Sunday, February 16, 2014

Callum Ross

Upon arriving in India the first thing that I felt was shock. The reason I felt so shocked was because I’d seen all the pictures and television programmes showing the poverty throughout India but I had never really felt like it was too bad. This was because I hadn’t actually had the chance to experience it in person. So, arriving in the country and seeing all the poverty in person, along with all the sounds and smells, made me realise just how bad the environment that these people are living in was, and just how crazy the country was.

 

As I sit here now inside my AGS hostel bedroom writing this final reflection I am thinking about the boys at the Future Hope hostel that I visited in Kolkata. I now feel very privileged to have access to things like the internet, and televisions around the hostel; things that those Indian boys don’t have access to.  Not only am I provided with these many tangible things, but I am also provided with a large number of intangible things, like various opportunities to reach my potential. These are chances that many of these Future Hope boys will never be provided with, so making the most of every opportunity I am given is one of the main things I have taken away from India, because nearly every one of those Future Hope and Jungle Crow boys take up every single opportunity of the very few available to them. It is now clear to me that every day myself and those around me are provided with amazing opportunities to reach our potential, although it feels like many of our fellow New Zealanders struggle to ever realise this.

 

An experience that will be in my memory bank forever is visiting the New Zealand High Commission and speaking to a staff member who was explaining how well you have to perform in Indian high schools if you want to get a good career from your university degree. The staff member then went on to explain what happens to the people who are still getting good grades that are high, but not high enough, to go off to university. This conversation made me question what I wanted to do with my life and made me think about how much effort I put in to all aspects of my life. This one conversation has made me rethink how I approach many situations in my life today.

 

Of the many things India has taught me a key one is to always be open to conversation with anybody, even if they are random people. After all there will always be people that will have interesting and valuable things to talk about, and these people can sometimes share a wealth of knowledge with you about the world. These individuals can be anyone, even people like young Mr Tripati (even though he does have a lot of unimportant information, some of the topics he does talk about can be very valuable)!

 

Throughout the final few debriefs when everybody was explaining how India had affected them mentally I was thinking to myself “why am I not feeling any of these emotions”, and I began asking myself “why is there a large number of people who are really emotionally affected by what they have seen and I am not affected?” Then upon arriving home, I thought to myself, maybe the trip hasn’t been any help to me at all? But now after a few of weeks at home with time to gather my thoughts, I have realised that my take on various things in life is now a lot different to what it would have been before the trip and I truly can see what I have gained from this amazing experience.

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