It has been 4 months...

It has been 4 months, since a new chapter, a new journey has started. It has had many unique moments, challenges, days of travelling (in total), super tasty food (which made me quite surprised). However, I still cannot forget the reaction of the officer in Larnaca Airport who saw me flying to India and asked the reason behind this. As I told him that I am coming here to work in a small community, his reaction was “Woaww! Be careful and I wish you all the best good luck!” This conversation made me think what I was actually about to do is to start a brand new life in a land with so many surprises that I could not think of at that time! This was a bit frightening and made me nervous. Yeah, I should be careful from a person with a Western life perspective. However, as I kept moving on, I found out that I should be careful not because a bad accident can happen such as an attack from a monkey around our house or an unlucky choice of a food can cause some trouble later on, but more because of the things can go unexpectedly with India bringing surprises to a daily life.

You never know or guess what can happen in a day here. This actually makes me more enthusiastic on the daily routines of the life, making the experience full of thrills and actually fun! You start the day with everything well planned in your mind then ending up at the end of the day doing something completely different, for example being involved in a “Dam” being invited from a known family or even a random person who is interested on to hang out with “Angrieji” people. Such attractions during a daily life become the highlights of the days here for me, being involved in cultural wonders of Hindu family, tasting amazing foods, chatting and even doing yoga after the dinner.

Random Dam Invitations turn into good memories

On the one hand, such attractions can trip the plans involving your projects. I can recall such events on my past 4 months here easily. For instance, a project related visit to clay mines in local area in order to get some clay for building can end up with being involved in wrestling event as part of the festival which took place just in the clay mines where most of the people were watching, community men being involved. Or for example, cancelling training for making bamboo furniture as the trainer person from local community turns out as a drunk man and being inconsistent and unreliable. Although such surprises can be annoying, they are all challenges, which make the whole experience colourful. I need to add the unexpected trips, which were decided in 5 minutes, either project related or for weekends. I can honestly say that such experiences are the ones who keep more places in our minds and of course in our hearts.

As I look behind to make a small feedback to myself for this blog, I am amazed on how much I learnt and I am still learning. I have learnt not only about the culture, local community, foods, language (although I still have big struggle with), but also within eco building premises. As a manager and a newbie coordinator, I now have a freshly growing knowledge, practical experience and more courage to handle the problems that can be small in our daily lives but are bigger in India! Before I have acquired myself as a non-practical engineer, whereas now I am getting into a medium-level practical engineer where I can lead as manager, plan ahead, handle challenges, and create solutions! These can become handy in our house for building shelves, shoe racks, ReStore furniture, garden solutions and the newest ones clay stove and a clay oven or these can even be project related solutions! The latest ones are just because we have been out of gas in the house for several days. 

Clay stove after having no gas at home

Greenhouse construction with a spectecular view

In these past four months, I have met many people with beautiful personalities, some being interesting, funny faces, serious faces, personalities with warm hearts and some people just staring at me endlessly with a lot of curiosity. I would like to mention about the interest of people on me. Hindu people seeing a guy with dreads, I can be a Guru or Baba- spiritual person in Hindu society. By the way my whole country, Cyprus, should be proud of me or award me as a representative of Cyprus as I have so far informed many people about my little island, they are now aware of the existance of Cyprus, an island that exists in the Mediterranean Sea!

PS.1---Another thing that I should mention is how the cow dunks and cow urine is an amazing thing! People here use them for building, burning material, natural pesticide, natural fertilizer; this should be why Cow is a holy animal here! I have used it as building material and it gives a soothing effect to me while mixing it whit my hands! 

PS.2---I am writing this blog post in a day that started with 35-37 degrees Celsius and I am working under hot sun and now, I can barely have access to internet or electricity due to a heavy storm and rain outside with a show of lightnings to our view!

So, one should accept the challenges and surprises here in India as advantages and fully enjoy them!

