Hard at Work

So why am I in India?

I am sure that to many it may come as a surprise that I am not in India to just bum around and embrace a new culture. I am in fact interning at Arbor Brewing Company Bangalore. A little bit of background – Arbor Brewing Co is one of the largest microbreweries in Ann Arbor, Michigan (the town where I go to Uni). 4 years ago microbreweries were legalized in Bangalore and thus stated popping up across the city as the new drinking holes for those working in business and the IT sector. My boss, a Bangalore native and alumni of the University of Michigan recognised that a lot of the breweries here were lacking experience with making great beer and thus wanted to partner with an established brewery in the states. After several years, we are now the second biggest microbrewery in Bangalore.

So why am I here? Given that craft beer is relatively new to Bangalore, I have been tasked with teaching people about our beers – as most are accustomed to the very standard Kingfisher. I host tours of the brewery, lead tastings with groups, and am generally a presence in the pub to get feedback from customers and answer any questions that they may have.

While this seems like a rather unconventional internship, it has been massively rewarding thus far. Not only for the chance to be in India, but to work with a great group of people. I will be hosting training seasons with the staff, helping with leadership skills; leading various beer tasting – working on product knowledge and presentation technique; and working primarily on how to sell more beer.

But don’t think I have been spending all my time working… I chucked in some photos of my morning walk to the gym and a trip to the botanical gardens here.

Cheers,

Oli

McKenzie | New Delhi, India | Week 3

My third week wasn’t as exciting as my first two weeks but I still had a good time! On Monday and Tuesday I rested after a tiring weekend in Rishikesh and did work from home. Emily and I went to the New Friends Colony Community Center and got mendi (henna) on one hand. Afterwards we had an all you can eat sushi and dim sum lunch at Yum Yum Tree! On Wednesday I did more work from home and in the evening Emily, Meghna and I went to Gurgaon (a nearby city) for dinner and to see the Bollywood show Zangoora: The Gypsy Prince at Kingdom of Dreams. During the intermission I said I was craving honey roasted almonds which they usually have at live shows in the States. Emily decided to go check out the concession stand and came back with two containers of roasted almonds! I was so excited but then Emily warned me that she thought they were honey roasted but they’re actually masala roasted almonds. During our trip so far we’ve been pointing out all of the masala (sometimes advertised as “Magic Masala!”) flavored snacks but I really wasn’t expecting this. I’ll tell you what, masala roasted almonds is nothing like honey roasted almonds. Nothing like it. But it was incredibly nice of Emily to think of me and buy an extra. The entire show was in Hindi and while Emily and I could infer what was happening sometimes, we actually were confused and lost for most of the show. The excitement of the song and dance numbers balanced with our confusion so we had a great time anyway.

My mendi (henna)!

A live Bollywood show!

On Thursday and Friday, Emily and Meghna were on an implementation trip to Uttar Pradesh so I was alone in the apartment. I spent my Thursday planning for a meeting with the National Service Scheme handicraft volunteers during which we would coordinate our next trip to Sirohi. I had created a spreadsheet with all of the survey results from our first trip and needed some questions answered for the one sheet which was filled out in Hindi and some other notes in English which I still couldn’t decipher. I made a schedule for the upcoming meeting during which I planned to ask about the few points of confusion from the surveys, ask about how their experiences were on the trip, if they had any suggestions for improvement, and different ideas for markets where we could sell our handicrafts in the future. On Friday I took an auto to the Starbucks in CP (Connaught Place) and met with the NSS volunteers. They all had similar answers to my questions. They all said they really enjoyed the trip to Sirohi and Khoiri but they would change our preparation. We all agreed that it would have been better if we’d coordinated with the villagers or a reliable contact within the village in order to find a more suitable day and time to visit the village. This planning could’ve prevented the unfortunate conflict with the community event and would’ve enabled us to survey more women. While I didn’t plan the first trip and I wasn’t aware that no one had coordinated with locals before it was planned, I now know to doing more coordination for any future visits that I’ll be running. I was also planning to discuss the ideas for markets and shops in Delhi for distribution of the handicrafts as my boss had suggested. On the morning of the meeting I received a call from my boss notifying me that she’d changed her mind about me focusing the meeting on distribution and she decided I should plan for another trip to Sirohi for the following week and to plan the trip along with how to begin production of the handicrafts. I decided to still discuss the market ideas with the volunteers but I also included the new task on my agenda. My weekend was fairly laid back. On Saturday morning Emily, Meghna, and I met and ate brunch with our boss. We discussed some issues we’ve come across during our time in our internships as well as expectations and hopes for the rest of our time here. Sunday was International Yoga Day! Unfortunately my will to wake up early for yoga was much weaker than my will to catch up on some much needed sleep. After getting some rest, I went to Dilli Haat market with the other interns to buy souvenirs for ourselves, family and friends.

