Saturday, November 18, 2006
I'm back. It's so surreal to be back. Haha I was commenting on the plane that The Straits Times kind of looked different, but I don't think anything has acutally changed, it's more like I've changed haha. It was GREAT, but I don't feel up to blogging. I mean, I don't think I could do the entire experience justice in a blog post. But I'll TRY. If I had to describe Kolkata in one word, it would be dusty. But of course there're other things. It's a city of contradictions. You have Park Street where you can visit Pantaloons and swiss bakeries and bookshops, and you can be in there having pizza and look across the street at the beggars and the people living on the roadside. Kolkata is like a coin; Poverty on one side and Affluence on the other. You can look around you and notice how the waiters and waitresses are darker-skinned and the people being served are lighter-skinned. They're all Indian, but different. How is it justified that we spend roughly around one year's salary for a Kolkatan in one meal? You'd feel weird walking into the street with a box of confectionery while people are struggling to survive on even one meal a day. You have people living in mansions and you have people living in garbage dumps; sometimes side by side. Things are (for lack of a better word) cheap in Kolkata, but cheap is always relative. It's not cheap if you bathe on the street and your bedroom is on the street corner.So you can basically split the things that we did into:
1. worksite
2. teaching
3. mother teresa's home for physically and mentally disabled women and children (sishu bhavan)
4. cooking
5. others (like R & R, home experience etc..)
So I guess we'll go in chronological order just to make things easier for everyone.
1. worksite
When we arrived, Hope Home was supposed to be demolished already, and we were supposed to start the building work, but guess what? Due to the very idiosyncratic nature of Indian efficiency (or as we like to say - lack thereof) the building wasn't even half demolished when we got there. So we basically did bricklaying and compacting for their path and painting of murals (fruits of the spirit! Our group did Goodness which is a sheperd and a sheep! Show you the pic!)
This is the mural!
You see the yellowy background? That's actually cement paint. A few of the girls plus Mr Ellis actually mixed it up with their hands at first (cos it comes in a powder and you gotta mix it with water) and they had blisters and you know cracked skin and stuff cos it was really caustic and corrosive and I stupidly used a used glove to mix as well and my hands kena and my elbows peeled. but it's all good lah. And we did the path for people to bring their cows through! I touched a cow! Cows are sacred! This is the path!
It was basically pounding and breathing in cement dust and paint fumes and turps and carrying bricks and having to contend with the mosquitoes and sandflies. My group was great except for the MOLEY MOLE SPY/detective/wall (because walls have ears) Kin Cheng who told vicious lies about us.
May she be constipated for a month.
But Sheryl, Si han, Jessie and Yuchen were good to work with! :D:D Everytime we wanted to talk about stuff we would just leave and collect rubble and you know talk about stuff we can't talk about in front of WALL. It wasn't very HARD labour as much as it was TEDIOUS labour. We had to fit in small stones and stuff into the gaps to make it stable and shovel and pound and squat all day. Haha. I joked that the path was probably very happy cos it got laid everyday. HAHA. And we kept eating cement dust and getting high on paint but I tell you, there's nothing like seeing the finished mural and the path and everything! <3
2.
The kids were really lovable and cute and gregarious and fun to be with. Philip (Chandan) had a little crush on me HEHEH:
He's the one closest to me HAHA he was always very SHY. But he gave me like 15 cards and drawings of cars and boats. Haha it was like he churned out a couple everyday. Very sweet lah and he helped to maintain order in the class when our group was teaching! The guy beside him is SARBAN! Hahha he has a crush on this 3 year old girl caled SALOMI. OMG DAMN CUTE SEE
She's pretty!! Next Ms India Universe! She's not one of the Hope Home Kids though, and I think she may be pretty well off compared to some of the others. Anyway Blogger has a problem with the pictures so I don't think I'll put up more ): Bloody Blogger. Teaching them was REALLY TIRING, especially the first class in the morning (which was the younger kids) and they kept running around and played the same games like DUCKDUCKGOOSE and lao ying zhuo xiao ji which they called monster and mummy instead haha to make it easier for them and we also played What Is the Time Mister Wolf? And everyone wants to be the monster, the goose or Mr Wolf. It's pretty odd lah, because over here no one wants to be Mr Wolf or you know the goose haha. There they purposely want to get caught. Probably cos they want to be the ones who are chosen - to be special. I mean, it's probably an esteem thing, because there're so many kids. They don't get much attention. They're really different from Singapore kids. Even though they don't have a lot, they're happy; kids here want MOREMOREMORE it's never enough. The kids at Hope Home probably don't know what they're missing, and in a sense, it's better that way. All they know is Hope Home and Dev Sarkar (whom they know as 'Dad') and they don't have many friends outside of Hope Home Academy. I don't know what to make of it lah. Things will go back to normal for them when we're gone. Caleb, Joel and Cephas REFUSED to say goodbye to us :'( It was so difficult to say goodbye, especially when they started to mob you and hug you and whew I almost cried but didn't. It's supposed to be, you know, happy. But it turned out like this bloody photo-taking session in which Mr Ellis made us take at least 8 or 9 photos. IRRITATING. YOU CONTROL FREAKKK. Okay, but it's all about the kids. Honestly, even being the MCP that he is, I got to give it to Mr Sarkar. At least these kids have a roof over their head and an education. For the older ones like Solomon and Moses it'll probably be very difficult if they want to receive higher education, but the younger ones can! They have a chance :D
3.
