BLOG 7. Mr W finally makes it to join the team!

January 19th. Through snowstorms from the south of France, via strike-ridden airport and broken down Easyjet flight, after a day and a night on Gulf Air and a tussle with the bustle of Chennai central station (cheap travel for aged persons over 60) and finally a rip-off auto rickshaw from Katpaddi junction, at last he hove into view, husband, kanavan/ veetakar. Vidya who wishes to become his 'second wife' insisted on arranging a pink rose in his hair. Now if you know Andy that will leave you puzzled, especially as Anna had given his hair a No 3 before he left England...Anyway he now has to catch up on sleep as we did a week ago and try to acclimatise to the heat and humidity.

The morning was then spent in some frustration and shouting of obscenities, fighting with Marilyn's new computer. By the end of the day all was right again and she has made good progress with finding on line resources, and with planning for initial assessments of those staff to whom English will be taught. She and Pam had a meeting with interested people yesterday which they feel went well ( interpreted by Selvi) and Marilyn now has a skeleton idea of how the programme with be planned.

In the afternoon I went to school again and it was apparent they had already begun with the free play as suggested yesterday. We had a great time doing clay with one small group and examining some vegetables and then doing printing with them with the other group. All the crossness which Pam and I have been feeling due to frustration re CMC and their stalling and hindering of progress, melted away whilst I watched these lovely children and teachers. Nonetheless we are going to have to try to be very firm to ensure that the elderly persons' centre does get started soon and a whole lot swifter than the school did last year. Dr Rita the new RUHSA director is coming to supper tomorrow and we are going to use the opportunity to hammer home our points.

After the children had gone home- though the last ones did not go until 5 o'clock, one hour late, the teachers showed us the small plants which they have planted in the garden and have kept alive with careful watering. I find it harder and harder to believe that these are teachers who have slacked and not shown enough enthusiasm for their work.

BLOG 6, in which we return to school

January 18th. Arrived at the school towards 10, to find a room full of children - about 24, though there are now 27 on register. The teachers and the ayah, Padmini, Rani and Saradha greeted me so warmly and presented me with flowers and a note of thanks for us all, and then fixed more flowers in my hair (on top of the roses Selvi had already insisted on back at the house. Have spotted that as well as a competition to feed us there is another to pin flowers in our hair. I fear the net result could be - and would by my children undoubtedly be- called silly and most definitely not age appropriate!)

It did in any case feel lovely to be back with them in the school and with the children. Sekar had led me to believe that perhaps the teachers weren't totally pulling their weight with enough enthusiam. I had to say gently to him that- through no fault of his own- he hasn't really been able to see much of what has been going on, and I think his judgments are based on too little observation. I feel defensive of the teachers because we selected them last year and they seemed such a good pair. They have also kept in touch with us by text and email this year,which is no mean feat for village women.

After being with them for the day and observing what went on I am much relieved that I still feel they are good teachers who are kind to the children (not always the case in Indian schools) and who have lots of commitment. I think that because our training last year was so minimal and we left them to make a start on their own, with as it turned out, very little ongoing support from Sekar, they may have become a little stilted in the way they work, and for example they have timetabled too little free play. Still, all that will be needed, I feel, is for me to be with them giving them ideas and modelling the way to work with the children, giving them as much first hand experience as possible and as many opportunities as they can each day for making their own choices and being creative.

Meanwhile the children are as ever, delightful and full of life and beans and character. They joined in immediately with the pretend doctor's set, taking my 'BP' repeatedly and administering at least 5 'injections'. One of them then wrote a prescription for medicine and told me to take it after eating! I was soaked in the water play, as we poured and splashed and floated, and then shown a beautiful garden with hills and trees they had made in the sand. All in all a day to gladden the heart and make me feel that all the frustrations of delay in getting things going, by officials at CMC and at RUHSA, are worth it in the end.

After school Sekar came and we had a meeting with staff and a representative of the committee which runs the school, Pushparvathy. I was able to get Sekar to explain about adjusting the time table to have more free play sessions, with all activities available from the time of arrival, and about planning for a small group teaching session each day. I said I would show them some ideas for this whilst I am here. Pam and Marilyn had arrived in the afternoon, and Pam stayed for the meeting with me. It became very heated at one time when Pam used the record of wages and outgoings to ask why staff had had a pay cut last month. The committee decided that they were unpunctual in arriving in the morning and that therefore they should be disciplined with a pay cut!!!! I said I felt sure this was not something the committee could just decide to do, and that it seemed a very unjust thing to do, to me. I did actually take a deep breath and say 'To be honest, this makes me feel very angry'

Sekar back-pedalled like mad, though I don't think he had disagreed with this action, and he certainly hadn't addressed it. After much to-ing and fro-ing of lively debate(!) we resolved that terms and conditions of employment and job descriptions will have to be worked out before we go.

