Volunteering Completed
Trip Start
Sep 11, 2007
1
4
8
Trip End
Jul 10, 2008
Mumbai (Bombay),
India
Saturday, February 9, 2008
It's been good here. It is hard leaving everyone.
I had a great send-off. I provided toblerone and pop for the kids. We danced and played some games near the end of the day to make it sort of a party. We played Detective and Musical Chairs. Detective is like Wink Murder: One person is chosen as the detective and leaves the room. Then a Murderer is chosen who can murder people by pointing his hands in a gun shape at someone. Then the Detective comes back, stands in the center of the circle and tries to figure out who is the murderer. Everyone puts their hands in a gun shape but only the murderer can kill. It is a lot of fun.
We had a teachers-only musical chairs game at the end which was interesting! Vinita, the head teacher there, was pushing the rules a bit. Musical chairs almost encourages breaking the rules (at least the way we played it). If you walk slowly and try to not let anyone past you, everyone queues up behind you and you get the most chance to sit. I also started pushing the rules a little by walking so slowly that Santosh started pushing me to which I braced myself and let him slowly slide me!
We danced some too
Rajishree, Sonu, Mahendra
. The boys all wanted to dance but none of the girls! Isn't that a reversal of Canada! Indian girls are not allowed to touch boys or be improper. Boys see lots of Bollywood videos with movie-star men dancing as the star of the video. A couple boys wanted to dance with me so we started waltzing around like a couple. Then lots of boy-boy couples formed. Then about 5 all started dancing with me, one behind the other! Then Mukesh, an older boy helper, suggested I dance with everyone, starting with the teachers! So I danced with each of the teachers briefly! It was great fun! I later learned from Tania that men are absolutely not supposed to touch women, certainly not dance with them! The more liberal teachers seemed kind of ok with it but one teacher had seemed very not wanting to dance. I had thought it was just shyness! But probably it was ok (I'd be more careful next time). I noticed in retrospect that while some of the boys hugged me, that the most that any of the girls did was shake my hand.Santosh, the cool, tough guy, is a great dancer but didn't want to dance in front of everyone!
It's weird not teaching all day since I'm so used to teaching. I've been living here at the volunteer flat for 1 month since I stopped teaching. I have been busy. I worked on the database and have been sick mostly. Plus I've done a bunch of small chores and seen a few things around Mumbai.
The database I worked on is for the school. It can keep track of family info, family loans and staff expenses
Bombay University (original grounds, fancy)
. It also is meant to store medical problems and donor info. It has been a fair effort to make and should be a good starting point for Tania. She has a Computing Science degree also and wants to continue what I've done. She's very sharp but is rusty at working in databases and hasn't learned MS Access as well as me. So I showed her how to do a bunch of things in Access. I went through a few big iterations (where I program something then Tania and I review it) and made a nice interface for the tougher parts of what Tania wanted. It's been kind of a neat challenge working on this database. I haven't done anything this big in Access before. Access Forms are quite powerful.I got a full check-up in this nice hospital, the Lalivati hospital. Tania recommended it just for general health reasons. It doesn't cost that much ($180) and they bring in a bunch of specialists to see if there's any small things wrong with you - to catch those things early. I learned that my blood iron was low. I got a bunch of internal organ sonograph photos, a skeletal x-ray photo and a report. I am glad I did it.
I went the the Ghandi house and learned a bunch about him. He was quite religious. He abstained from sex with his wife for 20 years! He thought advertising was evil and unhealthy ads should be censored! He thought that the spirit of the West was satanic because most people only go to church on Sundays and don't really live it. He also seemed accepting of people and into unity of the entire human race
The big intersection near the Gateway of India
. He tried to get better relations with other countries, esp with the U.S. He was anti-tech and anti-non-handmade-cotton because he saw cotton factories making poor country peasants in India destitute with no means to support themselves. He felt the answer was to go back to simple living, farming in the country. He created several communes where everyone lived in the country and shared all work, equally. These communes are still here, today. His real name was Mohandas.I bought 3 Kurtas! I got one traditional knee-length one and 2 super-short ones which are sort of T-shirt size only Kurta-style. Kurtas look like this:
http://images.exoticindiaart.com/kurtapajamas/pure_white_kur ta_pajama_vp17.jpg
They normally fall below your waist and have an opening cut on each side which stops at your waist (as if you took scissors to a shirt and cut a line straight up each side).