So far, my position with Skilled Samaritan Foundation has made me more flexible with my expectations for assignments, as well as with my position as a whole. Before leaving for Delhi, I was under the impression that I would have more concrete assignments and have assistance from my boss as to how she wanted the handicrafts program to be structured. After being here for a while, I have experienced a very unstructured position which leaves more room for leadership on my part due to the expectation of me to organize meetings with volunteers, plan trips, and develop the program without many requirements. While an internship with a leadership role can provide challenging opportunities for personal growth, sometimes I find the position to be too independent. For instance, our boss usually does not accompany us on our trips and this can be challenging when I do not speak Hindi and do not know the area. Although I have volunteers with me who speak the language, usually they have not been to the site before either. Experiences like this have definitely forced me to step up in times of uncertainty and dilemma.

First Impressions

I don’t think I ever really thought I would make it to India. It has been a goal of mine since a I was young child sitting in bed as my grandfather shared tales of all the adventures in the country as he had living here 60 years prior. Thus when I learned about the India Initiative Program it seemed silly not to apply. In the planning process for the summer a trip to India never was the focus. However during the first week of March I received an email telling me that I had been offered a chance to work at Arbor Brewing Company in Bangalore, India.

3 months later, and I found myself setting off on a 27 hour trip to get to Bangalore (which involved one of the top 5 longest flights, 16 hours from New York to Delhi). It was half way through this trip, at 3am that it finally hit me. I was going to India, to sell beer, in a culture so drastically different from my own. Quite frankly, I was terrified. But I came to realize that my grandfather (who was the same age as me when he left for India) was gone for 10 years where as I was just off for 6 weeks, his trip took 2 months, and did not have the luxuries of skype and FaceTime.

Now I am here I couldn’t be gladder that I made the trip. There is this magical, organic fluidity to India. On first sight, it seems to be chaos – cars and bikes swerving in and out of traffic (ignoring the presence of lanes), wild dogs hanging around street corners, and hundreds of people trying to sell me real Ray Bans. Yet when you look a little closer, you realize that it just works. Life here may be missing some of the luxuries which I take for granted in the US, such as drinking water from a tap. But people are working hard trying to make a better life for themselves and their family, and they are happy doing so. I have been greeted with nothing but kindness and a real interest in me, which is a refreshing change from a lot of the superficial interactions which take place in my life back home.

Bangalore is particularly interesting; as a friend told me ‘it is the biggest little city in the world’. He said this because there is quite clearly lots of new money in Bangalore. It is the IT capital of India with lots of international companies opening offices here. The result is a population of Indians who are quite well off. It is this wealthy class that you will see in all the breweries in the city and this small circle seem to all knew each other because of it. I find this disparity, and its implications, between the wealthy group which frequent the brewery and such a large very poor population of Bangalore interesting. I hope to write on it more as I spend more time talking to people here.

Having left my parents in Detroit 7 days ago, I still can’t quite believe that I am here – yet at the same time it all seems terribly natural (I wonder if my grandfather was feeling the same way 7 days into his tip). Well, that’s all I have so far. I’ll keep you posted.