Faik Nizam - Cyprus

Eco-Building Project Coordinator/Manager in Rait

EcoBuilding in Gajner

If you told me when I was in school that at age 34, a typical day for me might include things like: strapping a shovel to my motorbike and spending the afternoon in the desert digging ditch in 40c heat; using the same motorbike to transport a leaking bag of cow manure that was sandwiched between myself and my passenger; getting my passenger to stick his head out of the window of our car and shout 'beep beep' because the car-horn does not work and planning my day carefully based on what position the shade will be on my makeshift workshop on our roof - well, perhaps I would have chosen to study something sensible like accounting.

Though I suspect, a career balancing books may not have prevented me from finding myself in this, the most unorthodox of jobs. Afterall, it's not so long since my daily routine was more along the lines of insuring houses rather than building them. How exactly does one go from being and Insurance broker to an EcoBuilder!?

While traveling through India last year, I decided to cut short my stay in Darjeeling by one day. My next step was Nepal and Darjeeling just wasn't delivering the authentic mountain life experience I was craving (mainly because the mountain air was somewhat tainted by the smell of fried chicken from the local KFC). I commenced the 24 hour overland journey to Kathmandu on April 24th 2015. I arrived in Kathmandu on the morning of April 25th, just hours before a massive 7.9 earthquake was to strike the region. My original plan was to spend 2 weeks in Nepal and to cut a very long story short, I spent the next 4 months helping in the relief effort with a number of NGOs. It was there that I discovered that I could use my hands to actually build things rather than just pen pushing and number crunching. 

Eager to explore the crazy world of NGOs a bit further and to use my newly acquired skills to some useful purpose (rather than just going home and building a garden shed) I stumbled on EcuCare India. And What can I say about my work here? Managing my own workload and that of the contractors who helped us out was certainly a challenge. As we headed in to the summer months the main challenge was always to find shade and keep hydrated. And while I'm sure my housemates didn't really appreciate me turning the rooftop in to a sprawling workshop, I like to think I've made up for this somewhat by installing a nice hammock and armchair for everyone to use as a parting gift! 

So, I'll leave you all with some pictures of my work. As for me, I have a lot of catching up to do with my friends at home. No, I don't mean catching up on gossip, I mean I'm somewhat behind on my acquisition of mortgages, nice cars, gardens and such like that all my friends have been busy accumulating while I was living my simple yet content life here in the desert. 

EcoHouse in Indra Colony 

Hammock and armchair on the intern's house roof.

Sign for the Gajner ReStore

Niall de Bhiall - Ireland

EcoBuilding Project Manager in Gajner

SIX MONTHS IN THE AMAZING INDIA

Being sick in bed one of my last days in Harike is not the best moment to write my leaving blog post. Even so, good memories and experiences overcome the bad ones. How do I start talking about what it has been the most amazing experience I've ever had?

October 16th - I arrive in Delhi and meet two interns with whom I suffer my first frustration: after paying in advance a very expensive bus to Dharamshala, somehow it ends up broken before we get in and we miss our first day of induction. Today and after hearing a lot of stories about scams in Delhi, I think we were lucky to have only that problem! 

Induction week - we are in Naddi, where everything is beautiful (except the huge spiders) and peaceful, a nice transition for my first time in India. I meet all these interns from different countries, with different backgrounds, languages and interests. I assist to some workshops, a wedding, a cooking contest, fun club and girls club. I spend time with my homestay's family and realize how lucky I am for being born in Europe, with access to education, health, transports, ... even heating systems! Basically, I am lucky for having options.

Arrival in Harike - In my second week I travel from centre to centre with my housemates because Punjab is dangerous until religious protests finish. Rait and Gajner host us and we are invited to their activities and Saturday meetings, which help us to know how to start with ours. I arrive in Harike and want to leave immediately: terrible bathroom, zero privacy, no beds, no chairs, no table, noisy family and buffalos living next to us, mosquitoes everywhere...! But the team is amazing and we are there for each other when leaving thoughts come to our minds. We start the family tree, find a logo and a slogan (s*** it Gajner!) and set up the identity of the new Harike's centre.

