Why India?
"Why India?"
"Why didn't you just choose another country with a better Human Development Index?"
"How much is the salary there?"
"Geez, you can easily get that amount of money here without have to work in that country."
These questions and comments are something that I have been continually getting since the very first time I told my friends about my internship in India. Which is quite annoying somehow, because I was the one who was, and is, actually doing the thing. While they, well, all they could do was saying everything to me without even knowing how difficult it was for me to get this opportunity.
I will take you to that journey on another post as I don't want to write too much right now.
Shortly speaking, I got this opportunity, to do an internship abroad, from AIESEC Indonesia and the Ministry of Youth and Sports (Kemenpora) Indonesia. After several tests, we finally came into this portal called EXPA, where we could choose and submit our CV into tons of companies all over the world.
But our choice were limited to this specific field (e.g. business, education, marketing, etc.) that we had chosen in the very first time of our enrollment. As for me, who chose educational background, I could only choose India, Japan, Poland, Russia, Taiwan, and Turkey. I could enroll myself to as many companies as I want, as long as the company is located in the alloted countries. I remembered that I enrolled myself to around 80-90 companies.
From those number of companies, only few had given me the chance to go to the next steps, and one of the companies that responded pretty quickly after the interview was Oxford Public School, Morarkhera, India. I was told by the AIESEC Lucknow, the "nearest" local committee of the AIESEC India, that I was accepted as an intern in the school. When we got accepted, it's called a "match".
I have to be honest that India was not my first choice. But the program had these rules of:
1. After you are accepted in one company, you cannot reject it and hoping to get a match from another company.
Actually the EXPA system made it impossible to those who had accepted to get another match, as the other companies we had enrolled to will be automatically "withdrawn" by the system.
2. You have to pay IDR 2.000.000 for the break-match fee with the company.
I was, and still am, poor and I didn't have that amount of money at that time. So I wouldn't be able to break the match.
3. Those who break the match, will be blacklisted from any AIESEC program, FOREVER.
This is the worst of them all. I was joining this event from AIESEC Bandung called Global Village in 2016 and I loved it so much. I didn't want to miss that kind of excitement only for sake of "I should get a better country than this one." No, that wouldn't be happening!
But of course, the reasons were not only those.
I remembered when I told my parents about this. I was saying that the salary was probably not as much as one that I would get had I had gotten a job in some of the Indonesian companies. But I convinced them (although I was pretty sure that even without doing it, they would always support me, no matter what), that despite the salary, I was sure that I would get another great and amazing things while I would be there. Not only the life-changing experience, but also, the opportunity of getting to know people more, to get a better perspective of people. They supported and permitted me to do the internship, just as I expected.
After I got the permission from my folks, I went to visit some of my friends, only to have short conversations and say goodbye. But I didn't yet tell them of the internship. I was just saying that I would be working and it would be quite far. I did this because I was still waiting for my Indian visa to be granted. I finally told my friends about it after I had had the visa. Upon hearing this, most of them were supportive, but some of them were not really. Sorry not sorry.
On the departure day, I finally updated and told about it on Facebook and Instagram. I kept it secret up until the last minute, because I think it was no use if I told my friend that I would do something while the thing was still uncertain. Sounds cliché, but I think it has a deep meaning.
Just as I said earlier, going to India will be giving me a life-changing experience. Not only that I will learn from the school environment in particular, but I will also learn from the Indian people in general. It's not everyday that you get the chance to stay in another country for a year, right?
I want to close this with a word from one of my friends, who happened to choose India as her first choice. She said that "I want to go to India because I want to change people's stereotype of this country. I don't want to know this or that from TV or movie. I want to experience it by myself and I want to prove them wrong. I want them to see that India is a great and beautiful country."
Featured image: My friends and I in front of the India Gate, Delhi.