New volunteers and Indore

Well work has well and truly started again. The new set of volunteers arrived in September and Emma and I gave training on topics such as culture, religion, expectations and culture shock. We also visited a HIV/Aids centre, and two NGOs (non governmental organisations). All in all it was a success.

The training week passed very quickly and we could barely believe it when we found ourselves on a train (in my case for over 50 hrs to Udaipur!). I think as we had already done training with the previous volunteers, we were more confident with what we were doing and so it flew by.

After 5 days doing work mixed with sightseeing, I met up with Emma in Indore.The photo below shows Gandhi dwarft by the traffic and billboards of the city. It’s not a touristy place at all, so it has quite a different feel. I’ve seen only one other white person other than Emma during the past week. Very few people speak English and they expect you to speak Hindi. The food is AMAZING!!! It’s good all over India, but here every meal we’ve had has surprised us.

Anyway enough talking about food! The reason we’re in Indore (and not Outdoor – sorry, one of my Dad’s jokes which Ste has on more than one occasion tried to claim for himself) is to meet some of our partner organisations. We haven’t got any volunteers here this year, but we might have some next year, so we need to check how everything is.

One partner organisation is a Deaf and Blind school. We visited and talked to them. After we’d finished they invited us to celebrate the Navratri festival by watching the staff and children carry out the gurba dance the following day. We agreed.

So Emma and I went back and sat down to watch. After about 5 minutes we were pulled up and given 2 wooden sticks each and showed how to hit them together in time to the music. We joined in and had a great laugh. We danced for over an hour in different formations and a few breaks for water. It’s the most exercise I’ve done in a long while.

All the staff got really into it and you could easily believe you were in a Bollywood movie with people prancing about in the unique way Indians do. People just lost all their inhibitions and lost themselves in the music. You could just see it on their faces and feel it in the air. I had a brilliant time. I know I’ll never forget this experience.