Time to say goodbye

people checking out the photos i've collated over the 2 months here. probs one of my favourite photos.

Well its that dreaded time this week: its my time to say goodbye as we prep to leave SEDS on Saturday morning.

My lecturer asked me over the phone through our fortnightly conversations, "do you find it hard to say goodbye?" Immediately i answered "no", but the more i reflect on it, maybe i do. you see we went to the school on Monday morning to officially say goodbye during assembly. I had purchased a cricket bat in bangalore 2 months back and i wanted to give it to the school as a gift and a token of our gratitude for the way they've welcomed us. As the headmaster called cait and i to the front, Cait spoke first and then it was my turn. After speaking for some time i had to bite my tongue as a flood of words kept coming out - there was so much i wanted to say to the students and teachers, so much i wanted to encourage them and thank them for and just to tell them how much each and everyone of them will be missed. Even though i used quite alot of difficult english words i knew that everyone knew what i meant. A funny thing was that when i gave the bat to the school, the headmaster called Hasha, the smallest child of the school (who's in Lower Kindergarten) to come hold the bat while the school sang the national anthem. The bat is almost bigger than him. And he didnt realise that the bat was for the school, he thought it was all for him, so he would cradle and cuddle it haha.

The staff, children and people on campus have been so nice to us - how big their hearts are. it was cait's birthday yesterday (30th Sept) and so we went to the school assembly once again. They brought cait to the front and sang her happy birthday (all 3 verses of it) and all the children made her birthday cards. so many of them thanked her for the arts and craft she had completed with them. Ro, Rash, Jess and I have been cooking her brekkie and lunch and the girls also made her a cake. She might not be able to celebrate her birthday with her family, but she is family here so we celebrated it with her.

There's a guy here who i've made good friends with. he normally goes home every day but for some reason he's been living on campus. I asked him why hasnt he gone back to his village. his reply "because i want to say goodbye to you when you leave." How heartwarming it was to hear that. How nice and accepting people are here. So with the rest of my time, ive just been trying to hang with people one last night and say my goodbyes. my lecturer is right, i do find it hard to say goodbye. hard to say goodbye to people ive spent, ive grown with, ive laughed with, ive chatted with over the last 2 months.

one last surprise came last night which just made me jump with so much joy - Roja came back!!!! i was just sitting outside the dining room and then i heard her voice and i turn around and i see it - i see the great smile and joking sense of humour again! she came back with her husband and uncle and they are living on campus. You can just see the joy on her face! oh it must be good to be back home. So i ask myself - am

hanging with the boys at the fishing pond

singing of the national anthem. hasha and the bat

i missing home? and i think the answer is, im missing ppl more than the tangible things of home but there are bigger and better things that still need to be seen, experienced and accomplished here.

'Happy Birthday Coco' says the cake as the icing melted while piping it

The day of the wedding

its been a while since i blogged. alot of things have happened but to be honest they are things i can tell you easily and are not really blog worthy. i could tell you about how i went to chennai (about 6hr drive) to a music and surf festival on the beach. I could tell you how i had my first experiences with dealing with someone who has bipolar. I could tell you about how i went to Auroville - a self sustaining suburb (which has a cult-like feel). I could tell you about how our car broke down on the highway and that we needed to be towed all the way home making the drive back to bangalore over 14hrs. I could tell you how i and the 2 other volunteers here have this stomach bug for a few days now and that we all fight for the toilet. But no, this blog is going to be a bit different. You see, a blog is meant to be a place where you just pour out; a place where you pour out thoughts, feelings, emotions etc. I dont know if i’ve done a good job of that of late but this one i just need to write down as a blog to get it out of my head. This blog is all about what i observed at a particular event - and as my social work lecturer taught me thats the role of a social worker - to ask questions.

This blog is about me attending the wedding of roja and Krishna. Roja is a 19yo girl who works and lives here. She has such a bubbly personality, a great smile, always happy and a hard worker. Many a times we would chat or she would teach me how to cook or teach me telugu, and she’s always smiling and laughing (whether at me or with me im not too sure). She even recently would hide behind the kitchen door and scare us as we walked through. 

Yet, today was Roja's wedding day. A big day and a dream come true for all people im sure. Yet, this just didnt seem to be the case today. What happened to that sweet young girl with her ever- glistening smile and joy that shone from her presence? it just seemed to have disappeared today. You see, Roja's marriage was an arranged marriage. She met her husband 3 times before marrying him. He is 10 years older than her and i dont think they’ve actually talked to each other before - his family were interviewing her when i saw them together once. 

We drove 2 and half hours from home to see the wedding ceremony (which we missed because of our lateness in leaving, but we still got to be involved in the hindu blessing rituals) and in my mind i pictured young Roja to be so happy, this was her big day. But all i saw was something like sadness in her eyes, almost like she was lost. There was no smile, no happiness, just a girl standing there with her husband being mobbed with much aesthetic materials from all the people surrounding them. 

And so i thought to myself maybe its just me thinking these thoughts so i raised them at the dinner table tonight, but no, i wasnt alone, others felt it too. You could just see it in her eyes today that something wasnt right. Cait raised a good possibility that perhaps its because the dream has finally become a reality, and that the dream looked better. In addition i have other reasons; 1. that we were so far from home that she felt like an alien in the crowd - her home and family is here. Yet, my second thinking is that reality has hit her that she is no longer a teenager but an adult, a wife. See, the moments i interacted with her, she was a teenager - she would scare us, she would laugh and she would always interact with her adopted brothers here (she would punch them etc). Yet i think as Cait said reality has kicked in and she is no longer a teenager. She now has a husband - who she probs doesnt even know, and she has to take care of him. And who knows, the guy might be a great guy, i dont know. Seems to be a track record here of men leaving women here however. But this i do know, that Roja is a sweet young girl - always laughing, smiling, always cheerful, yet, something just didnt seem right today and it truly breaks my heart.

