This weekend, we got taken around the sights in Goa. It was really cool to see the nice parts of Goa instead of just the slums. On Saturday, we went to Arvale waterfall, then to a spice plantation followed by a surprise which turned out to be elephant riding! After that was a visit to Aguada fort – an ancient Portuguese fort, followed by the Aguada beach which was beautiful! On Sunday morning, they took us on a tour around some churches and temples. Below are some pictures as well as some other pictures taken just driving around Goa. Goa is very green, apparently the rest of India isn’t like that.

I started the 2 projects on Wednesday. I’m getting used to visiting the slums now and learning the places to take a deep breath and hold it! There are just huge piles of rubbish around. I’m not sure if it ever gets cleaned up which explains the smell. I am teaching the teenage girls who are not allowed to go to school as they have to look after their home. We get there for 9am and the girls come in over the next 15mins. They usually come late as they can’t always pull themselves away from their housework. While we are waiting for them, I start putting together some worksheets for them with english questions, and then another with some maths addition questions. The girls are just lovely! I’m glad I chose to work with them. They are very friendly and you can see how much they like having volunteers there. I started going through the questions with them, and then marking their work and explaining the corrections to them. The lady with me from the organisation set them some long multiplication questions, and then gave the worksheets to me to mark. I can’t remember the last time I did long multiplication, probably 13 years ago back at school! It took me a few seconds to remember how it worked, and I was very slow with marking the 1st few. For the questions where I was going to mark the answers as wrong, I would triple check them as I was worried that maybe it was just me that was wrong! I got back into it after a few questions though and went through the corrections with them. I then chatted to them about my life, my daily routine, and what London is like. They were really interested and were asking a lot of questions. I talked about the sights in London, and about the shops and theatres. They were saying it sounds like such a beautiful place! Its pretty crazy thinking about the contrast between my life there and their lives here. They were asking if there were any Indians in London, and if anyone ever wore a saree! At around 10.30, they had to leave to continue their housework. The lady from the organisation explained that we can’t keep them there longer as their parents will start complaining. Its nice that they can come for a bit though.

In the afternoon, I went to the orphanage with one of the other volunteers. When we were told that it was run by a 76 year old nun, I had images in my head from The Sound of Music and was expecting a sweet but maybe eccentric lady and a place full of love and fun. On walking in though, it really wasn’t what I was expecting. It was a big hall, pretty drab and cold looking. No bright colours or pictures the children had drawn on the walls as I was expecting. The older children were studying at the tables or on the floor, and the younger children were sleeping on the other side of the hall on the hard floor. We were asked to sit with the older children and help them with their homework so we were helping to ask them questions for their test at school the next day. The children were asking us questions about ourselves and where we were from. After around an hour, the children all went silent and were looking down looking scared! I looked around to see what had happened and saw the nun standing in the doorway with a stern look. She started walking around looking at what work the children were doing and slapped a couple of the children who she didn’t think were working hard enough and started shouting at them. I was a bit shocked! She came near to where I was and I started asking the children questions again in case I might also get slapped for not working hard enough! As soon as she left, the children relaxed again. So not the sweet nun I was expecting! I later learned that last week, she saw one of the other volunteers blowing bubbles and shouted no fun!!! They need to work!!! So they had nicknamed her fun nun in view of her lack of!

The 2nd day we were there, they had a doctor there giving the children checkups so the nuns were helping with that which meant we were left with some of the children. After doing some work with the children, we could actually just have some fun with them! It was great to see them laughing!

So after days of cold showers, we found out that there is a tap outside with hot water! So we can use a bucket to carry some in and use that to wash. It felt pretty amazing having a hot shower this morning! And then I’ve been really missing eating meat since I got here and its only been a few days. I’ve always been a ‘no meat no meal’ girl. They’ve only been giving us vegetarian food here though. Usually rice and a lentil dish. Tonight though, we had chicken! Was such a nice surprise! Funny how hot water and meat feel like such a treat now!

