Blog 20 Many tears, much laughter.

As we begin to think about the end of our time here and tying up as many loose ends as possible, I’ve also been reflecting about the whole experience of this month’s work. This week we are training our six candidates for the teachers’ posts and it’s proving emotional and exciting and hilarious. When we plan for the training we hope that participants will be open and generous in sharing of their own lives and beliefs and feelings. This group are showing themselves to be extraordinarily open to working like this and are all throwing themselves into activities which they have never experienced before in their lives. I have been asking them to use all the different play materials and then to talk about how they feel whilst playing like children. In British culture we tend not to have much scope or time for play after childhood, but in India this is certainly even more the case. The women have been screaming with laughter whilst throwing water over each other, whilst dressing up as ‘daddy’ for home corner play and serving tea to me, the visiting granny

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. They have joined in with mad story-telling about the magic orange which ran away through the streets of their village, pursued by all the village leaders, until it arrived at K V Kuppam high street, when I took the story back from them and had the orange squashed by a passing bus and turned into, as Wendy muttered, ‘marmalade’! It is always good to share a humour with a group of people, but somehow even more wonderful when the sharing crosses cultural and language divides.

At such moments I recall the story of the creation of the Bishopston-Kuppam Link, back in 1978, when I was a young mum, the age of my youngest child now. Carolyn suggested the idea as a way that people from two very different cultures could come together and learn to share the triumphs and the tragedies of each other’s daily lives, and in so doing would learn about their common humanity. My goodness has the link accomplished that as an aim, so many times over! The creation of the One Candle Fund, by Pam and Brian Morris in 2004, has brought us all into contact with so many stories of success and striving for education within families. They are so very grateful for the small bursary they receive from the fund, which enables them to continue with their education. Pam received a moving letter from Balaji, who has never received anything for himself, but who has seen his friends benefit, in which he spoke eloquently of their gratitude for the chance to follow their dreams. Every day we have been at the playcentre Balaji has been available to us, mending Brian’s innumerable punctures, shopping with Andy and Brian so they don’t get fleeced, bringing us our coffee/ extra chairs/ water etc etc. Nothing is too much trouble for him. You may imagine how Pam cried when she read that simple but beautiful letter.

On Saturday Pam met with the villagers of Seetaramanpet to try to establish how many of the One Candle bursary-holders needed continuing support. She learned that one girl on the list had died this last year. She had, it seems, very much wanted to train as a nurse after college, but her parents did not support her in this. She became very depressed and took her own life. This dreadful course of action still continues to be taken with appalling frequency by young people in India, perhaps because their culture often does not give them much control over their lives. In poor families problems of affording schooling or a daughter’s marriage can seem insurmountable.

Later in the weekend we went to visit the people of the village of Poonsoli whom Pam and Brian got to know really well when they were gathering information for the educational website (www.kvkuppam.info) Since we last saw them in 2006 one of the families has grown considerably, with several marriages having taken place and many young children being in evidence, the youngest of them a baby of only one week old, the child of a ‘love marriage’ between the son of the family and a Moslem girl. They all welcomed us eagerly and wanted to show us the crops in their fields or their new half-built house. Then Pam asked after the children of one family, the son and daughter of Selvi, and we received the devastating reply that both of them are dead, having committed suicide within a year of each other, both of them only in their late teens. We then realised that the enormity of the tragedy was written on Selvi’s face. Others in the family said ‘ she does not eat’. We did not have a translator with us, but of course Selvi was able to understand our expressions of shock and dismay and was bundled into Pam’s arms whilst we all cried with her.

So as I say, many tears and much laughter this visit. The more often we come the more real friends we have and the more we care about how they and their families are. One of my own saddest moments was at the elderly people’s day centre where everyone seemed to be enjoying being there with friends, chatting and playing games, watching television. This is what we plan will happen, once our playcentre is up and running, in the other half of our building. My sadness was because I was thinking of the day centre which my father attended for a brief while and which he hated. The simple small local group which we plan will be much more likely to be what the elderly would enjoy, we think. It will be supported by the people of the village too, who will be on the management group of our joint centre and will make sure the building is cared for. We know this will happen because Balaji has promised us.

Over discussion at the end of our day’s training today one of our candidates, a young woman of 30, talked about the needs of young people in the community, many of whom become overwhelmed by family problems. She suggested that they might have group meetings for – separately of course- young women and young men from the local villages and that these might happen in the evenings in our Pachaikili centre. Sekar said that RUHSA would probably be able to support these groups with some expertise in counselling. So we could be talking a really innovative new model, integrating work with the very young and their parents, with the elderly and with the youth. Amazing!