Maher

So I didn't quite manage to write this blog post on my last day off, but here it is. Better late than never, hey?!

We work with a lot of partners here at Sangam. Some we work with on a day to day basis: Deep Griha, Mobile Creche and Anand Gram are the three our Tare are working with currently. Some we have worked with in the past, and still have some links with, for example Green Tara. For some, we sell their products in the shop, Door Step School for example (Although I believe some Tare are going there in the next set of Tare, so we'll be getting more closely involved again!) and there are those that we work with regularly, but not every day, maybe once an event, once a month...

Maher is one of those partners. We don't send any Tare there, partly because it's 45 minutes drive away, and partly because they already have their own volunteer program. We invite some of the children from there to perform in some events, they do a fantastic play based on the life of Gandhi, and they've even been invited to come to Glasgow next June! One of their performers has been short-listed to be one of the next big acts in India.

I have visited there twice now, and each time I have been astounded. Here is the story of Maher...

Maher was founded by Sister Lucy, back in 1997, just 15 years ago. In the early 90's, she was living in a convent. One evening, a woman came to her, 7 months pregnant and asked for shelter. At the time, Sr Lucy couldn't provide that shelter because of the rules of the convent. She asked the woman to come back the next morning, when she would be able to help more. That night, Sr. Lucy heard a commotion in the village, as it wasn't far from the convent. She rushed down to discover an argument had occurred between this woman and her husband. The husband had poured kerosene on the woman and set her on fire. To make matters worse, the woman was 7 months pregnant. Sr Lucy tried to save the woman, she took her to hospital, but because of the rural area, and the lack of cars, it took her 6 hours to get the woman to the hospital. She couldn't be saved, and neither could the child.

From this event, Sister Lucy decided to do something. She wanted to set up a place for people to come, somewhere without barriers that would force Sr Lucy to turn these people away. After a few years, and with the generous help of some Austrian backers, Maher was set up.

15 years later, Maher has at least two sites in Pune, a site in South India, and one in the North. Sister Lucy is also trying to set up a site in Delhi. Maher takes in anyone, one of their mottos is "always room for one more". Sr Lucy said to us when I was there this last time "When we are full, we open another house. God sends us the funds from somewhere." 

As we arrived for my second visit, a child of around 6 weeks was brought in. It's parents had poured tobacco, kerosene and compost down it's throat, in an attempt to kill it. Why? It was female. The family had already had 4 or 5 girls and the parents were desperate for a boy, and couldn't afford to have another girl. Luckily, this baby was brought to Sr. Lucy in time. She sent it to hospital, and when they have made the girl better, it'll be brought back to Maher to live a really happy life. 

So that's the story of Maher, here's the website and here's some photos from the day!

Me and the small child I wanted to bring home

Claire and some of the children

Maher celebrate all religions!

Five Days Out

So this will probably be my first blog of the day, I think I'm going to end up writing two... I know what you're thinking, my blogs are like buses! Well, we'll see how this one goes, and then see how my afternoon goes - it's only an hour until lunch time right now! 

The past five days have been a little crazy, so much so that I've actually had to get my schedule so that I remember what I did and what order things came in! I have worked for all of them, and I've enjoyed them all so much, but I've also been very tired, and hopefully you'll be able to see why! (Although you could just tell me to man up and get on with my life, who knows!) 

November 10th - Day 1 of 5.

This day was the third day of the event. We headed out to Laxmi Road, which I've probably mentioned before. It's in the oldest part of Pune, and we do a cultural tour around the area, and the participants also have a chance to buy bangles, bindis, saris and punjabis, so it's always fun. Philippa, Aarti and I took a group of 12 around, and it was good fun. The participants enjoyed their shopping, and also wandering around the old temples and vegetable markets that we show them. This session is always very tiring for the SVs because it involves a lot of concentration to remember which direction to go (it's not quite second nature yet), and also to make sure the participants are ok crossing the roads, which are VERY busy, even by Indian standards, and generally walking in the right direction, particularly when you're taking a big group - and 12 is a big group for us! When walking down the line bazaar, it's almost impossible to see the end of the line of people trailing behind you because of all the other shoppers around. It's helpful to have two staff with each group, because then the one at the front can just glance and spot the very obvious purple of the other SV! 

