BLOG 1, 13th January 2010

Arrived this morning hot off a Gulf Air- very good - flight, via Bahrain, to stay at BTC Guest house, quite at the other end of KVKuppam from our usual haunts at RUHSA. It is hot hot hot and quite humid/ mozzy weather, especially after snow bound England. I was holed up in the Premier Inn at Heathrow for 3 days, largely to ensure that I snow didn't prevent me from making the flight. Andy is still in France having -indeed- been prevented from joining us by snow. He will arrive - hopefully- next Tuesday, so will have missed our first week. Our journey from Chennai airport with lovely Veejay, Ruhsa driver,and the old faithful Annandan, was fairly hair-raising, because Veejay drove at high speed down the new road, in Indian weaving in and out of lanes syle, and he kept falling asleep! Thank heavens for Brian shouting at him repeatedly...

We have had two lovely Selvi meals already, spoken at some length to Sekar, caught up on some sleep, and then visited Mr Immanuel, our dear friend, at Ruhsa. Tomorrow is Pongal, so we will just be socialising - priority to our friends in Sitaramanpet, who have been wonderful at keeping in touch with us over the last year by text and email- especially Balaji, Suresh and Raghu. All seems to be going well with the playcentre and it will be lovely to see it in action next week.

Our priority for this visit is to open the centre for the elderly in the Patchikilli centre. We also hope to get under way the programme for training teachers there too. There have been changes at Ruhsa this last year, and now Dr Rita is appointed Director, and we are looking forward to working with her. She has recently been to see the centre and is keen to be brought up to date with details about our aims etc. The third aim for us will be to try to initiate some development of the garden at the centre. Sekar is keen that the elderly will be involved in planting and watering etc and maybe even benefit from any veg grown. All very exciting in prospect.

Marilyn, our new girl- who is tomorrow to be tested on who is who in KVK- hIstory of the Link, key personnel etc etc-is on a mission for BTC to establish a programme to teach English to some BTC personnel and also to our teachers too, we hope. She is a quick learner about the wonders and vagaries of life here, because she spent 20years living and working in several African countries.

Just had a ten minute 'current off' which left me in pitch black touch-typing, but at least now indoors not under the shitting crow tree as last year. All curtesy of a dongle- a handy if expensive little truc, as they say in France. More tomorrow plus photos.