Cheers,

Oli

McKenzie | New Delhi, India | Week 1 & 2

Week 1

The exquisite Taj Mahal

Just a warning, this first post will be a long one because I will be covering my trip from my landing in Delhi on Friday, May 29th to this past Sunday, June 14th. After arriving in Delhi late Friday night, I settled in for a day before heading to Agra on Sunday at 5am. I spent my second real day in India marveling at the Taj Mahal’s beauty. Although I’ve seen many pictures of the Taj throughout my life, the tomb truly exceeded my expectations. After spending the day in Agra, my fellow intern Emily and I took a car to Jaipur where we ran into some issues checking in at our hotel. Apparently Indian hotels require copies of passports and visas from all foreigners staying at their establishment. This was news to me because I thought I was being smart by locking my passport in my bedroom back at the apartment so I wouldn’t lose it or so it wouldn’t get stolen. So Emily and I spent about an hour trying to reason with the concierge at the hotel so we wouldn’t have to sleep on the street. Luckily our landlord had a copy of my passport and visa in his office so he emailed us a picture and we ended up have a nice comfy bed to sleep in for the night. The next day we explored beautiful Jaipur by visiting the Hawa Mahal (Wind Palace), Jantar Mantar (an observatory with the world’s largest sun dial), and Amber Fort.

Super cheesy picture of Emily and me jumping in front of the world’s largest sun dial

Monday evening we drove back to Delhi to finally relax before my first work meeting. On Wednesday morning another intern named Matt and I took an auto rickshaw (or just “auto”) to a Starbucks in GK-1 M Block to meet with our boss. Matt and Emily had already been in Delhi for a few weeks and are solar panel interns working with villages to help install solar lights and panels where they are needed. Unfortunately, Emily was sick so she couldn’t join us for our meeting during my first week. Among other things, our meeting mapped out my upcoming tasks for the handicrafts internship and the goals my boss and I hope the program can accomplish over the next two months I’m here and the following month after I’m gone when the second and last handicraft intern will still be here. This meeting was also meant to plan for a handicrafts visit to Sirohi on Thursday, June 4th and solar panel installation in Uttar Pradesh (UP) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday but these trip plans fell through when some issues with funding arose.

While the sudden change in plans was disappointing, it ended up working out for me that the trip was cancelled because my Thursday was a looonnng day spent in bed. It seemed that whatever Emily had caught had also reached me and the following 24 hours were a rough combination of *WARNING* vomiting, fever, aches and constant trips to the toilet. While my first assumption was food poisoning or traveler’s diarrhea of some sort, our boss and local roommate both had the same bug and they are used to Delhi’s food and water. Emily and I concluded that this sickness might have been some kind of 24 hour flu but it will remain a mystery. On Friday I was already feeling much better so Emily and I took an auto to Lodhi Gardens and strolled around the beautiful park while taking frequent breaks from the unrelenting heat to sit down and chat. The weekend of June 6th and 7th was spent visiting Khan Market and Haus Khas Village in New Delhi where we found new Indian kurtis to wear on our work trips to villages and in the evening we discovered great live Punjabi music.

Week 2

After we had found out that the first trip was cancelled, the other interns and I began planning for a volunteer orientation we were running on Tuesday, June 9th. At this meeting we met with 11 engineering students from Delhi Technological University’s National Service Scheme organization. We spoke to them about the available roles and our upcoming trip to Sirohi on Thursday, June 11th. I was kind of nervous for the meeting but it went really well and I recruited six amazing volunteers to help me with the handicrafts project! On Thursday we all met up at the exit from the end of the metro line before taking an hour long tempo ride to Sirohi. Emily and I were feeling adventurous and decided to risk sitting on the back of the tempo for a bumpy and exciting ride. Our handicrafts team gathered the local women in Sirohi in order to survey them on their handicraft skills and their work availability. Unfortunately, we discovered there was a Muslim community event going on that day which prevented a large number of the community’s women from meeting with us. Even though we ran into this issue, we met with some local women and walked to the neighboring village Khoiri to speak with other available artisans. Throughout the entire day, everyone we encountered welcomed us warmly into their communities and the local children eagerly posed for photos and tried to speak with me even though my Hindi only includes two words. We left Sirohi and Khoiri with 17 completed surveys and I look forward to gathering more local women in the future and conducting more surveys in order to gain a better understanding of the skill sets available to our program.

