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.
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