Fundraising for Aim Abroad and Prakash Deep

Hey Readers,
Just to give you a quick update.  Since I often think of my Indian experience I have decided to do a fundraiser for the two organizations that I had the chance to work with.  It wasn't that easy to come up with a fundraiser idea - I mean, running a marathon was out of the question so I got my idea from my mom's photo books.  I created my own photo book with a short background history of my trip and I am now selling it as my fundraiser (minimum donation is £10.-).  All the profits go directly to the two organizations! If you would like to help please send me a message. Thank you for your support!

Reflections

Hey there Readers,

Although our last day in India has been posted I think I need just one more to reflect on the entire trip and find out what really changed in me. The one thing that I know for certain is that when I decided to go to India and do community service, I expected to make the lives of other people better. What happened to me though, is that they changed my life more than I changed theirs. When I say they changed my life I don’t mean that I have become a completely different person and that I will never be the same. During the trip I learned how much I take for granted and I had no idea how much I could miss a warm shower or electricity not cutting out at random intervals. I am also more conscious of all the food that goes to waste. The only meal some kids got were at the slum school! The number one effect that India has had on me is just pure awareness. As I’m going about my daily life and I see something that reminds me of the people, the conditions, the culture, or even the friendship that I experienced there, it makes me just look around and think, “Look at your life.” I started to compare my life to the life of some of the kids I worked with - how they grow up and spend their childhood in a slum; how they are probably going to live in the slum for the rest of their life and how low their chance is to receive a proper education. So what I’ve taken out of India is the ability to compare a whole new world to the one I live in and cherish. It was an incredible experience over all and I would definitely do it again. I recommend doing a trip like this to everyone who reads this because it’s one of those things that you will keep with you for the rest of your life. I also want to say thanks to everyone who has read my blog (my followers especially!). Also a thanks to my Mom who accompanied me and supported me even when the going got rough. She has also made a short video about our experience with India so check it out! Until then it’s been real and it’s been fun, so I’ll see you guys next time.

Here’s the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UV_w2e1_SY

My class and me

Women cooking in the corner of the dining room at the orphanage

Some girls in their room

Allie, the girls, and me playing cards

A man selling vegetables at the market

A linen store

Two street kids at the market

The last pictures of India! Sorry it took so long to post.

Day 12: I say good bye to India

Hey there Readers,

Once again I was awoken by the orphans next door coming up to the room but as it was my last day I decided to sleep for a bit longer and then get up. The first thing I wanted to do was go to the Prakash Deep School one last time before we leave and that’s exactly what we did. After breakfast we got in the rickshaw that would take us to the school with Hannah. We set off and when we arrived, we were greeted by Sabita and I was told to teach her class while she talked with Mom. This happened to be the class with my friends and I had a pretty good time dictating a spelling test and correcting them. After this the guys invited me to play basketball with them just outside the school area, and I said sure. I may not be 6 foot and a pro at basketball (like my uncle) but I played on the team in middle school and I was reasonably good. It was loads of fun and I almost fell into the barbed wire that kept the cows out but other than that it was nice. After a few hours at the school, our rickshaw showed up on time (for once) and we had to say our goodbyes. The whole school gathered together and Sabita gave Mom and me amazing gifts to thank us for volunteering and helping out. I made sure to get all of my friends names so that I could write to them every now and then and it wasn’t until that moment that you realize how attached you get. They were all saying goodbye and I don’t want to sound all emotional but it was very heartwarming. All three of us set off to the accommodations of the volunteers who would work at the school and we stayed there for a bit and checked them out. Next, we were headed to an all girls’ orphanage which would be interesting since I’m the only guy their age they’ve seen in a while. When we arrived we were immediately led to the volunteer who had been working there for four months already, Allie. I was really impressed with her because she knew all 88 girls by name and was completely immersed in her duties as a volunteer. First we went to get lunch and she brought us downstairs into the dining room. This consisted of a rather large room with mats lining the walls as chairs and two entrances: the doorway we just walked through and the kitchen. There were flies all over the place and she brought us some interesting looking stew with rice. I was a little nervous eating this (so was Mom) but we managed somehow. She showed us around and wherever we went I got two reactions. From the smaller girls they would just hide and giggle and from my age up they just watched me. It got a bit unnerving after a while, not going to lie. Once the tour was over we went back to Allie’s room where we found 8 girls playing cards. They asked if we wanted to join and Allie and I said yes. First we played Mafia, a game I actually have played in drama before and then a game involving spoons. I got out fairly quickly the first time but the second time I managed to stay in longer. We stopped playing after a while and the girls started interrogating Allie, asking her questions about me like whether I had a girlfriend or not. Half an hour later we had said our goodbyes and were back in our rickshaw heading back to Bandhu’s where we would spend our final night in India. That evening we had a good time with Kranti, Bandhu, B, and Hannah and Mom ended up doing makeovers at midnight for the girls.  They seemed to love it – can’t really understand that topic.  Anyway, we had a great last evening and had to get up at 4 am to go to the airport for our flight home. It kind of hurt to say goodbye to everybody since they had such a bigger impact on our lives than we would have ever expected. But I’m going to write some more on that another time.