I had a great time in Sirohi village! The children really enjoyed posing for photos.

After a long hot day with a total of four hours of commute, Emily, Meghna (another solar panel intern), Surbhi (our new friend), and I packed our bags for a night bus to Rishikesh for a weekend trip. We ran into some trouble at the bus station when no one seemed to know which direction to point us in for our bus but luckily we made it to the back alley near the bus station where our bus was waiting with a couple of minutes to spare. We arrived in Rishikesh at around 6 in the morning and wandered around before grabbing a taxi to our campsite. We booked one night of camping and one day of rafting through an adventure agency. The campground and tents were very nice and the food was amazing! Needless to say, we were pleasantly surprised.

Our campsite was at the foothills of the Himalayas

We enjoyed a nice cold dip in the Ganga

We spent the next day rafting for over two hours on the Ganga (the Ganges River) and went to our new hotel for a much needed shower and nap. We had an awesome weekend in Rishikesh and found an auto to take us back to the bus station for our 4:30 ride when massive amounts of traffic appeared out of nowhere. We were freaking out and terrified we were going to miss our bus and after running into the booth at the bus station at 4:40, a worker told us our bus was stuck in traffic too so it hadn’t arrived yet. We were so relieved but our relief eventually turned to extreme frustration when our bus took two and a half hours to arrive to the station and our drive took almost twelve hours when it should’ve only taken six and a half. We definitely had a rough trip home but we eventually made it back to the apartment and I tried to relax before my third week in New Delhi, India.

Emily | New Delhi, India | Week 3

Last Thursday’s trip to the village was not exactly as expected. Being solar electrification interns, we expected that our job would be to bring solar electricity to the villages, not take it away. However, our company’s system is set up on a sustainable model that requires each villager who accepts our help to pay a certain monthly fee – a fee that is much smaller than actual solar panel companies would allow for someone to pay. In one of the villages that SSF had helped before, villagers have refused to pay their monthly dues. The company has travelled back time and time again, trying to explain the long term benefits of the systems and how though they are spending money now, it will pay off in the long run. Each time they promise to pay but never follow through, so this trip, we had to remove the panels. The experience was especially uncomfortable because it was our first time to the village, our boss was not their to introduce us, and our only role was taking away their power. So, it definitely could have been better. Though it was an unpleasant experience, I feel that I learned a valuable lesson in this line of work: not everyone wants to be helped in the way that you are able to help them. This will be important in my career if I am to start a business similar to this. Also, I have gotten to know the National Service Scheme volunteers better, making this experience and any future interactions with these villagers a lot less daunting (below is our group picture at the end of the day at the village).

This past weekend definitly made up for our trip to the village. The other interns, McKenzie and Meghna, our friend here in India, Surbhi, and I travelled north to Rishikesh, a city in the foothills of the Himalayas. Our campsite was situated right on the bank of the Ganges River and there we got to kayak, rock climb, white-water raft, meet other travellers from all over the world, and eat some amazing Indian food. It was very nice to get out of the city to a slightly colder climate and just relax. I definitely plan to head back to Rishikesh at some point and take part in one of their treks of the Himalayas! (Below is my rock climbing at the camp and white-water rafting on the Ganges River)

Also, in case you were in need of some cheering up, this is a mama monkey eating a banana holding her baby!!!

Meghna | New Delhi, India | Week 1 & 2

Dawan-i-am, Red Fort

On the Saturday before last, I arrived in New Delhi. I had been to Delhi previously on numerous occasions but I had never been so excited. I was absolutely ecstatic to start working with the Skilled Samaritan Foundation. I spent the next few free days exploring New Delhi.

One of my favorite places was Janpath which is a local market that sells handcrafted bags and clothes. Despite the heat and all the bargaining with the shopkeepers, I managed to make some great purchases. In addition, I explored old Delhi – the Red Fort, Chandni Chowk and Humayun’s Tomb.

