Letter from OCL student on placement in India

Letter from Joanne Ensor October 2008

17/10/08

Hi All,

How are you all? I hope your well. I have officially been in India a month now and am on day 30 of placement today. A lot has happened sine my last e-mail. I have settled in and am now getting used to India and the love hate relationship we are developing.

Since my last e-mail I have done a bit of travel, (that’s right during student placement time!). We started by traveling to the closest big city Vizad (a shortening of a much longer city name!) then to our supervisors house in Bhubaneswar for three days. To our surprise our supervisors place was a mansion with a guest house, running hot and cold water showers, a plasma in every room, access to western style food, drivers, cooks and my favorite a washing machine! We had a fantastic time there having group supervision and toasted sandwiches!

We did do some work whilst there the thing that most sticks out in my mind is a visit to a refuge for women who had been trafficked from villages and poor families around the country. It was horrible- we sat with the women (many of them teenagers) and their children for a couple of hours; despite their ordeals they sang songs for us and treated us like royalty. Many of the young women had been forced into prostitution, were sex slaves or had been imprisoned in people’s homes. The women sang songs for us, showed us articles about themselves from newspapers and service brochures and made us tea. There were a few women who could not come upstairs to see us as they had new injuries so I asked if we could see them, we went down to the bedroom to visit one women who had been horrifically abused and was in bed with a broken leg. The room was filled with what looked like tables from a primary school but they were the beds for all of the women living in the refuge. There was no time limit on how long the women can stay in the refuge, but exit options are extremely limited, one option that was talked about was family reunification- I nearly fell off my chair, sending someone back to the family that had sold them in the first place, but now the women may have a child and is no longer a virgin, and is too old so would not be able to marry in the village she came from. One of the other exit points was marriage- and we think our accommodation options for clients are limited!

Following our stay in Bhubaneswar we traveled back to Vizad (by train which is really nice) where a public holiday was taking place a celebration for one of the women gods- everyone you ask seems to have a different reason why the holiday takes place so I am unclear what the actual reason is! Then we traveled to Hyderabad to visit international NGOs and some local NGOs. This was very interesting and we were able to put into context the work we are doing in the villages a bit more.

I am now back at the University Campus and have moved out of the lounge room into a bedroom which has been nice. Whilst writing this I have just been interrupted by our university supervisor who asked us to come down to his place to get some food his wife has cooked for us to try and there was the biggest dead rat I have ever seen in my life on the floor……. Fortunately it was dead! This is the kind of unexpected thing that pops up all of the time here, I am learning to expect the unexpected and be relaxed about it. Other thank this there is nothing too exciting to report I am getting excited for the end of placement as this means I will have finished the course and will be faced with the all important decision of where to travel to next- do I want a bit of culture or do I want a bit of beach time!

Sorry I can’t do individual e-mails due to issues with internet connection and power! I hope everything is good in Melbourne and you all enjoy the upcoming Melbourne Cup!!!

Take care and I hope to hear back from all of you with your news and gossip.

Miss you all Love Jo   

PS I am much better at using the squat toilet now.

PPS I am sick of eating various different curries three times a day- and have not yet mastered the art of eating with my hands!