19th January

19th January, fruit cake for a birthday celebration

We started the day with a meeting with Dr Rita and Sekar which went very well. Rita raised topics like the need to increase teachers' salaries without us having to, and we had feared she might not accept this. We spoke also about getting a person to replace the night-watchman (who is still, three years on, proving to be a poor workman) with someone who would also tend the garden and subsequently the unit of stall-fed goats which RUHSA would like us to establish in the grounds of the centre. I suggested that Balaji, who long ago expressed an interest in the garden, would be perfect. The only problem is likely to be whether he could accept the very modest salary. At the moment he is taking casual building work when he can, but it is not a steady income. If there was a way for him to do our job and to continue to do building work also, that might be a solution. We will have to discuss it with him. Balaji now has a wife and a child on the way and his older brother, who also has a wife and child  and lives in the family home, used to be employed by BTC but now has to rely on temporary office work. 

RUHSA have a stall-fed goat unit housing 21 goats and they also have a large number of kids now. The return so far in the first full year of operation is very good. They are keen to roll out more such units where there is land available. We looked in on the unit after the meeting and of course it is less than idyllic, as the goats do not go outside to forage at all. However goats who just browse in the environment do a lot of damage and the government is trying to cut down on this.The goats we saw did look quite healthy and they do have some space.  We may well have to swallow any qualms we have about this, and proceed with it. It should make a good profit which will greatly help us with funding the centre over the long term.

On then to the centre, yet again just as the sun was climbing over our heads. Arrived hot and sweaty and not surprised really that the teachers look worried, take my bag, hold my arm as I stagger up the steps and fetch a chair for the decrepit English lady. After a while Sekar arrived with Indra on the back of his bike and Indra was clutching a large cake box. Sekar had purchased from a bakery in KVK an extremely pleasant cake which he called a ' plum cake'. It was light and spongey. I had a Mary Berry moment thinking Mmmn, very light with good crumb! It had a slightly chocolatey taste and had small chopped cherries in it. We had asked him to buy it so that we could do a small birthday celebration of our granddaughter Betty's second birthday, which was yesterday. We gave a piece each to the elderly who then all sang Happy Birthday to Betty with us! The children had their piece with a couple of biscuits when they woke up. Today's school afternoon snack was a hard boiled egg, so these were packed in their tiffin boxes to take home. 

We used the lunch hour to discuss with the teachers the work they do with the children. I was struck immediately by how much they remember of their initial training and the refresher I gave them three years ago when we were last out. They remember for example how we talked about the importance of first hand experience, using their senses, for the children. We will have another hour with them tomorrow lunch time, again with Sekar's invaluable help as interpreter. We are planning to take the children to a park in Vellore for an outing on Friday and some parents will also come. Jude looked a bit pale about the lack of planning or any notion of risk assessment!! Since Sekar told us that on one excursion they thought they had lost a child and had a real panic for some time before he turned up, I did say perhaps we can have a list and do counting them out and counting them back into the bus! 

Back home for keeling over in the late afternoon. I think the temperature is hotting up every day now and perhaps this is what is making us so weary. Or maybe those Indians who see us toil past on our bikes and are astonished to see such aged persons on bikes may have a point. The teachers joked that next visit we will have to have motorbikes and I replied that as I can't ride one maybe next visit it will be wheelchairs...