From Ujire

I’m writing this in my apartment in Ujire. The ceiling fan is circulating the warm, humid air around the room and I can hear crickets singing in the dense forest across the road. Sitting nervously at the Indian visa application centre in Edinburgh almost two weeks ago feels like a different world.

                                    

I spent my first weekend in Mysore, visiting a school teacher friend from Oman. 

Kamakshi and her husband Mohan cooked up some fantastic meals and introduced me to many local foods; ranging from various sweet and savoury breakfast dishes to “thali” set lunches and Indian sweets. I spent two very interesting afternoons with Mohan’s brother-in-law who has 30 years of experience working with appropriate technology in India.

After three days in Mysore, I travelled to Ujire (pronounced Ooo-jee-ray), where I will be spending the duration of my internship. This is a small down in central Karnataka, about 2hrs bus ride from the city of Mangalore. 

Travelling from Mysore to Ujire, approaching the Ghats

As far as I know I’m the only Western guy in the area and because of this get stared at quite a lot (especially when I picked up some groceries in town while out for a run and jogged home holding a bag of bananas).                                     

The Selco Foundation is working on a range of agricultural projects with local farmers. Here I went along to visit a farmer who transplanted half of his rice field with a transplanting machine being tested by Selco. We will be doing a yield test to compare the rice growth when he harvests this crop next week.

                                     

This is the view from the office window looking out towards the Western Ghats which are shrouded in the end of monsoon season clouds. The green lowlands look like jungle but are in fact farms growing rice, coconuts, bananas, rubber trees and much more. Most of the farms are less than 10 acres in size and are accessed down small bumpy tracks. One of my main tasks over the next few weeks will be testing small scale threshing machines with some of these farmers. I will be writing more about this soon!

                                               

  

                                             

I arrived in Ujire at the end of the monsoon season, however there are still heavy downpours of rain several times a day, so having an umbrella is essential!

                                       

                                       

Last weekend we went out to visit the farm of Anand, who is the head of the Selco foundation. The small farm and also serves as a test ground for some of Selco’s projets – for example a solar powered electric fence to keep out elephants (and more rarely tigers!). We caught a jeep along the main road and then walked for 30min to reach the farm.

                                       

This is the group of us at Anand’s farm. The five of us in the middle are all working at Selco and the two guys on either side were just visiting for the weekend. The blond girl is an Engineers Without Borders summer intern and will be returning to the UK next week.

The farm is in the foothills of the Ghats.

On Sunday we hiked to some waterfalls near the farm. Apparently tigers are occasionally spotted in the area. 

                                      

There were loads of leaches on the hike, however one of Anand’s farm works gave us a stick with a cloth ball on the end containing salt and some herbs. The leeches would fall off as soon as you touched them with the cloth. The falls were very impressive and we swam a bit in the water. I hope we will do some more exploring in the area over the coming weeks.

Some background

So, I’m off to India! Or at least I will be as soon as I am granted a visa. Right now, this decision is in the hands of the visa processing officer at the Indian Consulate Office in Edinburgh. After submitting my passport along with various covering letters last week, the 8-10 day estimated visa “processing time” is finally coming to an end. Needless to say, it could be even longer before my visa is granted but this hasn’t stopped me from laying out all my gear ready to go (by far the earliest I have ever packed for any trip!).

In the meantime, I’ll give a bit of background to what I’m going to be up to in India and my reasons for wanting to do an internship with SELCO.

Why am I going to India?
Having just graduated in Mechanical Engineering in the UK, I plan to spend a few months exploring my interest in the field of international development by gaining experience working as an engineer with a NGO or Social Enterprise.

I am particularly interested in learning about ‘appropriate technology’ – in brief, this term describes technology which is economically viable, environmentally friendly and developed with the involvement of communities so that the technology reflects factors such as culture or the locally available skills & materials. Appropriate technology isn’t only applicable to the international development sector, however it is often used to ensure development initiatives are sustainable, and bring long term benefits.

My interest in appropriate technology led me to contact SELCO, an Ashden Award winning social enterprise. By developing an affordable solar lighting package, SELCO made solar energy accessible to low income and off the grid households in rural India – so far over 700,000 people have been served since SELCO was founded in 1995.

In 2010 the SELCO Labs was opened, with the aim of testing and developing other appropriate technology innovations – ranging from small scale agriculture machinery to solar cookers and wind power. By “incubating” this technology in a rural setting, the most robust and locally appropriate ideas can be evaluated and potentially developed into a sustainable social enterprise.

From time to time SELCO offers internships to students and recent graduates, and this is where I come in. I will be working in the SELCO Lab as an engineer, helping to progress some of their projects while learning about both the technology and the social and cultural aspects which are key to successful implementation.   

What will I be doing?

I will be involved in a range of SELCO’s on-going projects, and will write about this in more detail once I arrive. Some of the work may include testing agricultural machinery, setting up anemometers and collecting wind data, testing solar water pumps and designing /constructing prototypes for an industrial solar cooking plant.

I also hope to make the most of the cultural experience of living in India. I’m sure this will be an adventure itself! I’ll be based in Ujire which is a small town in a rural area, but only a few hours bus ride from the massive city of Bangalore, known as India’s “Silicon Valley” (also home to many of the infamous Indian call centres). I’m only 50km from the sea and I am fortunate to have a good friend living just a few hours away in Mysore.

What is my motivation?

A few people have asked why I’m choosing to spend my time-off working in a small town in rural India. So, here are some the reasons which come to mind:

•  I would like to learn how I can use my engineering skills to benefit people who haven’t had the same opportunities I have had.
• I enjoy being immersed in a foreign culture and I think working and living in India could be really interesting, and an adventure!
•  I believe appropriate technology is key in enabling people all over the world to raise their standard of living in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way.
• I believe social enterprise orientated solutions are a good way to solve development issues such as access to affordable, clean energy. 

I think it will be interesting to look back at the end of the internship to see if any of my thoughts on this have changed.

Thank you for reading if you have reached this far! Hopefully this post will give some context for anyone who is interested in my internship. I’ll aim to keep future posts a bit shorter. It would be nice to end post this by saying something like, “now I’m off to pack”. However, as I have already packed, I’m off to bed.  

Welcome

In this blog I will be sharing my experiences of living and working in a rural town in Southwest India for three months, as I undertake an engineering internship with the technology labs of the social enterprise SELCO.

From testing rice threshers during the harvest season to measuring wind power data across Karnataka, I will be involved in a range of the SELCO Labs on-going projects which aim to develop sustainable and socially sound innovations in order to improve the lives of poor and underserved people in the region.

I hope you enjoy reading!