Last weekend, Kat and Laura headed off to Agra to see the Taj for the first time and Nella and I set off up north to Ludhiana in Punjab. We were going up to visit a hospital and connected teaching college which was originally started up by Fenella's great aunts in 1880. The train up there was delightfully luxurious as we were in chair class so we had large, comfortable seats and we were provided with food throughout the journey. We were met on the platform by our friend, Kumar's, brother who kindly chauffeured us to our fancy hotel. We had had a bit of trouble sorting out accommodation because Ludhiana is not a tourist spot so it is difficult to find both cheap and safe hotels, so Kumar found us this hotel, at a slightly larger price but it was very nice. We were upgraded to an executive room and treated ourselves to hot and powerful showers, tea in bed and watching some very weird and surprisingly provocative Indian music videos on the television! We had a lazy morning and breakfasted in the hotel restaurant before being picked up by a couple of professors from the college to be shown around. We were first taken to the spot where the aunts set up the original dispensary in a church, which is now lots of shops, and then to the actual college. There are 5 different colleges; nursing, medicine, physiotherapy, dentistry and psychiatry and then a large, fully functioning hospital attached. We were presented with flowers and shawls on arrival and given a tour around the nursing college and the hospital. I was amazed by how like a British hospital it was, especially compared to my experiences in Uganda. It was very clean, and smelt sterile, with all the necessary equipment such as monitoring and ECG machines and everything. I don't think it would have looked that out of place in the UK! After lunch we were taken to the sports field where the students from each different college were competing in a sports day, and we (mainly fenella) were presented to the congregation! Just before we left Ludhiana we went searching through a graveyard to try and find the graves of the aunts, sadly we were unsuccessful but we did find another unknown Greenfield, which is Nella's surname.
Our return journey was not quite so luxurious as we were in 'second seating' class which is almost the lowest of the low with hard bench seats and we had a mouse running up and down the carriage at our feet - making my skin crawl continuously. However, the train arrived in Delhi 5 minutes earlier than scheduled which is unheard of!!
On Sunday morning we awoke to pissing rain which immediately put our plans of a day by the pool out the window. We wove our way through the puddles up to the farm and spent the day chatting with the assorted guests and entertaining the children, finished off with a mini party and dance show to celebrate Annie and Christina's (one of the staffs children) joint birthdays. The kids were hilarious dancing, particularly the younger ones who were taking it very seriously and had clearly learned their moves from the TV.
At some point during the night Laura and Kat returned from Agra, although I slept through it and we woke to yet more rain and a lake for a playing field. As was the case in January, rain is the perfect excuse for the kids not to come to school. Subsequently only 50 of 250 kids showed up so they were pushed into classes together: Grades 1,2,3 in one, Grades 4,5,6 in another, advanced A and B together, Adv C and Grade 7 and finally Grade 8 and Adv D. We were given new and not-so-improved timetables for the day where Kat and I had a single period of 1,2,3, a double of 4,5,6 and then a double of 1,2,3 again. It was absolutely exhausting and trying to fill an hour and 20 is so much harder than filling 40 mins, particularly with 7 year olds with poor English but somehow we got through it, finishing with a paper aeroplane race when it dried up.
Thankfully it was no longer raining - just very foggy - on Sunday so there was almost 100% attendance again at school and it was back to normal lessons again for us teachers. There has been a bit of a mad rush recently because the end of year assessments had to be written and submitted by the end of February so our free periods were filled with writing them - and yes they have got 4, 18 year old girls to write the end of year exams, certainly not something that would happen at home ;). On Tuesday night we were invited to Mr Kumar's house for a cooking lesson, dinner and rum! We started by drinking chai in the garden and then settled down to watch the enormous block of butter melt and the onions sizzle in the pan (on an outside fire) for hours whilst we sipped on our rum and coke. Eventually the mutton was added to the dish and again left to stew whilst we put the world to rights. After the delicious and much anticipated meal we retired to the veranda to drunkenly dance to a mixture of 80's pop.