BLOG 5

January 16th

Today in the morning Sekar from Ruhsa came to talk about our plans for this stay. We identified main aims, 1) to inaugurate the centre for the elderly 2) to do further training with the teachers and give them support to develop 3) to establish a plan for programmes of teacher training at the centre and 4) to plan for developing the outside area.

Sekar agreed to set up meetings with the relevant bodies and explained simply to me how the area is divided politically at local government level. The village of Kamanchemanpet has an H L F (habitation level forum) which is responsible for managing the playcentre. The HLF in Seetaramanpet will be taking the same responsibility for the elderly centre, and we will begin with a meeting with these people to find out what they would like to happen and which members of their community they think would benefit.

As a result of this discussion with Sekar I have decided that I will spend the maximum time in the school, working alongside the teachers and playing with the children, so I've given myself a very attractive sounding plan! Pam will focus most on the elderly project though we will all be able to attend meetings about it and help with resourcing.

Someone will have to administer a very big kick up the bum to the chief engineer at CMC, the mother-ship organisation for RUHSA, because in a year they have failed to decide where to sink the bore well for the playcentre. Blog followers from last year will recall the hilarity of the old chap who divined water with a coconut ( to be parodied later by Andy and Brian with a lemon). Unfortunately the CMC engineer believes the water is in quite a different area of the plot and consequently a Large Nothing has occurred since last January. Ruhsa have historically been quite adept at procrastination, especially when CMC are involved.

After the discussion Brian Pam and I cycled to lunch in Seetaramanpet with Raghu's mother, whilst Marilyn stayed to meet with Arul about her project to teach English to some of the BTC workers. She now hopes to meet with staff on Monday morning to begin to move it forward, and Pam will stay with her to take notes.

Lunch was, as we knew it would be, delicious and evidentally a lot of care had gone into making a special meal. Raghu's family are delightful and his parents are always smiley. They are especially grateful for the help with college fees for Raghu which has enabled him to continue his education and to attain a position with a good company (TVS) Raghu talks often of his determination to give back to the community when he has a permanent position and has finished his training and we are quite sure that he will do this.

After lunch we went again to see Nagadevi, their very sick neighbour, who is home for the weekend. I have used poetry again to try to express some of the powerful emotions we all felt. We then organised to get a taxi to take her on Monday to CMC hospital in Vellore after hearing that she planned to go by auto, which is a dreadfully uncomfortable ride even under normal circumstances, and is unimaginable for someone in constant pain.

Nagadevi

Even now, your life reduced to barest bones

A cage for monstrous pain,

And all your fierce woman's flame

To bitter ashes

Even now, you struggle upwards from the bed

Whispering of coffee

Hospitality still imperative

And you the mother in this home

Impotent the words in both our tongues

No comfort in regret

The shock of your diminishing

Is shouting in our eyes

Perhaps you feel our sorrow

In the touch of fingertips

For silenced by the pity here

Compassion's all our gift

To you, the mother, heart and soul

Beloved in this home

BLOG 4

Lying in bed listening to the high pitched waily-waily temple music issuing from tinny loudspeakers all through the night (oh the delights of Pongal festival) and to the scream and chuff of endless trains, with fan whirring noisily to blend all the sounds together, I realised that in yesterday's blog I left out several important things. Thinking of Andy - still struggling to reach us despite snowstorms, air traffic control strikes and broken down planes- I realised he would want to know about the complete solar eclipse which happened yesterday, 300 miles south of us, peaking at 1 p.m. The sky was just a little darker and it was mercifully cooler but lacking a glass to look through we dare not do so. All around the locals kept shaking their heads and obviously warning us not to look directly at the sun. However whilst we were cycling Marilyn and Brian noticed some boys looking through X ray film and stopped to have a look and had a really good view of a full black sun, as it was a cloudless day. We desperately tried to think of how to contact Arabella, our visiting doctor from England friend, who we knew was really keen to see it.

The other forgotten incident happened as we were cycling home, through Veppenari, which is as they would say in Bristol 'all trimmed up' for Pongal, with pretty lights strung along the main street. In the middle of the village they have erected a stage and there are obviously all sorts of entertainments happening over the 3 days of festival. Yesterday there was a pole-climbing competition. Teams of three young men were competing to reach a bag of money right at the top of the pole, whilst buckets of water were thrown to put them off. As we watched one lad, standing on the head of his friend, who was on the shoulders of a third, managed to pull down the money, to great cheering from the crowds.