Harike's family tree

Quarterlies - EduCARE's reunion in Harike! We develop the house to host around 50 people full of ideas, challenges, knowledge and creativity. We come up with goals by centre and project for the next months and why not to say, we had a great time playing dumb games, getting to know each other and sharing random conversations with people from all around the world.

Community engagement - we walk around the village, talk and take pictures with whoever want to talk to us. I mean... with everybody. We start to identify people: the girl who speaks a bit of English, the stitching girl, the principal's daughter and English teacher, the toilet paper guy, the leader children of the migrant community, etc... Five months later, they all have names and work with EduCARE: Rashvinder and Harsvinder in Girls Club, Janu and Narinder at the school, Amit who works with the SWASH team and still sells us toilet paper, Sansgina and Prince participating every week in ASP... They all make my stay more comfortable, strangers that have become part of my daily life and whom, in one way or another, I'll miss when I leave. 

Christmas break - I love travelling, I've doing it my whole life and I keep looking for being paid to travel (any ideas?). 14 interns and two weeks of holidays, 39 hours and two non-sleep nights on a train just to reach the first stop. In the middle, tuc-tucs, boats, sleeper buses, taxis, ricksaws and scooters. Christmas and New Year's Eve far from home but with our EduCARE's family between Mumbai, Goa and Hampi (Oh Hampi!). Western food and meat after 3 months! Obviously, some diseases - we are not immune to diarrhea or pink eye. And in general, one of the best trips I've ever done, surrounded by beautiful places and people. Then we split, interns go back to their centres but I continue my solo-travels to the South. I visit two different NGOs, the city of Bangalore and in my way back, I got lost in the middle of the night and in the middle of nowhere...I don't panic though, because the most awesome family is there to adopt and feed me for a night, until it's time to get on the bus and finally reach Harike. 

Cold times - It's January and it's freezing in Punjab. Some people say it will only last one week, some other say it will last two months. It lasts too much for me, I miss the beautiful Spanish weather! Days working from bed with all my clothes on, improvised talks in the kitchen because it is the only warm space and races to the bathroom at night to go back under the blanket as soon as possible conform a normal day during Harike's winter. 

Finally feeling comfortable - Going out alone is not an issue anymore. The shopkeepers and communities know us and almost every inhabitant of the village has a picture with us, so they don't ask for more. We don't pay excessive prices for daily products (or that's what we think). The guys in the fish shop yell my name and country every time they see me, the cookie shop guy automatically gives me mentos when I show up and Amit wishes us happy International Women's day. We are invited to ceremonies where we taste delicious food and learn Punjabi dance moves while Indians look, record and laugh.

FFRO visits - I could write a whole blog post about them. Six days I spent in that room with the same officer saying: come tomorrow, drink a chai, wait a minute, the boss is not here, we lost your documents bring them again, another chai for special guests? Whether you want it or not, Indian bureaucracy is part of the experience and what you can learn from it is to increase your patience. Maybe learn something else and take a book with you when you have to deal with it.

New interns - We need more manpower, projects start growing and we happily receive five awesome interns in February. The centre is full and we learn how to survive, collaborate, live together, and most important, how to cook for ten hungry young people (the secret: start chopping at 6pm and eat rice and vegetables, let's say, at least 4 days a week) 

Goodbyes - It's time to leave for those who arrived in October. We've been around six months together and shared the most beautiful experience. I can't imagine a better closure than spending Holi in Pushkar and a few more days in Jodhpur that I will never forget. I have now friends in so many countries that I'm afraid I won't have time (or money!) to visit them all. I'll do my best though, and if I ever go back to Spain, I'll be waiting for the EduCARE and specially Harike team to visit me. 

So, what's next? Right now, I can only think in how hard is realizing that I'm leaving and I won't see the lovely kids of our communities grow up, although I'm looking forward to see the outcomes of the seed we've planted. India has taught me to adapt better to any situation and timing, so even if I still don't know what I'll be doing the next month, I'll figure it out. I know though that I only got to know a tiny part of this country and that I want more. I know, then, that sooner or later I will come back to the amazing India.

