COUNTRY: India
PROGRAM: GapBreak
PROJECT: Teaching
WRITTEN BY: Phoebe Laing
6:00am - The day begins quite early for some of us (Fiz), who make the most of the cool morning to do some yoga on the rooftop and watch the sunrise. At around 6:45am, a group of us goes jogging, although this depends on whether we can drag Pankaj or a male volunteer along, as it's not always safe for girls to go running unaccompanied. Then it's time for cold bucket showers, lounging in the rec room, or doing some hand washing on the roof.
9:00am - Meena Ji's "Breakfast is ready!" rings through the house, waking the last of the sleepers (Shoumyaa). Breakfast is bananas, cornflakes, toast and chai, but may also include omelettes, rice flakes or a special Indian rice and lentil porridge. After breakfast we handwash the dishes and finalise our preparations for school.
10:20am - We leave for school in our trusty van, spending 20 minutes avoiding potholes, chickens and oncoming vehicles. Our school is on the outskirts of a poor tribal village, one that is small enough to ensure that everyone knows who we are, so we do a lot of waving along the way. The kids are always happy to see us - they run up to us for high fives, or to hold our hands or even to carry our bags for us. Teaching can be exhausting, but it's also a deeply rewarding process, especially when we can see progress being made or notice the children trying really hard on a particular day. Moreover, we all agree that teaching is the focus and highlight of many days, and we swap funny or touching stories for much of the trip back home.
1:00pm - We arrive home to lunch, which typically includes daal or curry, vegetables, rice, chapati (Indian flatbread), cucumber and often pineapple for dessert.
2:00pm - The afternoon is spent planning the afternoon lessons for the orphanage and the next day at school. Now that we're used to the process and have figured out how carbon paper works, this passes with impressive speed (at least we think so). This leaves us with an hour or so to fill with relaxing or slightly silly food challenges - most recently Fiz ate 1kg of Gulab Jamon (sweet dough balls cooked in honey syrup) in just ten minutes. Even after that she found room for a couple cups of chai at chai time, an essential part of the day for many of us.
5:00pm - We leave for the boys' home, which is just 10 minutes away. The home houses some orphans, but many boys are from desperately poor families who can't afford to keep their children with them. The boys, being older, took longer to warm up to us than the school kids, which made it even more rewarding when they began to happily greet us and joke around - the lessons are always excitingly unpredictable because they're so cheeky. We try to plan fun lessons, as the boys already attend school each day. We also play games for half an hour afterwards, as an added incentive to voluntarily study for an extra 45 minutes per day.
7:00pm - We arrive back to dinner, which is in the same style as lunch. Dinner is always a fun meal, as most of our tasks are over for the day and we can relax over the delicious food.
Of course, this routine is only during weekdays. During the weekends at home we're free to do what we like, which usually includes going to the markets and chatting with the growing number of vendors who recognise and greet us. Otherwise we're off on our weekend trips, the most recent of which were a desert trip and tiger safari.
We all loved the desert trip - seeing the sights of Jodhpur, before making our way into the desert (which included some crazy off-road sections) where we slept under the stars on homemade beds. Our host family was very friendly, made us delicious food and joined in with our fun. We watched the sunset from a sand dune, got up at 5am for a camel journey to see the sunrise, took lots of camel selfies (see above photo) and sat in the dunes and around the house, enjoying the stillness of the desert.
The tiger safari, in Ranthambore National Park, was a great way to see the forest, but unfortunately, for us at least, didn't include any tigers... This didn't matter too much, as the hotel was lovely and we spent lots of time by the pool trying to tan (i.e. getting burnt).
You can probably tell what a great time we're having and how much we love our kids. We can't believe we only have a month left, but we're determined to leave a lasting impact so that they can benefit from us like we've benefited from them. Because of this, we've recently set up a crowd funding website (https://www.mycause.com.au/page/84008/acoffeeforachild) to address health issues in our school community, help the orphanage with basic infrastructure, and we're also looking at setting up a fund for the orphanage boys to continue studying once they leave. If you can help us out at all, we'd appreciate any donation.
Phoebe
No comments:
Post a Comment