BLOG 3, a sad meeting

Today, Friday 15th, being Cow Pongal, is another holiday. We had agreed to meet the lads met in Blog 3, at RUHSA hospital, to visit Nagadevi. In the event we were also able to arrange our meeting with Dr Rita, director of Ruhsa, to fit with this.

We had been warned that we would be shocked to see Nagadevi, who is gravely ill. She has been a very energetic and full of fun organiser ( animator) in their village but is now stricken with what began as cervical cancer and went undetected for too long. She is in great pain and was we think pleased to see us, but unable to tolerate much time. Her daughter who is a nurse stays with her. The Sitaramanpet people, like our lads, are so grateful to Dr Rita who found money from an Australian fund for helping patients with this cancer, to pay for some- I would imagine mainly palliative- treatment in RUHSA and at CMC, the large hospital in Vellore. A shocking transformation in a year for this lively and attractive woman, and a great sorrow for her community too.

Our meeting with Dr Rita went excellently. She explained first of all that she has long had a particular interest in cervical cancer screening programmes but that take up is very very low. I mentionned that this has also been the case even in Britain, and she seemed to have heard of what happened with Jade Goody last year. Dr Rita had taken the trouble to visit the projects already existing for the elderly, and our play centre, in order to prepare for our visit. She asked very good questions about how we would plan for sustainability and what funds we proposed to draw on. We came away very heartened indeed by her interest and her evident intelligence and readiness to listen. We will meet her again after we have made a start on identifying the elderly who will benefit, and also later to see how progress is made re setting up teacher training programmes.

We then cycled our old favorite ride, down the back way from RUHSA to Sitaramanpet, along the line of the railway, to Balaji's house for a fabulous spread, and yet more flowers in the hair. This causes much mirth from the swarms of grinning village children, and perhaps is weird for pensioners from England! Balaji's older brother Shankar was there with his new bride of 2 months, Shanti. She seems a very sweet person- young, 2o years old we think. I told her she has been fortunate to find this family to come to live with and she seemed to agree. This marriage was arranged through a broker. Her family live near Bangalore. The couple seem so far to be very happy with each other, showing affection for each other in a way that is unusual here. Maybe things are changing in India too. Suresh told us that nowadays the idea of love mariage is gradually becoming more acceptable.

Ah ha, as I write, the regular 2 minute late evening 'current off' which makes us all the more grateful for the return and the fans when it comes.

BLOG 2, in which we renew friendships with our lovely lads from Sitaramanpet

Day 2, and still slowly adjusting and acclimatising. Morning spent in the house chatting, mulling over what our priorities will be for this trip. I watched mesmerised whilst Selvi and her helper Vidya prepared food, grinding coconut, tearing at coriander leaves etc, and out of this later came this poem:

Like a prayer
Side by side the women stand
Small, sari-clad
Fluidity and elegance in every careful move
Silver anklets on bare feet
A sweep of sequin border
Falling like the stars
The well-worn everyday routine
Peel chop grind wash
Coriander coconut and rice
Is quietly performed
Beautiful as ballet
Offered like a prayer

In the afternoon we cycled to Sitaramanpet to visit the several families we know there. It is in this village that the recipients of the One Candle Fund bursaries live, now up to a hundred children who are enabled to remain in school for longer because of this small donation from English friends. Balaji's family welcomed us first with coffee 'sacre ille' ie ' no sugar' and with hugs and kisses. This is not so usual in Indian culture where they have not yet adopted the custom of hugging and touching which has developed so strongly in England in the last generation. The three lads, Balaji, Raghu and Suresh, are a real credit to their families, such determined students and now 2 of them in excellent jobs, and also boys with a real sense of duty to the community. Again our welcome here, so heartfelt and genuine, was a real tonic after the cynicism of modern British culture. This poem came out of this experience. Suresh who is 23, and works in computer assisted car design, for TVS, has been able to buy a new house for his parents which was built last year. Small wonder that in this village and this locality education is the great goal for all families, being the means to improve their situation in life. The boys still return home for weekends and for holidays- such as Pongal at the moment- and are much more naive and unspoilt than young men of that age would be in our culture.


Best described as love

With just a few words
Perhaps fifty Tamil me, and you
Two dozen English
Plus, your phrase,'Body language'
Smiles and laughs and hugs
Not usual in your culture
But borrowed now from us
Together, in our strong determination
To communicate
To tell each other we are glad
So happy, rumba santoshum, to be back
Pulled from village house to house
Each family with food or drink, a welcome
Warm to give
One year on returning home
From home, stretching our languages
Across the barriers of age
And lives lived half a world apart
To a perfect understanding
Each of each
That what we share here
This day, this place
Is best described as love

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.