two continous days...

Past two days gave me another reason to be grateful to this exchange programme.

And past two days made me realise again, that meeting people sometimes becomes the most important way to know about something you were the most ignored about.

I knew about Western Sahara and Morocco issue before coming here, but just that Morocco had occupied Western Sahara, and nothing more. And I'm being honest about my ignorance, not proudly though.

Yesterday, I had time to talk to B. I had met him earlier and spoken little, but did not know as much as I got to know yesterday. He's an FK participant and comes from Western Sahara. He is from the Refugee camp in Algeria for the Saharawi's from Western Sahara who could not stay in their homeland because of the occupation by Morocco and the discrimination by them against the Saharawis. His experiences were something I might remember all the time.

He was born there, and this camp is there for the past 33 years. The refugee camp is one of the most well organised camps in the whole world, but people live in mud/sand houses. The temperature in that desert is commonly 55 degree celcius and during rainy seasons, they have no homes, as most of it is taken away by rain. There have also been instances of people dying due to the collapsing of the house when they were inside it. There is only a primary school there, so if anyone wants to pursue higher education, he/she should leave their family and go to Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Cuba as most of these countries provide nearly full scholorship to Saharawis, but not Morocco. He left home when he was 12, and has been studying in Algeria since then. Saharawis are discriminated in Morocco when they are there for education. They are even tortured, physically.

And here he was talking and having presentations in order to make more people aware and join the campaign to get saharawis the right to self determination. UN does not have a mandate again.

Yesterday, I was off, with the United nations class, to a place which was once Concentration camp during 1941-45. Loads of thoughts came into my head, loads of questions and loads of chill. It was weird being in some of the rooms in that building, which is now a memorial and a research centre. We had a very interesting orientation session and then had a pretty interesting discussion on Human Rights. I wish to write more of this, but I plan to do something with regard to this later, so I'll put up more experiences later. But one thing I can never forget, is the chill I experienced walking in the forest which was nearby, which was once the burial ground of all the innocent lives which was taken during the Nazi period here.

They were two great days and now I'm happily occupied doing my project work (note: I'm happy doing it). And I'm looking forward to Tuesday on meeting people who are going to give us a little more insight about Sri Lanka.

On the Road.. just 5 minutes to decide??

Saying bye Bømlo, bye Føyno, stood happily on the bus stop to go further on to our tour. The moment of getting into the bus to the destination didnt come when we got to know that we were expected there on 28th March. eh...? communication gap!

We didnt know what to do and where to go. The bus was just in 5 minutes and we had to decide on it. We had a situtional laugh for sometime and then rang up Inger Lise to get her opinion and for sure it was a worry for her as she didnt know how to help. With her trust on us to make our own decision we decided we should go till Bergen. Rang up Karoline our friend who was supposed to host us after 28th march but open-handedly welcomed us to her place. That was a relief when were on the road.

Now landed up in Bergen and will go to our planned destintion on the expected date.

Everything was planned before beginning but spontaniety helps:)

Good booster to our tour. Seriously worth remembering!!!

First successful presentations in Norsk!:) :)

Today, we (vestland group) are done with one of the presentations in Norsk and to be frank it went very well and we got a good response from the people who were listening to us.It was nice that we got people who can help us in translations but we hardly depended on them.

The subjects they are studying was international studies with all Norwegian students and so this was our first try which got very good results. It gave rise to dialogue between us and them, raised their curiosity about India and Guatemala.It wass very much visible that they understood all of what we said without any misunderstandings.No bored faces either!:)

Guys, our Norsk is not that bad, we can do it. And this was just the beginning which fetched us good results and so will the other presentations.

Keep it up!!

our tour...

As told before, we have foredragturne (information activity) in the pipe and one group (carmen, sharath and afreen) have already left to meet schools and talk about India and guatemala in West Norway. Vineet, me and carlos will leave tomorrow evening to the northern part, Tromsø.