María Reyes - Spain

EcoBuilding Project Coordinator and Project Manager in Harike

Eco-Building in EduCARE India

When I arrived to EduCARE in October, there were no Ecobuilding interns nor previous coordinator. Some projects were done in the past and a few more were already spotted, so it was time to start working. I was expecting to stay in Naddi but I was sent to the new centre where community engagement was the most important part of the first months in Harike. Through all these house visits and walks around the village, I was able to observe the habitability conditions of most of the families. Five factors define a slum - lack of potable water or sanitation, overcrowded houses with no durability and insecurity of tenure - and you can easily identify some of them in the communities where we work in EduCARE. Although it's a small scale, with between 40 and 120 families, reaching awareness and improving their skills to finally help them building the needed infrastructure are the right steps to make a difference.

The number of Ecobuilding interns increased in the last months what allow us to develop new ideas and projects. In December we received Niall from Ireland, who has previous experience in bamboo and earthquake construction. He came right before Christmas holidays with lots of enthusiasm and willing to start building!

In January two more interns joined our team, Faik from Cyprus and Alexis from France. They are now working hard in Rait and Naddi respectively and we'll see the results very soon! The last Ecobuilding addition was Lamia from Madagascar, who joined EduCARE a couple of weeks ago and will be starting the new centre in Rang Mahal.

Currently, we have ongoing projects in the three main areas we work on: interns' houses, furniture and community projects.

Indra´s homestay with bamboo structure and mud walls

In Harike, we are improving our centre by building a fence that will keep strangers away during work hours - they are welcome the rest of the time!, making new furniture for our common area and designing the future ReStore that will open soon. The garden keeps busy our interns in Rait, where they are planning a greenhouse and experimental vertical farming to extend to families who don't have enough space for an horizontal orchard. Faik is also making new furniture now that the centre is full. Alexis will show soon the result of the greenhouse he's been planning in Naddi, next to the nursery where the forestry team work. Finally, all the interns in Gajner are finalizing details for the ReStore launch, including furniture and a canopy made by Niall. He's also working on the ECRC design and a new homestay in Indra's colony. Two weeks ago, he delivered a three days' on site workshop for interns and community about bamboo and mud techniques, and the outcome is that the homestay is almost ready to use!

Indra's Homestay

They all are small projects that will improve the interns' stay or the communities' conditions. Hopefully we'll serve as an example to them, increase awareness and family incomes, transfer our knowledge, eliminate the stigma to some materials, adopt a more sustainable way of life for, at the end, improve their habitability conditions and dignify their lifes.

María Reyes - Spain

Ecobuilding coordinator in Harike

Welcome to Harike

The first month in Harike has passed, and it has gone very fast. Many things have happened, and the team has been working hard to establish strong connections with the local communities. After the end of quarterlies, the team began strategizing on the future of the centre and planned the centre's activities for the following year. After some house decoration activities (led by our former centre manager Ethan), the real work began.

First Saturday Meeting complete

Until now, we established two weekly ASP’s with two different local communities. The wonderful  Jessica, our Women’s empowerment project manager, has initiated a Girls’ Club with the Makhu girls and has received a very positive response. Our Eco-building project manager, Maria, has been working hard at establishing relations with local women who will host the eco home stays in the future, as well as worked on the plan for eco-buildings in all of EduCARE’s centres. While our new centre manager Tommaso, in between cooking delicious meals for all the interns, has begun his business plan for Harike’s ReSTORE. In addition, we also began giving workshops to a local school on a range of subjects including SWASH, girls’ health, disaster management and environmental awareness. Maria and Jessica gave the first two workshops and received very positive feedback from both the children and the teachers. These workshops will be given twice a month for the next year and are aimed at raising awareness amongst local children about important issues.

Harike team members standing next to their caricature

With respect to the forestry project, Harike has a lot of potential particularly due to its proximity to Harike’s Wetland, a protected area which includes a bird sanctuary home to hundreds of birds migrating from places as far as Siberia. The forestry team, composed of Sydney and I, had a pretty successful month in terms of establishing contacts and planning future projects. During this month, we have managed to meet and interview a number of officers from Punjab’s Forest Department in both Harike and Firozpur, as well as visited Makhu’s tree nursery to learn about the local flora and fauna. After some brainstorming sessions and lengthy discussions with Mr B, we came up with a number of projects to implement in the future. These include:

·  Establishing a tree nursery at the local Sikh temple, planting bamboos and a number of other local trees, with the aim of engaging the local community in taking care of the trees and create, in this way, a social forestry project.