For He is good for His steadfast love endures forever

Apologies for the late blog - we didnt have internet for 4 days straight and the feeling of realising that theres life outside of internet has hit me, so i havent been on the laptop as much.

On Sunday 30/8 Ronny and I drove for about 30mins to a biggish village call Madakasira - its a village below a hill. Yet on this hill contains so much history - it was a fort and a summer palace for a king and queen and then the british rebuilt some of the fort as well. So we climbed the hills to the fort. It took about 1 1/2hrs to climb but it was so worth it. Such breathtaking views at every angle - the village was below us yet in the surrounding areas were sights of green crops and further still the hill ranges and ontop of each hill you can seen other forts and outposts. it almost felt like we were taken back centuries ago just staring into the horizon and pointing at hills saying ‘i want to build a fort on this hill and that hill’. It was amazing - something i’ve never experienced before. 

We were so buggered when we came home so we had a relaxing afternoon. I hung with the boys at the fishing pond which was awesome. We fished for a bit, but then we just played games - we built a human pyramid, and then i taught them leapfrog, and some other things - seeing if they can lick their elbows (u cant), asking them to stand up while sitting back to back with their arms interlinked, wheelbarrow races, touching our noses with our tongues, rolling our tongues, speaking in different accents, playing this game called ‘honey if you love me' we even did Heel and Toe. It was so much fun - something so simple for me yet great fun for them. 

On monday my fellow students at another NGO called Timbaktu came for the day. We got to hang out which was good fun. Secretly they came for the food because i kept telling them how good Manil's cooking was…..we had spaghetti for dinner which they munched down….bit of a dilemma for the girls though is that 2 of them are vegetarians….i should say ‘were’ because they smashed down that spaghetti. bahahaha. they spontaneously stayed overnight and stayed for another day - this time we had laksa for lunch - delicious….you know its a good meal when there’s silence in the dining hall because everyone is too busy eating.

 Im a guy who if i visualise something or have a project in mind then im gonna stick to it and see its done….thats y i dont do much because if i start it then i have to finish it haha. so the next 4 days have been me in my in project mode. I am the librarian at the school. As an observer i noticed that no one was using the library - why? because the shelves were just stacked everywhere - no one knew what books were there. So my ocd kicked in and it was my goal to revitalise the library. I spoke to the boys about it and wanted them to catch the idea so that they would contribute, they would invest, and they would take ownership of THEIR library. they caught the vision and they said they wanted to paint the shelves as well. this was so awesome for me becuase i wanted to find outlets for their creativity as the school is heavily academic. So we spent 4 days in the library just redoing it and resorting all the books. i found books in japanese, german, dutch - there were some reader’s digest magazines dated from the early 2000s. We finished the library and it looks amazing. well done to everyone who helped. The joy of hearing children say ‘wow! the library is so clean’ and actually taking interest in browsing the sorted books (the spines of all the books are now showing, with the faces of some of the books actually facing the person browsing). i have to thank koorong for giving me ideas of how to present books on shelves. The borrowing system has now been reinstated and the first book that was borrowed out was by a teacher and it was a book in Telugu entitled ‘who is Jesus Christ?’. Not having any influence in his decision making, im very interested as to why he picked that book. 2 other girls were so excited to borrow out books that the principal said to me ‘did u hear they joy when they borrowed those books?’

On Friday we celebrated Teacher’s Day. It was a day where students would celebrate their teachers. And they had a surprise for all of us. the students took all the teachers (myself included even though i explained to them im not a teacher, im a librarian) to the classroom where they began popping balloons that were filled with glitter, with a cake as the centrepiece in the room and on the blackboard ‘happy Teacher’s Day to all’. It was such a surprise because no teacher knew it was coming. obviously the teachers here have made such an impact on the students. During the consumption of the cake it had to of course turn into a food fight. i came out second best - cake was all in my hair and ear. We went to the taps to wash it off when it then turned into a water fight. i only had hands but the teachers had bowls of water to launch at me - so again i came out second best. 

The rains have arrived so now that each day its hot but int he afternoon the storm clouds come rolling in. on wednesday afternoon tuition was called off because the sky was black. So what did we do? well, we played soccer instead. The pitch was dirt and so wen the torrential downpour hit, the pitch turned into mud. It was the best fun ever. everyone was just laughing and trying not to slip. i scored twice and like every soccer player i needed to celebrate somehow. so i found a pool of water and skidded across it on my body. i expected to slide maybe a metre or two but it seems like i only slid may 20cm - obviously there was more dirt than water in that puddle. But the joy that comes from just hearing constant laughter. 

Lastly we found out that Cait is coming back on Saturday. it’ll be such a joy to have her back.

India has been such a great experience and i feel that Zim and Thai has defs prepared me for this place. you cannot help but love these kids and people here and thats what i cannot help but do - just constantly love, and show compassion, and support them in any and every way. As Augustine my social work supervisor said - ‘social work is just compassion and common sense’. and as one missionary said ‘you can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving’.

i’ve entitled this blog from a verse in the bible that i recently read. i think its relevant and fitting that He is good and he is loving.