A whiter shade of pink

Bout Ye

The Bucket of Happiness – what does this imply? Ha! A theorem that Jon and I thought up featuring the Jon Bell spring of happiness and sensitivity and the Graham Richardson springback function. For anyone who cares I will explain sometime!

Well, it has been a long week, but we have got through it thank goodness! Last Sunday was a great day. We read and went to the park (exercised!) and then went out to meet a friend of a friend of Jon’s called Rochelle and her friend Sanjana. Not having spoken to many people socially for a while was quite amusing and I’m sure we seemed so random but it was fun! They are Bahai’is working in Connauaght Place up in north Delhi. Anyway, it transpired that Sanjana was interested in working with ASHA and getting her kids that she taught to meet with some of the kids in the slum. And we are also going to the Lotus Temple, the Bahai’I house of worship, which looks beautiful, on Sunday for morning prayers. Cool!

The Southampton team then left on Monday night and spent the evening with us which was really nice and quite sad. Having only met them a few times, it was quite sad to see them go! God bless guys, hope to meet you again soon!

Class this week was harder, inevitably in some respects. English is a darned confusing language! Basically, we didn’t realise just how many fiddly bits we were trying to teach them and as a result got a bit messed up in Zakira – it just wasn’t as exciting as last week I guess. And we both got tired, while I managed to loose my voice. But the kids in Zakira are great. The guys are maybe a bit over zealous sometimes, but they are fun. It is amazing though how much kids can repeat, and then completely forget very soon. The tests proved that much anyway. There are a few kids who are doing well though and we have started to give them extra work so hopefully they can pick up. We are even being taught Hindi during lunch times in Zakira, which is hard, but starting to get through!

Mayapuri is still good too, but still very polluted. I really can’t imagine living there. The first class are good fun and pick thigns up quickly. However, the second are really very inattentive and noisy. A few of them didn’t show up today to watch the cricket. It seems amazing to us that out of possibly 3-4,000 kids, the ones who wanted to learn English, volunteered, didn’t show up. Though it was the minority, it just annoyed us. Then Dr Kiran visited Mayapuri today and after the lessons, we really got into some dancing – I have the photos to prove it unfortunately. They don’t take no for an answer, but I don’t think either of us tried very hard to say no! Dr Kiran is great with the kids, they really do seem very bright and knowledgeable about their own issues now, which is something ASHA manages really well. Paul and Rakesh translated her talk with the Baal Mandal (childrens group) to us and then there was a party lol. It was fun and great to see the kids enjoying themselves. We managed to start a mega game of “What’s the time Mr Wolf” again – and literally all the kids want to hold your hand, they fight over it. It is ahumbling experience in the slums. Everyone makes sure YOU get fed, and YOU get a seat. It seems mad when they are the ones who we are there to try and help and we should be the humble ones. The staff are amazing too, they really work hard at a ground level and are very good to us. They always have a smile, and a supply of sweet teaJ. Mmmmmm…

We also had an amusing run in with a rik shaw driver. He tried to charge us 80 rupees, so we took him down to fifty or panchass. Then half way through he said panchass = 60. “No…panchass is fifty.” After some friendly banter it was all fine though lol. That was a random story to tell but it was funny! Bill martin is also staying with us on and off at the moment, Freddy’s brother. We had a huge conversation with him last night. Jon and I had decided that romance and common courtesy was dead until we met him lol. He is an amzing guys, and his and Freddy’s story is a real rags to riches. They came from a village on the tip of India up to Delhi and made a living out of nothing. He now lives in Canada and has a great big family. He talked a lot about a healthy character. In Canada he had a shop, and a guy came in once and started mounting off to him about white people and coloured people. So he set a sheet of paper on the wall and asked him and any of his friends who could stand beside the sheet of paper and say they were white. They are now the best of friends apparently! I don’t know if that story made any sense, but it was one of the most interesting conversations ( and funny) that I have had for ages!

I must go now, I am tired, but I hope that has kept you a bit in touch with me. Two weeks here have flown by in many ways, I feel properly like I am living here atm! Scary!

Miss you all loads!

Duff