Last few weeks have been so hectic and I think the most difficult part has been to make presentation in norwegian rather than english or spanish. It was a decision that we all made together, and that was to present in Norwegian, as in the past 7 months we have witnessed and experienced the response we get when we talk in English. English is not that well taken language here. There are people who I think, are excellently fluent in English, but there are some for whom, English is not their language of preference. So, here are we, 6 people who never knew I word of norwegian and after 4 months of language training trying to talk about themselves, their countries, their host organisation and their culture in a language, which they hadn't spoken before 7 months.

Its going to be difficult, and at times frustrating when you want to say something and the only thing stopping you is the language, but its going to an experience which all of us will remember, and a journey which will be memorable and definately hilarious!

Dialectic conversations

Proud to speak Norwegian.

We have learnt norwegian but how far are we Flink so to say, here goes one of the best examples for it.

We have Information work in Norway, so in relation to it, we had to call some school where in we can have it. We royally went and started introducing ourselves in Norwegian but we were numb when it came to understanding them and making wondering faces in trying to understand it.

Well, that was not our fault, it was the dialect!
Vandana saying, "Ok, bye" when the person (from the northern part of Norway) on the other side meant that she would connect to another person. And me repeating as to what we are going to do when the person (from western part of Norway) was telling us the the actitvities of the schools.

Its funny to make fun of it and even more funny to face it!!

Women's Day.

Never has this been done, and I dont know what I feel about it, it just seemed nice. At the great sunday middag today (which is a speciality of Sunday and also when Svein Arne is in the kitchen), Ander Hals came up and asked all the boys to stand up. And together they all sang 'hurra for deg.. gratulerer med dagen', which is actually a birthday song, but also used for congratulating on special days, and today it was sung by all the guys in the matsalan, for all the girls sitting there for Women's Day. The day doesn't mean anything to me, never before, not even today, but just that sweet act by Ander Hals will make me remember that day, if not for anything, but for the song him and the guys sang for us cause it was Women's Day. And it just felt nice.

Sweden - day 6

It was a day of meeting people and talking to them about the differences between the two cultures, theirs and ours, hearing their questions, talking about media in india and a lot of interviews. We concentrated today mainly with the media programme and met loads of students of the same. Sebastian, Andreas and Matilda were three people we were the most with today. It was quite surprising for me to see the amount of facilities these students from media had. Two studios with excellent camera and lighting facilties, amazing computers with the up to date softwares for editing and all other computer related jobs and a very nice atmosphere to work with. Something which caught my attention was the amount of practical work these high school students in relation to media. They are handling those cameras nearly everyday, taking pictures for the school website which is very quick in putting up news about what’s been happening in the school, writing stories and taking interviews. It was completely amazing to see the level of development and the amount of facilities available here.

Its common in these two countries ( Norway and Sweden) to take up vocational programmes in the high school. Well the students I met today who were interviewing us and walking around with cameras and mics very comfortably were students of the second year of Media Programme. I caught some details of this programme. It’s a three years programme in high school. IN the first year, it’s a study of nearly everything, but in the second year, you can choose and begin specializing. And what can they specialize in this media programme – Television, Graphic Designing, Photography and Writing. So, its pretty much the same thing we might do in our Masters programme back home. So why did this all catch my attention. Well, being a Journalism student, it was interesting for me to know that facilities can make a lot of difference. Also, when I compared it back to my university, it was completely different. I don’t know how it is now (as I’ve been away for more than 6 months now) but atleast when I left, I remember those computers of the Media Lab, and they are not those great ones. Better equipments could help a lot, and that would be something I hope to talk about when I get back. Also something which is going on in my head is a college website. Well, we have the normal university website, but what about a students one? Well, when you have 3 classes studying Journalism as their majors, and 3 studying communications, why not give it a try?

These are thoughts which are pooling in now, I’m not sure how much of this will remain in my head when I get back, so wrote it here, so that I can remember when we are back in June in the loveliest place of all with the most amazing people, Bangalore. But for now, we are completely in love with this amazing place called Ystad and it is nothing, but beautiful.

Completely amazingly fantabulous!

Some images from Ystad (2 are edited).