Something Hands On & Hindi

alexisisis

I want to go to India to live for a while and want to volunteer when I'm there. I'd like to do something hands on rather than working in a charity office or something like that, whether it's farming, building, humanitarian based etc.

I'm also learning Hindi at the moment and expect to be reasonably ok at it when I go (not for at least another year) so I'd like to obviously work on the language when I'm there with the aim of becoming fluent. Now I understand that where I go will make a difference to this as not everywhere speaks Hindi.

Basically I love India (been there once before) and have become sick of life in the UK so it could be for quite a long time that I go for. I really want to do something that makes a difference after working in meaningless office jobs in the UK for most of my life (28 now) but I really don't know what area I am interested in or where I should go. I'm not that interested in teaching English as I'm quite shy & I think standing in front of a class of kids could be my worst nightmare. I just know I want to do something at grass roots level, to act rather than talk about what's going on there.

I was looking at WWOOF to start with (this is how I became interested in volunteering & realised that it's what I want to do with my life) but I'm not sure how I feel about living in a small remote village growing vegetables for however long.

Does anyone have any advice or ideas with this in mind?

tiffin

I don't have any advice for you per se, Alexisis except to say that wwoofing can be a wonderful experience for all involved. I am from Australia originally, and did a lot there in my mid to late 20s, but also a little in India and then the USA. Actually I wwoofed in India about 6 years ago when I was about 28, so there you go. It was a great farm we stayed at, but not in a Hindi speaking area.
It is an interesting thing going from a "developed" country to do agricultural work! Although I wasn't exactly new to gardening or agricultural work - I know a thing or two about organic growing, and consider myself to be quite hard working, I was pretty much useless next to the peasant women I worked with who had grown up working the land. They just had so much more stamina and really knew how to pace themselves. Maybe it was the paan! But, far from me being able to offer them any major help, it was like they had way more to teach me, really. Still, I think they appreciated that I was trying and was interested in them. I didn't speak a word of Kannada and the guy who owned the farm worked at a school in the nearby city and only came home to interpret the days events in the evenings. It was awesome!
Anyway, all the best!