My super-short ones look nice (and normal) enough that I'd wear them in Canada, even. I am wearing my red one in the 2 pictures with Krishna. Sorry I don't have more pictures of them, I plan to store them and take them back to Canada. I got them alot for Burning Man. I am always on the lookout for good costumes for Burning Man.
The school had a couple big incidents last week. First, on Monday, two of the kids lost their only parent in a car accident! Tania and a couple teachers went to the hospital to see the children. They should be ok. Tania will try to hook up the 15-year-old with a small job at the school
Garden in front of City Hall
. They can find a place to sleep, preferrably with a roof. And food to eat. While they keep going to school. Then while Tania was at the hospital, 2 of the older kids stole 20 000 rp from Tania's bag!Tania only noticed on Wed when she checked her bag and noticed that two of the boys had fancy, expensive new cell phones (how dumb are they for getting such obvious, expensive things!). She, Vinita and Mahendra took them to the police station and got the officers to scare them and make them see the seriousness of the problem. One of the kids was quite regretful and the other seemed not very regretful. The kids had put porn on the phones, which is illegal, so the police took everyone to the place where they got the porn. The police got a nice bribe from the porn seller, a good deal all around.
The police are not known for being uncorrupt and helpful but they seemed to really help this time. I wouldn't have been surprised if they had asked for a fee to fill out reports talk to the boys. Or if they would have charged the school and the boys and made everyone pay to get out of jail. The police get paid very little here and are forced to live in terrible conditions at government provided hovels. So they supplement their income with bribes. The law is very flexible. The police often do what the politicians in power want them to. It is often best to just avoid the police, even if you've been wronged. Especially if you're poor and a low caste. And especially if you're a woman.
The boys also had a party and bought alcohol for a bunch of their friends
City Hall before free music concert
. They are maybe about age 15-17.The boys are fairly responsible and Tania has known them for years. She hires them for help around the school. I was personally impressed with Bismilla when he helped me out fixing the school computer. Boys make mistakes sometimes and they have so little money. But still, theft is wrong.
Tania felt that this was yet another example of a break in respect and trust for the school. So she decided to call a parent's meeting and shut down the school for a week. She talked to the boys, their friends, their family and all of the parents. The boys now seem to be very sorry.
Tania's Mom, Marilyn arrived from Canada a few days ago. It was good to meet her. We all hung out and played Trivial Pursuit on Wed night (as well as getting ready for their hiking trip the next day). She, Josh (Tania's boyfriend), Avi (Josh and Tania's friend and landlord) and Tania have gone to Matheron (sp?), a beautiful, mountain lake retreat for a few days to hike and relax. So I said goodbye on Wed (Feb 27), before they left.
I visited a temple with Krishna and a couple teachers yesterday (Feb 28). I put some pictures of that up, also. It was a neat visit. We hung out and various places and ate at a couple stands. I watched the four others, all hip modern Hindus, doing their traditional offerings and rituals. They touch the ground at the top of the stairs to a holy statue and then touch their face. Either their nose, then chin. Or their mouth and then move their hand outward. The temple is quite happy to paint the rock bright, sky blue and add gaudy christmas lights here and there to spruce things up! The Hindu Gods are always quite trippy with their multiple heads, animal bodies and multiple arms!
I am ready to start travelling, now! I have stayed inside too much. However, I'm going to go into withdrawal next week when I no longer have almost dedicated access to a computer! It's going to be hard but I think I can make it. I'm a little scared of leaving my safe, comforting house, here. Will I be lonely? India is a bit scary. I'm just too locked into my routine, right now. I'm supposed to love change and adventure. And I do, it should be awesome.
Curtis
