Life at the Home Base

I have to say that I quite enjoyed the month I have spent here at the Home Base in Dharamsala. I would describe it as supportive and fun. I lived with 7 other volunteers and the staff that came during the day were available to help us if we needed assistance or had questions (they were also available by cell phone at all times). The staff also organized our outings, Hindi lessons, guest speakers, meetings and placements. We were never bored. There were 3 community workers Monica, Kanchan and Anju who were all women and whom I particularly enjoyed talking with. I thought of them as my older Indian sisters even though they were all at least 20 years younger than me.
Some of the things that the other volunteers and I noticed or found interesting:
- we had wireless internet; however it frequently went out and nobody (i.e. the staff) knows why.
- we could get our laundry done within 24 hours. The service came to the house everyday (including holidays, weekends), picked it up and delivered it all for a very small price
- switches in Canada are opposite the ones here, so I often turned lights and fans off instead of on
- we would run out of water, but with 10-15 minutes there was usually more
- knives were not routinely put out for meals; someone found them in a drawer a week after we arrived. I had already adapted to using a spoon.
- to insert our adaptors into an outlet, we needed to push a pencil in a hole at the top of the outlet, put in the adaptor in, and then pull out the pencil. Somehow sticking a pencil into a 220 volt outlet worried me; however nothing has happened so far.
- we take bucket showers. This means we fill up a bucket of water, and using a small cup, pour water all over ourselves, soap up, and then rinse with more water using the cup. This took some getting used to. I particularly found it challenging not to get my soapy hands in the clean water that I was about to rinse from. Also, the entire floor is wet afterwards. There is a drain in the floor but the area is not separated off. After you were done you squeegeed the floor the best you could, and hoped to get the floor dry enough so that you didn’t slip.
- Out toilet was a squat version- I just pretended I was camping for a month.
Overall adjusting to all this with other the other volunteers enriched our experience. I can’t wait to come back!