Dust, rubbish, heat, street cows eating rubbish, power outages, men with henna coloured hair, more dust, crazy bumpy roads, children with dark eyeliner, old cycle rickshaws, dust, crazy store beauracray, dust, beautiful Indian clothes, Indian music, monkeys, western superstar fame... Welcome to India!
So I've had my first real venturing out of the house today. First stop was a slum school within walking distance of the house. Small room, really gorgeous kids, basic education. In the morning, children from the ages of 3 to 6 come and in the afternoon it is school for the older kids. The aim is to convince their parents to let them come to school rather than doing the chores at home so that they can be made ready for mainstream public education and actually have an education!
Today there were 24 kids who turned up and we all sang nursery ryhmes with actions and letter and number rhymes. It was a fun but sweaty experience! The man we are staying with - Shri teaches the kids a few days a week and you can tell he really loves the kids. However, another volunteer went in the afternoon when us and Shri weren't there and he said it was completely different - there was a teacher with a stick and not very nice at all. It shows you never know what really goes on when you're not around. Hopefully though these kids who are allowed to come to the school will have a better life opportunities, though of course you never know.
Next stop was walking back home and having a home cooked indian meal - Aloo Gobi (Potato and colliflower and chapati).
After this I went to pick up my glasses but it seems they may take a few days to get used to - everything looks strange, the floor seems like there are hills and bumps even though it is flat and it feels very trippy and difficult to walk!! I subsequently felt nausius and thought I was going to throw up. We went back to the glasses shop to check they got the prescription right and they double checked and apparently it is the same script as my prescription sunglasses, so hopefully it will get better!!! In the mean time, we visited another 2 orphanages - first one felt very dodgy, second one was amazing. Again, like in South East Asia, most of the children do have parents but either they were too poor to look after them, or the father had gone off and the mother couldn't afford to keep the child, or the child was being physically and/or sexually abused at home. There doesn't seem to be a foster care situation where kids can be fostered in families - only apparently if their parents have actually died and they are really orphans.
At this orphanage there were 12-14 girls from the age of 7 to 22. The woman running it was really passionate and committed and had a really good outlook and good values and it felt really good there. Only problem was my nausia which wasn't great especially when the 2 youngest children asked me to come outside with them and play... I felt so ridiculous - the white western person who feels sick from wearing glasses when obviously these girls have had to cope with so much. Anyway, I may go back there another time in the week, otherwise I have said that I am happy to continue going to the slum school with the other volunteers as at least I know there is something I can do there.
The school kids were really hilerious with their english spoken in Indian accents - I really should record it tomorrow. There were so many times when I was sure they were speaking Hindi but apparently it was english!
Also, Shri's daughters here - Naima (3 and a 1/2) and Naisa (4 and a half) are very gorgeous. Well actually Naisa is incredibly gorgeous with a really nice nature and Naima is a drama queen, always complaining and always acting as if she is a model and walking around blowing kisses!! Very funny though.
So tomorrow I will be off again to the slum school to hopefully give the kids some fun and caring attention (rather than the possible harsh attention that they get when we're not there). It is definately exhausting though in the heat with finding the energy for it so I'm glad I only signed up for 2 weeks!!
xxx Orna