·  Work with some of the women from Makhu village to create organic vegetable gardens for self-consumption.

·         ·  Establish an income-diversification project aimed at the two local communities we work with in Harike. As these communities’ incomes rely on extraction of resources from the wetland (for example by fishing and cutting wood for fuel and fodder), our aim will be to create a number of organic vegetable gardens for the families to use for self-consumption. This will allow the families to reduce their expenditure on food, improve their levels of nutrition, as well as promote more sustainable agricultural practices.

Harike team at Quarterlies

For the moment, these are the forestry project priorities and steps have been taken to ensure we’re on the right track to achieve these in the next year. In addition to the main project, Sydney and I also created a new garden for the interns’ house which will be used to grow organic vegetables, as well as mosquito-repellent plants (which are very much needed for the summer months here).

All in all, our first month here went very fast, between some planning and strategizing, drinking many, many chais, film nights, perfecting our parantha recipe, running away from frisky buffalos, playing cricket with the children and experiencing our first Punjabi wedding, we have learnt a lot but still have a lot to achieve.

Our first Punjabi wedding

Alessandra Sciarra- Italy 

Forestry and Organic Farming Project Manager, Harike (Punjab)

Eco-kitchen, a way to fight the unbearable heat inside the house

When I arrived to Gajner one of the first things I realised was how incredibly horrible it was to cook there. There wasn’t any type of ventilation and we had to turn the fan every time the fire was lit. Beside that, considering that sometimes at night we had 40 degrees, cooking there was literally like tucking into a sauna. It was unbearable.

I was ordered to build an open kitchen on the rooftop and a room for more interns to sleep there. When I arrived, there was not enough space for everybody and some interns had to sleep on the outside. At the same time, I started working on two technical projects: the solar project, from Johann Kieffer and Vjay and the sand filter. It was about building a solar panel on the rooftop in order to obtain hot water for cooking and for the shower. The sand filter project, from Lucía Villamayor consisted on two sand filters, one on the terrace and the other one down in Manoj´s backyard, our logistics manager and neighbour. The sand filter aimed at cleaning the dirty water used for washing in order to reuse it to supply a small garden. We realized soon that the most logical idea was to make everything work together as an Eco-Kitchen, by fixing the hot water tap and putting there the sand filter.

For the Eco-Building I started with the material: Bamboo. It is very common and popular in Asian architecture and it still remains an integral part of their lives. Moreover, it is incredibly flexible, resistant and cheap, and it is more sustainable than normal wood since it’s production doesn’t waste a lot of energy. In addition, during the growth period the bamboo has a positive influence on the climate of the region and helps to control erosion and floods. So it was perfect for the Eco-Building project, in spite of not being endemic of Rajasthan (bamboo can not grow in desert areas and had to be imported from more humid places of India). 

The Eco-Kitchen that I designed is basically a bamboo enclosure of 2.7m per 6m, with a sloping roof that sheds rainwater sinks toward the terrace. It presents a versatile philosophy, which means that the space can be adapted for different uses such as kitchen, bedroom, meeting room, etc. The walls are designed to be movable and placed in different positions. The roof is made of small bamboos that are supporting a tarpaulin that can be put on or removed as needed. Finally, the design takes into account the location and the possible climate issues during the year.

I would like to say that I like the result of my work on the Eco-Building project, but I am specially proud and excited about the solar project and the water sanitation project. Some people got really interested on those projects and are currently trying to do the same in other places. At that moment I felt that we were doing something great and beautiful for the community.

 

Enrique working on the Eco-kitchen on the rooftop of the interns' house in Gajner

Enrique Reig Navarro - Spain

Eco-building project manager, Gajner (Rajasthan)