The afternoon of this day was very relaxed though, with the tailor coming in, and then the pax going out to visit Indian families for dinner. 

November 11th  - Day 2 of 5

Today started with a visit to a community partner. I went to one of the sites belonging to Deep Griha. Deep Griha do just about everything, they have creches, coaching classes (a bit like a homework class), they teach teachers English, they teach tailoring, they have a health clinic, and do health checks, eye checks, and they have a massive HIV awareness project as well. And they do this in several slums, and they're just generally a bit awesome. They have lots of volunteers helping out there, including Claire and Danielle - two of our Tare. Danielle showed my group around Ram Tikiti, the slum we visited. Deep Griha was the only community partner that our Tare are working with that I hadn't visited, so it was really good for me to get the chance to go there, and see what they do first hand. I was a little shocked to walk in and find a laptop and speakers set up for us to watch a video. It seems Deep Griha are very well supported, much more so than a lot of our partners, and whilst they obviously need as much help as they can get, they maybe need it a bit less than some others. They're doing fantastic work though, and the participants enjoyed being able to play with some of the creche children!

The afternoon found us running a 10 million girls session. 10 Million Girls is the name we give to our sessions about WAGGGS. We try and give the participants who come to Sangam some information about what WAGGGS is doing, and what other organisations are doing, and try and show them what they can do when they go home. In this session, we ran a game developed by Philippa and the rest of the Sangam Staff, about a variety of 12 year olds from around the world, with different opportunities. It's based on work done by The Girl Effect, and you can find out more by googling for them, and also watching the video found HERE. Hopefully there will be a video of our game coming out soon, because I think it's a brilliant game! 

In the evening, we spent some time planning for Day 3 of 5, which happened to be our Community Fun Day...

November 12th - Day 3 of 5

COMMUNITY FUN DAY! This is a day that Sangam runs twice a year, at the end of the Tare's time here. They invite children from each of the sites that Sangam have been working with to Sangam, and we run activities for them! The Tare are in charge of the day, which is good for the SVs, and the participants help too. This year, we had 30 children from Mobile Creche and 35 from Deep Griha (ish anyway), and they were doing crafts, playing games, playing with a parachute, playing musical chairs, pass the parcel, all sorts of things. The children, and the participants really enjoyed their day, and we got some fantastic photos from it! The day was very hot, so a lot of the staff were melting, but some of the children were in woolly jumpers! Strange. The SVs were doing the odd jobs, taking photos, filming, carrying water out to the campsite, making sure the green children were with the green group, and the pink children didn't keep coming back to the crafts (note: this is not related to their skin colour, but their group colour!) 

Once that was finished, we tidied up, and then got straight on with another 10 million girls session. In this one, we talked about the community fun day, and also ran a short debate about whether we should be responsible for other people. I was then on reception until 8, just to add some more fun into my day! 

November 13th - Day 4 of 5

On this day, I was the only SV working for most of the day. Ellen wasn't very well for all of the previous days I've spoken about, and still wasn't 100% and Jessica and Philippa were both scheduled off anyway. I started the day at 7am with a water tower climb. I love climbing up the water tower, it's a great bit of exercise and the view from the top is so worth it! Half of the participants (13) climbed it with me this time, which is a really good turn out - sometimes people are just too sleepy! Last event, there were only 2!

Sayali and I took the participants and Tare out to Maher, another of our community partners, and had a fantastic morning. This will be the basis of my second blog post today, so I won't say too much about it! When I got back, I went straight to finalising plans for another 10 million girls session, with the help of Claire. Ellen was meant to be running this session, hence me not being completely organised for it. I also decided to change some plans based on the things we'd seen at Maher that morning. Sayali and Aarti covered for me when the tailors arrived with tailored saris and punjabis, and Gwen covered me in the shop. It's brilliant to have such a great team around me, especially when I'm the only SV working!! Ellen was feeling well enough to come to my session, but as she hasn't been to Maher before, I still ran it. I think it went pretty well, I was pleased :) Philippa also kindly came downstairs from her day off to sing a song with us! 