Sirohi with interns from UM and DTU

The first week of my internship was dedicated to getting me oriented with the business and their work. The Skilled Samaritan Foundation is a social business which aims to light Indian villages with solar power. I have always wanted to work with green energy and this internship gives me a great opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the field. Because this is such a new company, many of assignments for the first two weeks included expanding on the volunteer handbook, posting updates on their website and working on a fundraising campaign.

Backyard

In the second week, the other interns from the university Emily and McKenzie, some volunteers from the Delhi Technological University and I went to Sirohi, a village in Northern Uttar Pradesh. A few households stopped paying the development fee of the solar panels and so, the organization decided to have the solar panels removed until they could devise a more efficient payment plan. This trip was a great learning experience since I did not anticipate some of the challenges we faced. It was difficult to articulate to the villagers the advantages of solar energy and the necessity of timely payments. Despite the higher cost and frequent power outages, they still preferred electricity. In addition, most of the villagers felt that it should be free and the

White-water rafting in the Ganga

Indian Government should be paying for it. Miscommunication between the villagers and the company made the entire process longer and more tedious.

This past weekend we went to Rishikesh, a small town on the foothills of the Himalayas. We spent the weekend camping along the Ganga, white-water rafting, indulging in Indian food and exploring Rishikesh.

Week 2: After the Weekend at the Village

These past few weeks were met with challenges. After striking 5 deals over the weekend (May 22nd – May 24th), Matt and I had a lot of work cut out for us. We put together all of the proper documents, talked to our consultant at the solar company to retrieve our systems, and skyped with our funders in the U.S. We worked for the next two weeks, planning a trip to install the solar panels the weekend of June 5th-7th. However, at the last minute, our funder did not release the funds. There was a miscommunitcation/misunderstanding between what he had pictured the money to be used forv(lighting classrooms of villages) and what it was needed for (lighting streetlights in villages for security at night. Because it is almost always sunny during the day in India, they did not need lighting for during the day). This often comes with the teritory of having a funder from one country, and the business in the other. Although it was frustrating at the time, I am happy to see the possibilities that can go wrong with this type of business. Now in the future, if I am to own a company like this, I know I will need to spend more time with the funders helping them to understand the environment that we are working in.

Moving forward, we have connected with other volunteers through an Indian organization National Service Scheme (NSS). Tomorrow, we plan to travel to a village that we have already installed panels in, pictures to come!

Besides work, another intern, McKenzie, and I were able to travel to Agra and Jaipur. You can see my picture with the Taj Mahal and the world’s biggest sun dial below! This weekend we will be traveling to Rishikesh, a city at the base of the Himalayas, to go camping, rock climbing, white-water rafting, and to relax with some yoga.

Week 1: Biggest Challenge/Opportunity

(This post is copied from the Summer Vocation blog. The theme was: what has been a major challenge at your internship?)

I began my internship three weeks ago at the Skilled Samaritan Foundation in New Delhi, India. I found my biggest challenges right off of the bat. I knew coming into this internship that it was a relatively new company and their first year taking interns. However, after listening to my friends’ past internship experiences, I was still expecting a bit of structure. I soon realized that was not the case.

My internship title was a Solar Electrification Intern and I was told that I would be helping to light the homes of villagers by working in the field every weekday and possibly weekends. However, I was not able to see the villages until two weeks into my six week internship. All of the time before, and after, was spent making brochures and presentations, writing e-mails, talking to funders, and adjusting their website. At the time, I was disappointed; I had anticipated gaining a lot of field work to be able to bring back to the classroom this fall. Now, I am very appreciative of this very different but equally fulfilling experience.

Because this is such a new company, my boss has allowed the other interns and I to take on a leadership role, acting almost as her partners. We are able to get first-hand experience in starting and running an NGO; something I had always considered doing in my career. The problems we have faced are things I never would have anticipated, and after these three weeks of interacting with various partners and funders, I feel I am more prepared for my long term goals. I am just excited to see where the next 3 weeks take me.

(The first picture is of another intern, Matt, the panchayat (village leaders) of our first client in Babri village, and I after we made a deal! The second picture is of Matt, my boss Gauri, and I with one of our solar panels at a school in Shukrtal village.)