In a message dated 12/29/2005 8:20:19 PM Eastern Standard Time Earl Choldin writes:
You can't go back to Constantinople
My wife Sudha and I went to a village in Kanyakumari District of Tamil Nadu in 2005 as volunteers with
the American Jewish World Service on a seven week assignment. For me it was a return to volunteer work
in India 40 years after my first assignment in Gwalior, M.P. as an India 11 PCV. For Sudha too it was
a return to India, home though not quite home. Sudha is a city girl from Punjab, a long way from rural
Tamil Nadu. We met at the Experiment in International Living in Vermont, training Peace Corps India 78
where she was teaching Hindi and I was coordinating cross-cultural studies.
Our assignment was with a small NGO that provides eye health clinics and rehabilitation services for
the blind in villages in one block of Kanyakumari District. It does this work on contract with Sight
Savers International, a British charity.
For the last 15 years I have been running organizations providing professional development and global
education services to Alberta schools. So my assignment in Tamil Nadu was to provide organizational
development assistance to the NGO. Working with staff leaders, we developed criteria and procedures
for staff evaluation; we developed a web site and a newsletter and we developed funding proposals for
new programs. Sudha is a psychologist trained in rehabilitation. She provided staff training so that
they can work more effectively with blind people and their families.
Like a Peace Corps assignment, some days we wondered why we had come. Will the director ever use the
staff evaluation procedures I developed? Will the NGO actually do all the things I promised in the
proposals I wrote? Would they have gotten the money anyway without my developing the proposals?
Ultimately does it matter if the money goes to this NGO or a different NGO? On the other hand, we
did do good work. Maybe some folks picked up on some of our skills. Maybe the NGO will be more
effective because of our work and the people will be better served.
* * * *
I returned to Gwalior for a brief visit. Everything is the same and everything is different.
I visited the school I taught in. There have been several additions to the building but classes look
much the same: classrooms crammed with sixty plus students taught through lecture method. Not a
single piece of student work or a single poster on the walls. The bulletin board I put up is long
gone. There were a few obvious changes: where student bicycles used to be parked there are now
student motor scooters and just outside the school building there are now two dozen tutoring schools
operating out of apartments. Also, I was told, the curriculum has been updated.
I went to the home of Gunshyam Keshyap, my closest friend in Gwalior. He passed away last year; his
wife and I had a warm visit and a few tears together. I met his granddaughter, who is studying pottery
in Bhopal. She moves and speaks much like a 20 year old in suburban Chicago. I met his grand-nephew.
He greeted me by touching my feet respectfully. He was leaving Gwalior the next day to start his first
job with a firm in Delhi.
I visited my old colleague Leela Natarajan. She is old and somewhat frail. I guess I am old and somewhat
frail too. Several other colleagues have died. We reminisced how her father and I used to argue about
the Viet Nam War, he supporting the US government, I damning it. This time, however, she and I agreed
about the Iraq War.
I rode around the city. Transportation was still via three wheeled tampoos picking up passengers along
a set route like a bus. However, everything felt different. The city has grown from a population of
300,000 to 1,300,000. Old landmarks were covered by new construction.
I walked through Mahel Gaon, the poor neighborhood near my house. I used to provide an informal
after-school recreation program for the kids there. Nirmal, one of those kids, recognized me. His
whiskers are grey and he has a pot belly. Things seem to be going well in Mahel Gaon. With the
assistance of India's affirmative action laws for scheduled castes, Nirmal and several of the
boys I worked with have gotten government jobs. We had a cup of tea at the road side tea stall.
Tea stall tea is the same.
Everything is changed and everything is the same.
Earl Choldin
7749 96 Street
Edmonton, Alberta
T6C 4P8
780-434-5568
echoldin@hotmail.com
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