After dinner, I was then in charge of preparing for the children from Maher to come to Sangam to perform a play of Gandhi's life for us. They arrived, set up, and performed. I was a little annoyed because the CD player in the hall is being temperamental at the minute, and kept cutting out, so I had to sit next to it and press "pause" and "play" every time it seemed to do it. However, not really knowing the music/story that was on the CD, I was never entirely sure whether the CD player had cut out, or if it was just a silent bit! 

That night, I collapsed into bed. I don't actually remember getting changed I was so tired, but I must have done at some point. I was asleep by 9.30 easily (given that the session finished at 9, and I had to clear up...) Ellen, now feeling better, did my "On Call" for me. Being On Call basically means if the participants have any problems in the night, the night watchman comes to wake you up and you have to sort it out. I don't think there were any problems, but if there were, I don't think I would have been in a fit state to sort them out!

November 14th - Day 5 of 5

And for my final day of excitement, all of the SVs and Sayali went out on a cultural tour, lead by Sayali (her first ever session "in charge"!) We went to Alandi, Tulapur and Ishwari. Alandi is a really really old temple next to a river, which Jessica described as DisneyHindu Land. You queue up to get in, and around the temple, and it was very much a tourist attraction. Philippa and I stayed outside to guard the shoes - I wasn't really in a temple type mood, I feel I've seen a lot of them, and with such a big group, I wouldn't have been able to ask all the questions I would want to to understand it properly. Tulapur is another big temple, but a lot less touristy. It was in a very serene location, at a "sangam", or river confluence, as we would call it, a meeting of three rivers. Sangam means "coming together" which is why Sangam is named so. It was really peaceful there. Ishwari is yet another of our community partners. They do a lot of work with women, and we went to the founders house, where we ate ginger biscuits, and guava cheese (not actually cheese, more like a block of jelly tot, it was very yummy!). There was also a very sweet ginger cat there who was very playful! 

After this, we headed back towards Sangam, but stopped off for lunch at our local resturant, Aangan. The food here is really good, and as usual, I ate far too much! 

We then went back to Sangam for half an hour break, before heading out again to Aga Khan Palace. This is a palace built by an Aga Khan, and it's famous because Gandhi was imprisoned here. It's a beautiful building, with a big garden, and it's very peaceful. We set the participants off with a challenge, some questions to answer based on the displays in the museum, and Ellen and I taught Sayali a bit more about the Sangam SLR camera, and then relaxed on the grass! 

After this, we had a much deserved free evening! 

So there's my five days. At some point in that lot other things happened - Jen came home, and left again, I think I slept, I think I showered, I'm pretty sure I ate (other than Aangan!), and I definitely took lots of photos. I also don't think I can say enough how much I enjoyed the last five days, but also how much I am enjoying my day off today!! I'm definitely not doing anything much today. I might make it to the sweet shop, but that's as far as I'm venturing... 

Hopefully I'll be awake enough after lunch to write a blog post about Maher, but I might end up sleeping again, so maybe it'll come another day... we'll see!

Cuppa Tea!

You'll be pleased to know that this week my blog comes from the land of the less poorly! Things have started to get better now, the tired and ill participants have gone home (and hopefully enjoyed their lamb roast that a lot of them had planned, and are now having just as much fun at school :P ), the staff are steadily getting back to full health (although we're still looking after Philippa who managed to get a sinus infection, and basically slept for 4 solid days - she's back to work but we're making her take it easy), the server is basically up and running again and we haven't had to deal with Hanif's sense of timing since!! 

We had three days between events this time, which would have been fine, if we had managed to get all the participant names earlier in those three days, but we got them in the afternoon of the second day, leaving us just half a day to get everything ready before the participants actually arrived! It was a little chaotic. 

The two groups arrived on Monday afternoon, one from Birmingham, and one from Bucks, with an age range of 23-75! During our staff briefing, we were told (by the Americans) not to stereotype English people, and maybe they wouldn't just want to drink tea all the time. Well. I know my country better than that. Sangam has had to bring out the spare mugs because there weren't enough out, and we've also had to buy extra milk! We're having to plan in time for them to make tea between sessions, and we're also having to teach all the non-English speaking people exactly what a "cuppa" is...

