India Internship Scholarship

They say good things in threes.

This was certainly true of our seventh week in Pali.

Firstly, Anna and Ingrid discovered that, contrary to popular belief (both in Pali and back home), they are in fact, goddesses of the domestic kind. Matt was recently summoned to the field for a night to assist with an Educate Girls side project, and though within half an hour of his departure the guesthouse courtyard had filled with cows and dogs (which were evacuated by a neighbor at Ingrid and Anna’s request, or plea rather), the girls certainly redeemed themselves in the kitchen, preparing potentially the greatest sabjee stir fry Pali has never witnessed. We will not delve into the unconventional methods used in preparation and the strange and perhaps slightly horrified looks of one EG member when he saw us chopping vegetables on the chapatti board.

Secondly, we have discovered after seven weeks of watching only excessively melodramatic Hindi soap operas, Hindi news and cricket commentary in Hindi, that both the Discovery Channel and National Geographic are broadcast in English!! Anna is thrilled to have resumed her fervent love affair with Bear Grylls and Ingrid and Matt are just as pleased with the small respite from the constant sound of “What would Bear do??”

Finally, and most importantly, on a trip to Pali’s tribal belt to work on one of our final projects, Ingrid and Matt witnessed a small miracle that really brought the work of Educate Girls home. This last week we have been working on case studies on two girls in infinitely different situations. One girl, Kamla, with assistance from EG, has reenrolled in school and reached the tenth grade with prizes for her academic achievement. Another, Timi, an only child, was educated for two years before dropping out to help her handicapped father and working in the house and on their farm. While we spoke to 11 year old Timi’s family and photographed her daily activities (fetching water, grazing goats, chopping wood, milking cows, preparing food, cleaning the house) and discussed the work of Educate Girls and the benefits of a complete education her father made the decision that Timi would be reenrolled in the local primary school. It truly was a special moment and we hope that Timi will join the hundreds of other tribal girls in the local school.

Meanwhile, exhibiting highly un-intrepid behaviour, by holing herself up in the office, Anna has been drafting materials and documenting every facet of Education Girls program, from staff training materials to monitoring and evaluation matrices.


Legend has it that Brahma dropped a lotus flower on the earth and the Hindu pilgrimage town Pushkar appeared. Having heard glowing reviews about the town, its beauty, isolation and serenity, from parents who traveled there 25 years ago at least, we decided to make our own little pilgrimage for the weekend. It was beautiful, it was isolated, but serene it was not. Having spent seven weeks as the only foreigners in Pali, where we are beginning to feel as local as one can here, we three had very mixed feelings about the hoards of tourists that filled every nook and cranny of the streets, hostels and hills of Pushkar. Particularly when both Matt and Ingrid ran into acquaintances from school, university, the North Shore and Newtown. To its credit, Pushkar did have the very, very best restaurant and street food we have encountered so far, and for this reason alone we will return next weekend. As we have all come to agree, food is always priority number one.

Space-time collapse,
Ingrid, Matt and Anna