This is how we spent our downtime…

Its funny, at the start of the week, I was thinking I think I’ll be ready to leave by the end of this week but now my last day is here, I don’t feel ready. I don’t want to leave the kids here. Even though its only been 3 weeks, I’ve definitely got attached to them! I headed to the slum in the morning for my last lesson with them. As it was my last day, we just had fun. We did some artwork, decorating a piece of A1 paper with drawings, and then played some games. After the lessons, the children gave me a present! Something pretty for hanging up on the wall, and a packet of silver bindis, one of which they put on me. It was so cute considering that they have nothing! They were telling me not to leave, and telling me how much they’ll miss me. I started crying. The older girl who was my favourite told me not to forget about her. I assured her that I wouldn’t. I really wish there was more that I could do for her!
It was a similar experience at the orphanage in the afternoon. Normally, we have Friday afternoons off but they agreed to take me to the orphanage so that I could say goodbye to the children. They were asking me if I will come back and I told them hopefully. I couldn’t really say no, hopefully I’ll get the opportunity to come back and see them again one day.
After I left, they took us out to watch a Bollywood movie. I wasn’t expecting much, the film was in Hindi with no English subtitles and was 3 hours long so I expected to be completely lost, but I loved it! The film was called Blaag Milkha Blaag which means Run Milkha Run and was about Milkha Singh, an Indian runner. I loved all the dancing in it! We had one of the ladies from the organisation with us and for any bits where we were confused, she would whisper what was going on and we would pass it on to everyone like a game of Chinese whispers! The Indian cinema experience was funny. You would hear people’s phones ringing, and they would actually answer while in there! And then there was an intermission halfway through the film! Some adverts followed before the film restarted. Shortly after that, there was a power cut! So the whole cinema was dark, and everyone started laughing and whistling! We’ve had around 8 power cuts in the 3 weeks I’ve been here so I guess everyone here is just used to it.
After the movie, we headed out for dinner. Its become our Friday night ritual. We go to a restaurant called Pentagon at the end of the week to have a break from the food at the camp. It was a nice way to spend my last night. Tomorrow I fly to Delhi. I’ll be there for 1 night, and will then head to Jaipur to start my next project.
Below are some photos of the children I have been teaching:

So I’m already nearly at the end of my 3rd and last week here! I’m going to be sad to leave. We had 2 more volunteers leave here last weekend and 7 new people arrived on Monday! So there are now 14 of us here, 13 girls and just 1 guy. Not sure if I should say poor guy or lucky guy! In terms of nationalities, there are 3 Brits, 4 Australians, 3 Swiss, 1 Irish, 2 Belgian, and 1 Spanish! One of the Belgian girls was born in India but was adopted by a Belgian couple when she was a baby so she’s back here to see where she originally came from. After her visit to the orphanage, she was saying it was strange for her because she would have been one of those children, she was just lucky to have been adopted. I guess we all are in a way though, so lucky to have everything we have. You really realise that after seeing the children here. You can’t help but think about all the opportunities we have compared to them, just because of where we were born.
The new volunteers went on their tour of the projects on Tuesday to decide what they want to do. They came into my class and I talked to them about what I do there. When they left, I asked the children which ones they want and they all said we don’t want any of them, we just want you! So cute!
The lady whose house we use for the classes asked me to help her draft a letter yesterday. She wants to apply for a loan for some money to start a business making jewellery and clothes so needed to write a professional letter to the bank requesting the loan but her English wasn’t good enough to write it so I helped her draft it. She also currently sells ‘ice cream’, basically blocks of frozen fruit juice to the local school children. They stop by her house straight after school and give her a few rupees for some of the ice cream. Its a nice way for her to make a bit of money for herself and it’s really nice to see the entrepreneurial spirit.

While teaching in the slums this morning, one of the locals brought me and the lady from the volunteer organisation cups of tea. While it was a very nice gesture, I’d heard that it was best to avoid drinking tap water here and was a bit worried! Of all the places to drink tap water, the middle of the slums was probably the worst place to! She was standing there though waiting to see if we liked it! I knew it would be considered really rude if I didn’t drink it, so I drank some. It was actually really nice, but I was drinking it really slowly, as if that would make it any less likely to make me ill! She came back to collect the cups and I still hadn’t finished so I had to just down the rest and just prayed that the water had been boiled well and it wouldn’t make me ill!

After the weekend break, the projects started back up this week. I’m really enjoying it. I think the kids are getting more used to me. There is a girl at the project in the slums who I want to take back to London with me! She’s 15 and so bright! She has so much potential, and she’s just lovely! The children have requested that I bring in photos of my family in tomorrow, and chocolate for them! One of the girls told me “You’re really nice teacher!” and “You’re a good teacher, I always understand when you teach me”. So cute! I found out on Monday that they have 1,500 houses in the slum here and only 4 outside toilets which they all share. I really can’t imagine having to live like that.
At the orphanage, the scary nun was around again but with a stick this time! She started hitting one of the girls with the stick because she’s 11 and can’t read and telling me that I need to teach her to read! She gave the girl a book to read but she couldn’t read any of the words. I tried giving her really simple words but she still couldn’t read it. I spent the whole of my afternoon there with her going through letters and sounds and simple words. It was pretty frustrating. I left her with some words to learn for the next day. I went in today and when I saw her, I asked her if she had learnt the words and she said yes miss! And started reading them to me. She was so proud of herself! I told her well done that’s fantastic! It was so nice to see a little bit of progress. I spent the whole of today’s session with her again. I really want to be able to spend as much time helping her as I can before I leave. There are 98 children at the orphanage and only 3 nuns so its hard for the children to get individual attention if they’re struggling and I don’t understand how hitting the children because they can’t do the work helps.

We had 3 volunteers leave over the weekend, and we’ve had 5 new volunteers since then – 1 from Switzerland, 1 from Spain, and 3 from Australia. Its cool having a mix of people here now from all over. There are now 9 volunteers at the camp. Its nice having people around to chat to and we all eat together. After the projects, the staff here organise activities for us to do in the evening. Today we started learning a Goan folk dance which we will perform at a festival next week. Apart from that, there is a cooking workshop once a week, trips to the beach twice a week, language classes start up this week, and there is also a weekly saree workshop. All the other volunteers are away from home for shorter periods. They’re here in Goa for between 2-8 weeks, and then head back home afterwards whereas I’ll be away for 6 months!

The driving here amuses me! I think I’ve only seen 1 traffic light since I got here. Seems to just be a free for all! Things that would normally be considered bad practice back home like overtaking round a bend seem to just be normal here as long as you beep your horn while doing it to warn any oncoming traffic that you’re there! Cars have signs on the back saying ‘blow horn ok’ or ‘horn ok please’! The rules or lack of do seem to work here though strangely! The drive to the projects and back everyday is pretty fun. Such a bumpy ride while the driver blares out loud Indian music with the windows down! I have no idea what the words are, but some of the songs are pretty catchy. I think I actually have my favourites now!

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!