Getting up the following morning was a little difficult after going to bed at 1am but the beauty of Indian 'old monk' rum is apparently its lack of hangovers which we were all very grateful for. Having said that, Wednesday was a very chilled day at school as it was the school picnic so all the kids brought in a contribution and the older children spent the morning preparing the food. The Montessori classes were given their food first as they go home at lunch time. They were all made to give in their chapattis brought from home (to many of their disgust) and then they were handed back out again to them all sat in an enormous circle.
After we had our lunch, the children were all making kites out of sticks, tissue paper and thread and very successfully flying them so our services were not required and we all took the opportunity to go and have a nap in the sunshine. Re-energised we went to judge the spelling competition before sending them all home for a 4 day weekend due to it being the Hindu festival of colour, Holi, on Friday which I am very, very excited about!
Lots of love xxxx
Our return journey was not quite so luxurious as we were in 'second seating' class which is almost the lowest of the low with hard bench seats and we had a mouse running up and down the carriage at our feet - making my skin crawl continuously. However, the train arrived in Delhi 5 minutes earlier than scheduled which is unheard of!!
On Sunday morning we awoke to pissing rain which immediately put our plans of a day by the pool out the window. We wove our way through the puddles up to the farm and spent the day chatting with the assorted guests and entertaining the children, finished off with a mini party and dance show to celebrate Annie and Christina's (one of the staffs children) joint birthdays. The kids were hilarious dancing, particularly the younger ones who were taking it very seriously and had clearly learned their moves from the TV.
At some point during the night Laura and Kat returned from Agra, although I slept through it and we woke to yet more rain and a lake for a playing field. As was the case in January, rain is the perfect excuse for the kids not to come to school. Subsequently only 50 of 250 kids showed up so they were pushed into classes together: Grades 1,2,3 in one, Grades 4,5,6 in another, advanced A and B together, Adv C and Grade 7 and finally Grade 8 and Adv D. We were given new and not-so-improved timetables for the day where Kat and I had a single period of 1,2,3, a double of 4,5,6 and then a double of 1,2,3 again. It was absolutely exhausting and trying to fill an hour and 20 is so much harder than filling 40 mins, particularly with 7 year olds with poor English but somehow we got through it, finishing with a paper aeroplane race when it dried up.
Thankfully it was no longer raining - just very foggy - on Sunday so there was almost 100% attendance again at school and it was back to normal lessons again for us teachers. There has been a bit of a mad rush recently because the end of year assessments had to be written and submitted by the end of February so our free periods were filled with writing them - and yes they have got 4, 18 year old girls to write the end of year exams, certainly not something that would happen at home ;). On Tuesday night we were invited to Mr Kumar's house for a cooking lesson, dinner and rum! We started by drinking chai in the garden and then settled down to watch the enormous block of butter melt and the onions sizzle in the pan (on an outside fire) for hours whilst we sipped on our rum and coke. Eventually the mutton was added to the dish and again left to stew whilst we put the world to rights. After the delicious and much anticipated meal we retired to the veranda to drunkenly dance to a mixture of 80's pop.
Getting up the following morning was a little difficult after going to bed at 1am but the beauty of Indian 'old monk' rum is apparently its lack of hangovers which we were all very grateful for. Having said that, Wednesday was a very chilled day at school as it was the school picnic so all the kids brought in a contribution and the older children spent the morning preparing the food. The Montessori classes were given their food first as they go home at lunch time. They were all made to give in their chapattis brought from home (to many of their disgust) and then they were handed back out again to them all sat in an enormous circle.
After we had our lunch, the children were all making kites out of sticks, tissue paper and thread and very successfully flying them so our services were not required and we all took the opportunity to go and have a nap in the sunshine. Re-energised we went to judge the spelling competition before sending them all home for a 4 day weekend due to it being the Hindu festival of colour, Holi, on Friday which I am very, very excited about!
Lots of love xxxx
No comments:
Post a Comment