By far, even though we only went there ONCE, it was probably the most eye-opening part of the experience. I mean, just walking to Sishu Bhavan from the Mother house, you see entire families living on the street on mats and lots of beggars. Then when you work with the children, you understand why the masi force-feed them and treat them that way. They don't know eating is good for them and they suffer when they eat because some of them can't swallow, so mealtime is like torture. I took care of a couple of them, mainly Johnny (who is blind, and kind of a bit paralysed on the left side), and Rinku and Deepa and this girl who kept wanting to be carried (I took care of her for a pretty long time but I forgot her name because it was long :X started with a "d") and we fed them (AND I CHANGED NAPPIES haha) and played with them and exercised them a little. There was this girl who was in a wheelchair and she was slumped down all day because she was very depressed. I think she knew what was going on around her, but she couldn't control her movements and I suppose she was really frustrated. And later on when it was almost time to leave, Deepa kept crying because there was no one to attend to her so I sat down and patted her (like my grandma used to do when I was a kid!) and sang Malay songs. Haha cos I've always thought Malay songs are more soothing. Felt very emotional lah, because I was thinking that she doesn't have a grandma to love her and pat her to sleep. She doesn't have eyes, but she can still cry and she clings on to you. So it was really hard leaving them. HAHA you can ask Sheryl Koh HI SHERYL who thought I was very blackfaced when I was putting the aprons back. I wasn't lah! Because I knew if I started talking I'd cry. But I did ANYWAY and it's just you know feeling sad that they're that way that's all. You feel very blessed. It changes the way you see things.
4.
:D COOKING WITH MS KOH WAS FUN!!! We peeled lots of garlic and onions and cut carrrots and potatoes and deboned chickens and fried up yummy tom yum noodles in a big wok and cooked chicken rice. It was good. Ms Koh let us do a lot of the stuff there and the food all turned out really yummy. She's really systematic. LEARNED STUFF like put salt when you boil your eggs so it's easier to peel :D She's fun.
5.
I suppose Swabhumi and the bookshops and stuff was fun. But it wasn't terribly exciting. Bought many many books :D City Centre was soso. I mean, it was like Bugis (according to Jasmine HAHAHA). Home experience was boring, but the focal point of the wqhole trip isn't the home experience, so I'm not too concerned about that lah. Although some people did have a LOT more fun. I went with Yina, Sui Kim and Sheryl :D:D Hohoho it was so painful trying to make conversation with he hosts who weren't very talkative, but the students at AOG were pretty fun :D And we left the house hungry. Luckily dinner was good that night haha. A lot of stupid things happened lah, but I can't be bothered to recount them. We played in the junior school where we competed who could jump the highest. Miriam (who was the host) could jump pretty high haha. But being with the 3 of them was FUN lah even if the hosts weren't.
I'm CHANGED. It's so surreal being back. Have I already said that? Haha. I think I got to know certain people better during the trip! MADE MORE FRIENDS GREAT. And they're fun :D HEEHEE And those whom I already knew I got to know better. Really, you've got to go there to come back. I really believe that everyone should go through this kind of experience, because it changes you and you learn things you'd NEVER learn otherwise. If we don't go back next year, Yina and I are going in our gap year. We WILL :D:D Honestly, I think things will be slightly different. They call it a paradigm shift? At least amongst the girls who went for Regional CIP (: haha. I WANT TO THANK THE WORLD FOR GIVING ME THIS OPPORTUNITY.