“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” Mother Theresa
Sieru visited the college in October 2011 for the first time since he graduated in 1999 as he had been unable to attend his 10-year reunion held on campus in August 2009. When his first-year, Sasha Sud, announced his wedding plans in New Delhi, this was the catalyst that pushed him to finalize his long awaited return to India after 12 years.
Being from the pioneer class, of course, he was amazed at the change in the campus. Back in those days the buildings were still under construction and any plants and trees were still in the seedling stage. The colour was brown and the noise of the construction work going on ever present. On entering the campus gate, he was greeted by a local person who welcomed him as if he was known to him. The man, who is now a security guard, asked him what year he studies. Sieru then told him he was from the first batch. The man then replied, me too, I was here 1995-1997! Sieru, bewildered, said, “I believe the college started in 1997”. The guard replies, “Yes, that is because I was in the construction team!” It turns out that back then the man had been employed by the construction company and later retained when the construction was finished. Imagine to be recognized after such a long time!
As Sieru came up the drive, although he had been warned that the campus would be unrecognizable, he still could not contain his excitement and surprise at how much has changed. He wanted to see the swimming pool which had not been there in 1999 but OMG the drive up was jungle; the roads covered by trees; he felt as if he was travelling up through a green tunnel. That was quite an experience! He found in particular that the landscaping had been very tastefully designed and well maintained. The college was almost unrecognizable. However, looking through the large entrance door, now covered in greenery, led him to a more familiar territory - the admin block and the AQ, which remain largely unchanged. New features, the inner garden and an inauguration plaque in front of the Triveni board, a bust of Mr. Mahindra inside the Admin Block, along with some classrooms that have been given over to departmental offices.
Commenting on the social life, another striking difference between 1999 and 2011 is the facility to communicate with family and friends back home. Back in 1999 Hotmail and Yahoo were just kicking off… a few students had laptops, with little a computer lab in the AQ that had frequent power outages. People back home too did not use email much; there were limited ability to communicate with friends and family through the internet. Due to the construction work, the telephone cables on campus were regularly getting broken so it was very difficult to keep in touch with family and friends. No Skype, no FaceBook, difficult for students now to imagine how that could have been! Movement curfew was at 10:00 pm. This had one good outcome though. It forced all of us to spend more time with each other, getting to know one another and building friendships, spending hours in the common rooms discussing issues and talking to each other. Nowadays, students spend a lot more time on their laptops, using the wifi available on the common rooms. People spend more time on facebook and skype than the amount of time the Pioneers spent with each other. This lack of technology was had lead to many lasting friendships for the first batch. Animals and snakes had not yet figured out that the intruders that were invading their space were here to stay so there were many unexpected and unwelcome crossed paths unlike today where there is so much vegetation for them to hide away in.
The pioneer class was well aware that they had a responsibility to set the tone for future students coming to the college and discussed how new first years were to be received. Back then, college decisions were mostly based on past experiences from other UWCs, these rules were then customized to the Indian environment. Indian culture was more restrictive back then, which made standards of dress code and behavior off campus more important to maintain.
After graduating, Sieru went on to Trent University in Canada to study Computer Science for 4 years on a full scholarship. Feeling completely at home at Mahindra UWC, he found life in a Canadian university sometimes insular, since coming from a UWC college, he had come to expect that anyone you talked to would be an idealist with an open mind and global perspectives but this was not always the case. That was quite a shock for him, a reality check! He found himself re-thinking what making a difference could be in his current context. How do you change a world that doesn’t want changing? He later decided that change comes from within, and that through his interactions with people he could at least share his thoughts and influence people’s mindset. He began to feel that if he could change just one person at a time then this would slowly make a difference. He actively participated in Trent’s International Program, including the annual Cultural Night performances and Potluck Dinners, modeled based on the Pearson UWC activities. This was helped by the former Director of International Students Program at Trent, who had been the founding Head of Pearson College, Jack Mathews. In the Pioneer years at Mahindra, Cultural Nights happened about 5 times a year, one from each continent, where music, dance and food was celebrated by all..
After Trent he returned to Ethiopia where he worked for over 2 years in the telecom industry, training people and heading a project that introduced of telephone service to over 2000 villages in the south for the first time. In 2007 he was accepted for grad school in the UK on an EU Erasmus Mundus Scholarship, a joint masters program, led by the University of Reading with study terms at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) and the University Carlos III of Madrid (Spain). He did his thesis on Sustainable Development: Developing an e-government Application to improve Governance. Sieru finally returned to Canada upon graduation and now works as a software developer in Toronto. He volunteers with a local youth organization as well as with the UWC NC back in Ethiopia.
He recently set up a scholarship fund to cover expenses for an incoming Ethiopian student who could not afford to pay for the flight ticket, pocket money, project week and security deposit. The NC had lost several scholarship seats to the college for lack of this money in past. There have only been three Ethiopian students studying at UWC Mahindra College in the past 14 years. With this new fund, Ethiopian students will be able to attend the college every year, provided the UWC scholarships continue.
In the future, Sieru would like to open a business in Ethiopia but at the moment he continues to work in Canada to gain experience and save some investment capital.
He sees himself split between the two countries. His home in Ethiopia, where his desire to instigate changes may even drive him into politics, and his adopted country Canada, where he loves the people, the country and the democratic system.
“I do find myself continually defending my UWC ideals, and fighting prejudices against people due to the fact that I have known so many different and wonderful people from so many different backgrounds at UWC,” Sieru says with a smiling face. “Change is one drop at a time.”
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