Hannah gave a talk about her Gap Year as a volunteer teacher in India, a destination partly inspired by her grandmother’s love of her own visits there.

Hannah’s talk was fresh, amusing and at times very moving as she candidly described her mix of feelings on having thrown herself, on her own, into this unknown territory of job location, encounters and experiences completely unfamiliar to her.

She chose to find a volunteer opportunity independently, rather than via an organisation, since she wanted to be in direct contact with a local community and the headteacher of its school.  Internet trawls and sheer chance brought her to an ad for a 6 month post as a volunteer teacher at a community primary school in northern West Bengal, near Kalimpong.  This method of finding her ‘opportunity’ also brought enormous parental  anxiety as to whether the ad was a route to an internet slaving scam!

Hannah gave us lively descriptions of the school day and life (and the delicious food) in the hostel she shared with the headteachers, their families and 23 of the school children.  She told us about the community, its social life, particularly the many weddings, where everyone was involved in the preparation and cooking for them in the most reciprocal way.  She made many friends, in spite of the sometimes difficult language barrier and was repeatedly the object of enormous generosity, despite the givers being relatively so much poorer.  She learnt about a different approach to life, lacking the time-saving modern domestic conveniences that we have, yet making time to share a cup of tea and human empathy.  In this community, she also learnt about the joys of freedom from preconceived judgement and found the fun and outgoing confidence to join in, to sing and dance even in public.

Hannah spent the first three months in India on her own amongst her Indian friends.  When she returned after Christmas, she brought with her a friend Seb who, to the huge delight of the boys, loves football.  Playing team football became a regular event.

Hannah’s own contribution to the community, above daily school lessons, engagement with everyone and teaching English here and there, was to try to awaken in them the desire to care for their local environment and to better their own surroundings.  They all worked together on projects to change attitudes to littering in both adults and pupils, first clearing the playing fields of huge quantities of litter and then making and decorating bins for future use.  She introduced them to the delights of story books and being read to and to the benefits of practicing regular personal hygiene, such as good tooth-brushing and dealing with outbreaks of head-lice.

In conclusion, she urged us all that a Gap Year was for anyone!  And, after the initial understandable qualms of a novice, she can’t wait to go back next year.

There were no meetings in June, July and August, we stopped for the summer.