So far it's been a lot of fun. I thought when I first arrived that I would enjoy having younger groups here more, and whilst the younger groups are fun, I actually enjoy the older ones a lot more. I enjoy hearing their stories, and listening to their life experiences. They also tend to be a lot more willing to "get stuck in". It's interesting how my opinions and expectations change the longer I stay here. 

Today is the second day of the event, and I have a day off! It's a little strange, because I haven't yet got to the point of needing that day off, so for the first time on a day off during an event I'm ready to do something! So my plans are: updating this blog, obviously! Tidying my room, as always, maybe having a nap, generally relaxing this morning, and then this afternoon I'm off out with Hayley (the guest services co-ordinator) for a drink and maybe a wander around whatever exhibition is on in the college grounds :) I might be ready to do stuff, but I'm not going to exhaust myself at the very start of a 10 day event!! 

And finally, as promised, only a couple of months late, a picture of me in my sari! 

Claire and me in our slightly matching saris by the pool :)

Sick all round...

Today my blog is brought to you from the land of the poorly things. But don't worry, for once I am not poorly! (yet!) However, here is my list of things/people that are poorly...

1) The participants. 

The current participants, a group of mostly 16-19 year olds from Norfolk, arrived at Sangam after a weeks tour of India. They visited Delhi, Agra (and the Taj), and Jaipur. They saw a tiger on a safari, they shopped lots. Sounds like they had loads of fun. This also meant, however, that they arrived at Sangam absolutely exhausted. So we changed our schedule, and gave them an afternoon off to recover. Now whether they're over-tired, or whether they've been running on adrenalin, or whether they ate some dodgy plane food on their way from Delhi to here, I don't know, but they seem to be slowly dying. We've had at least 5 out of 18 be particularly ill so far, but the rate seems to be slowing, and they seem to be recovering. And give them their due, they have got on with it most of the time (particularly when there's shopping involved!) and they've been trying. 

2) The staff.

So lots of the staff also seem to be getting ill at the minute, in a completely different way to participants. Whereas the pax are throwing up, the staff have sore throats, bad heads, jaw aches, all those kind of exciting things. We've got at least 5 staff who haven't been feeling amazing, and I thought I was heading that way too, but I was just overtired, so I am 100% now after a good night's sleep!! 

3)The washing machine.

Last week, I was doing some washing (shocking I know). I went to collect my clothes from the machine,I opened the door, and out poured smoke. Yes. Smoke. Not steam. No. Burning type of smoke. Luckily, my clothes managed to not smell of smoke (I am not sure how), and I went and wrote the situation on Aruna's magic board. (you put broken things on the board, they get fixed. Aruna does not like things written on her board). The washing machine man says the machine is very broken, with a big crack on the inside. Sad times.

4) Hanif's sense of timing. 

So Hanif is the local Scout master here. Last night, he took a group of pax and Jessica to his house for dinner. He was told to arrive for 6pm, he arrived at 7pm. Even for Indian timing this is bad. Jessica was under strict instructions to make sure they left before 10pm, and to not let Hanif take them to his gardens, 45 minutes drive away. At 10.45pm they still had not returned home. Jessica says they left Hanif's house at 9.50pm. They just happened to take a detour via Hard Rock Cafe, and some out of town construction sites. Obviously the most direct route home!

5) The server.

It is with regret that I announce that Sangam's server is very poorly. The poorliest of all poorly things. The computer men have been looking at it for nearly 3 days now, and each day they walk away shaking their heads. We have no staff internet, only guest internet, and that is only desktop computers, as the wi-fi is broken. We have no X: drive, once again, and I'm sure you remember how traumatic it was last time we had no X: drive. We also have an event starting in 5 days. We miss you server. 

But despite all these ill things, we somehow seem to be surviving this event. Odd things keep happening, that mean we get by. Pure coincidences. Jessica needed the Rickshaw Skit video from the X: drive. The X: drive was broken. Claire had it on her memory stick. Philippa needed some videos, again from the X: drive. Christa had them on her computer. Someone had printed out the example Sangam Snapshot for the pax. We never do that normally, we just show them it on the computer. 

We are prepared for Poorly-Land!