A couple of Day 11 pictures

Some of the slum huts around the Morning Star school

Mom teaching at the school

Some of the smaller kids learning

Angie and me at the market

Perfect Bake... mmmmmm

Day 11: KFC- Never Again

Hey there Readers,

My first morning back Rajat comes up and wakes me at 6 to go exercise with him and the other orphans in the park. I get up a groggy mess and by the time I got down Manish was already crying because he fell down on something sharp. Rajat (the big brother of the group) says we should go so I carry Manish over to the orphanage where I’m joined by Mom, B, and Hannah. I help the boys shower and dress as they get ready for school and then Mom and I leave to eat breakfast and get ready for another project. Just a note - when people visit they usually only volunteer at one project and stay with a host familuy that lives close to the project. We are going to try and see as many different projects as possible because Mom is evaluating all of them and will give feedback to help Nuria organize her future volunteer placements and projects. We head off to the Morning Star slum school and see what’s going down there. Bandhu drives us and he pulls up at the side of the road where you have a small dirt path and at the end, a massive slum that stretches in both directions along the road as far as I could see. This was one of those, “What have I gotten myself into?” moments and we walked towards the slum. Eventually we arrived at a sort of tent thing that was curved but didn’t reach the floor. It’s difficult to explain so I’ll just get a picture. Here we met Rakish and his wife, both teachers at the school who had organized the students into three groups: beginners, intermediate, and advanced. He showed us the ropes and then Mom got the advanced class while I started with the intermediate. This class consisted of a blackboard and about 25 kids who were differing ages but most of them looked about 8 years old. On the blackboard were a couple of addition, multiplication, and subtraction problems that the kids had to copy down and solve. My first task was grading all of their work including a multiplication table up to ten. Afterwards I made them write 5 animals, vegetables, etc. which I also had to check. Once this was finished the smaller kids left for lunch but the intermediate and advanced groups had to stay for another hour. We decided to make them both stand up so we could do some exercises with them. Once again we showed them the Macarena and then Simon Says and after that just a clapping game. The kids were dismissed and now Mom and I went to check out the rooming accommodations of the volunteers who wanted to work at Morning Star, which happened to be at Rakish’s house. I was invited to go with him on his motorcycle while the women went home in a rickshaw. On the way to his house we stopped to get lunch which turned out to be fresh chicken. Normally that’s fine, but here’s what I mean when I say fresh. We stopped at a little, open shack at the side of the road swarming with flies. Rakish talked to the guy at the table and then went to a cage with a couple of chickens in it and pulled out one by the legs. It flapped for a bit and then gave up so he gave it to the man he spoke with earlier. The man picks up a massive knife which I hadn’t seen earlier because it had been so covered in flies and he uses this to cut the chickens throat over a wooden barrel. He drops the chicken in the bucket and leaves it to bleed to death. He then deals with another man’s chicken by chopping it into various pieces and packaging it. I heard a knocking sound and realized that the chicken in the barrel was flapping its wings in a final attempt to get out before it bled to death. It was pretty gruesome for me, not gonna lie. So he then took it out, removed all of the skin and feathers and cut it up, pulled the organs out and put them on a balance. I would like to remind you that everything is covered in flies: the knife, the chicken, the table, the balance, the pile of organs, everything. He then put all this into a small plastic bag and we drove off once again, this time headed for his home. We got off the bike and we went inside where his wife cooked dinner. Needless to say, I stayed away from the chicken. It was a nice family in general and after lunch we went to the market with Angie, the volunteer staying at Rakish’s place. It was pretty awesome because we went to this place called ‘Perfect Bake’ where they have ice cream and coffee and all that good stuff that’s difficult to find anywhere else and we know it’s safe there to eat. We left Angie and returned to Bandhu’s where we spent the rest of the day in an exhausted stupor and after dinner we welcomed sleep.

Day 10 pictures:

A typical sight on the road

Shri's slum school

Volunteers helped decorate the walls

Kranti going through fresh vegetables

Hannah tutoring a neighbor and me just chillin