Carol and Harold's India trip: October 12

Tuesday lessons went very well. Carol put out three stations and let the children chose. Harold kept the more advanced students quite busy with numbers and letters. We don’t have a feel for how the two women in our classroom feel about us, but we know that the founder of “Earth Saviours” and the head teacher of the school (she teaches the older students) approve of what we are doing.

This afternoon we had the most amazing speaker talk to us about women’s issues in India. She talked for over 2.5 hours and we were still peppering her with questions when she was leaving. We will write up a summary of her talk in a future blog. One fact that everyone here agrees on is this: the Delhi/India that we’ve seen in the last week is not the real Delhi/India. It is the sugar-coated country that India wants to project to the world during the Commonwealth Games. They’ve chased out the beggars and cows, stowed away the old busses and hidden the trash. While it has made our adjustment easier, we feel cheated about experiencing India’s reality. We’ve been assured that everything will get back to normal quite soon.

Wednesday morning started bright and early with a SKPE visit with Michelle and Ray. Then, Harold, Carol and a handful of others went to the park for our yoga practice. School today was fine – mostly a repeat of yesterday (which is a good thing). We did have two special events at placement today. Chloe, another CCS volunteer, joined us and worked with the elderly. She shampooed some hair and is planning a spa day for them on Friday (including nail polish and lipstick!). At the end of our time there, we got everyone (kids and elderly) outside to watch Avi swing poi. Poi is a performance art in which a ball or balls suspended from a length of flexible material, usually a plaited cord, are held in the hand and swung in circular patterns. Real artists then use fire to enhance the spectacle. But, even without the fire, everyone had a great time.

Because of the closing games ceremony tomorrow, most everything is closed. They’ve declared it a holiday. We aren’t sure yet what we’ll do but we won’t be going to our school.