I arrived in Goa at 6.15am on Tuesday morning. The airport was empty so I got out very quickly and the driver was waiting at the exit for me. He drove me to the volunteer camp and my 1st thoughts were that this was not what I was expecting! I thought Goa would be a nice introduction. I’d heard it was very European so didn’t think it would be too much of a culture shock. Driving through though, you could really see the poverty around so clearly! I was a bit shocked! The camp was around 30 mins drive from the airport in an area called Majorda and the building looked pretty nice in comparison with the other buildings nearby. On arriving, I met Sophie who is going to be my roommate. There are 2 sets of bunk beds in the room so it can sleep up to 4. A bit of a change from living on my own but I’ll get used to it. I was exhausted when I got there and just wanted to crash! But I had a full day ahead and breakfast was being served in 30mins so I only had time to have a shower (which was cold!) and get changed. I met the other volunteers at breakfast. There are 7 of us here at the moment, all from the UK surprisingly. We had a meeting at 9am and then headed out to the various projects to see what the organisation does and decide what we want to get involved in.
We were taken to a computer class they run and is available to the locals free of charge. They go through the basics from typing to Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and using the internet. Next we went to an orphanage started by a nun who is now 76 and still runs it along with 2 other nuns. They have 98 children there! They need help during the day to help look after the children who are too young to go to school and in the afternoon for the older kids, to help them with their homework. Next up was a school for mentally challenged children, and finally was a trip to a slum called Monte Hill which was pretty horrible and smelly. If you look up Monte Hill slum Goa on google images, you’ll get an idea of what its like. You couldn’t imagine that people lived there. The organisation have 2 small huts, around 8ft by 6ft where they run classes for the locals, from the young children to the teenage girls and even women empowerment classes for the married teenagers and older women. We were told that it was a very strict muslim community and they didn’t see the value of education for the girls as it was more important for them to learn how to look after their home and help to look after their younger siblings. The girls were expected to be married by 16. The organisation try to encourage the parents to let their girls attend the classes and by bringing the classes to the community, they were more open to it. With the older women, we were told that they weren’t allowed to leave the community without their husbands and didn’t know much about the rest of the world so the empowerment classes were there to try and teach them basic literacy skills, teach them about the rest of the world, and teach them skills such as things they can make and sell to make some money. They also take them on excursions to the beach or the volunteer camp.
We then had a meeting with the program manager and had to pick an option for the morning and afternoon so I’ve picked the teaching in the slums in the mornings, and orphanage in the afternoon.

So after months of planning and organising, it turns out there are some things you can’t plan for, like flight cancellations! On my way to the airport on Sunday night, I got a txt informing me that my flight had been cancelled. We got to the airport and were told that it was due to technical problems with the plane, and then had to queue for 2 hours to try and get rebooked. They found 1 leaving at 7am the next morning to frankfurt, from there I would have to wait 4 hours for a connection to Mumbai, and then I had to book a new flight to Goa from there. I was arriving in Mumbai at 1.30am and the 1st flight to Goa was at 5.15am. So much for my plan to fly in the night so I could sleep through the flight, arrive in the early afternoon, and then beat the jetlag! I was now flying through the day and arriving 1st thing in the morning so will have a full day ahead with no sleep. That was the only option though if I wanted to make it in time for my airport pickup window.
I was offered a hotel overnight and given the choice between a Premier Inn or The Hilton. As if that is even a question! My parents stayed over with me so they could see me off in the morning. By the time we got to the hotel and had some food, it was after 11.30pm. I booked my new flight from Mumbai to Goa, emailed my new arrival time to the volunteer organisation, and then went to bed.
I managed around 2 hours sleep, and then we woke up at 4am to head to the airport. I said goodbye to my parents, I’ll see them again in just 10 weeks so it wasn’t too bad, and then I headed in and got on the flight. The 1st leg to Frankfurt wasn’t bad, during the 4 hour changeover, I was very grateful for my Kindle which I had loaded up with movies and TV shows. The flight to Mumbai was just about bearable. I had been switched from British airways to Lufthansa after the cancellation and there was no entertainment except for a small TV screen which was too far away to see. The food was decent though as far as plane food goes. Arrived in Mumbai, and the guy at immigration informed me that I couldn’t stay in India for the 6 weeks I was intending to as my visa expires before that. I was under the impression that my time there started when I entered, turns out that it started when the visa was issued so I only had a few weeks left as a result of applying too early!
Then had some drama finding where to go for my connecting flight, for some reason it was a domestic flight but was leaving from the international airport. After being sent back and forth between the 2 airports, I was left with just over an hour to catch the flight but made it through just on time luckily and was finally on the last leg to Goa!