Amida Volunteers Blog

Its day 74 in the Dehli house ( for Big Brother fans- that took a bit of working out!)
Hello, well although its Delhi, its bumbling along quite well. There are fewer volunteers here now, but we are all getting along well, and have been enjoying classes. I take the morning conversation classes, which start off with nice topics such as 'what makes a good friend' and then turns into why Pakistan and India are at conflict etc, which I have to steer clear of quite quickly!!! At least they are showing a higher standard of vocabulary and thought process. Its actually the Monk here who enjoys talking about freedom fighters and terrorism, so at a push we can discuss it, as long as I dont tell them what i think of it all, and make sure that they dont say anything too, too damaging.
We went to Paha Gange on Monday for our day off, which was quite nice. This is where all the travellers go, so we saw another world of delhi. So there were the stereotypical white backpackers there, with dreadlocks and hippy tie-dyed clothes. We must looked out of place there all weraing our jeans and jumpers! It was nice to see a little more, and the cloth and shawls they sell are amazing. I had to stop myself buying a trunk there, as although it was beautifully carved ( and cheap), i had to think what would I do with it!
We have a meeting every saturday to discuss our lessons, and we decided to have it on the balcony in the sun(- its a hard life) and one of the volunteers shouted 'monkey!'. I thought he meant there was one there. He said no he was just calling them. AND THIS HE DID. 15 minutes into the meeting we all turned around to see a monkey had joined us on our rooftop, and they certainly are not cute being in close quarters with one. You can see their teeth! It ran past us onto the higher part of the balcony so we ran into Joys sleeping area and frantically locked the door behind us so we could continue our meeting. Another few minutes passed, and we heard a loud bang at the door, and all we saw was the monkeys face peering in at the window. It was quite scary at the time!
WE have started 2 new outreach programmes since Christmas. One at a place called Harsh Vihar, where we teach children from the ages of 2 to 16 years old. We divide them up into groups, Sarah and I teach the very little ones things such as nursey rhymes, basic numbers and the alphabet etc. Last week we did the song about '10 little monkeys jumping on the bed' and we got 10 of the children out at the front. As part of the song they have to pretend to sit on the floor and hold their heads because they had bumped their heads in the song. Unfortunateely, we didn't think this one through, because when a child is punished in India, they are made to crouch on the floor and sit with their hands on their heads or their ears. After the 2nd child was in this position, and looking really upset and confused, we realised and had to find an interpreter quick to tell them it was only pretend! ah well you live and learn! Next week I think Old MacDonald willl be safer.
Our second outreach is actually working with street children. They live by the side of a busy road and their parents make the plaster and stone statues for shrines. So the childrehn are covered in chalk dust and wear rags. They are amazing children, and are alot more willing to learn than any of the children we have taught so far. they are aged between 1 and about 12, although their parents join in in the background, which is excellent. Even the little baby was doing all the actions to 1,2,3,4,5 (the one about the fish). it was really worthwhile doing. I think next year the project wants to do more of this stuff, which I think is a good move.
Last week was a really good teaching week, except for one of the classes I teach getting out of control (well actually only 1 boy). He has been Eve teasing ( teasing girls) the girls in the lesson, and being lude towards me, so I had had enough of this, and Joy had to step in to throw him out of the school, as he was also disrespecting other volunteers, and people from lower castes than himself too. The rest of the class also got warnings, as some of them were guilty of the eve teasing, and teasing of the others, and after Joy spoke to them, they all came running up to me, nearly in tears thinking that they were all being accused of what the one boy had done to me. ( as in India, you can be arrested for doing this). So I had to calm down 6, 6 foot tall boys, and made sure they knew it wasnt them that was in trouble. The next class went really well. This is actually my favourite class of students, it was just a shame one let it down for them all.
So its been a quieter week this week, and Joy is taking a much needed break, so we'll be in charge proper of the main grammer groups- eek i've only just got my head around the present perfect tense!
Its my night off, so I think Im going to take a wonder then watch a film- if only we had baths here, but i did discover our big washing bucket is just big enough to sit in, at a push! ( see adapting to life here quite well!)
any way , lots of love to you all,
Jenny xxxxxxxxxx

So here I am in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. All new to me, never been in South India before. It's an utterly different world, As different to Delhi as London is to the Mediterranian. The heat slows everyone right down, and everyone smiles at you and is friendly. Genuinely friendly, not "I'm smiling at you 'cause I want you to buy my stuff" as happens regularly in the Big Smoke. Or more accurately, the Big Pollution - Delhi is possibly the most polluted city in the world after Mexico City. It's a bit like smoking twenty Marlborough Reds every day there, and the snot that comes out of your nose is black. When you do washing, after hanging things out to dry, they finish off possibly less sweaty, but just as grimey and dusty as when you started (and sometimes more so). And each and every leaf on the trees has a thick layer of dirt...

So, even though it too is a highly polluted city, Chennai feels like a breath of fresh (-ish) air. The saris seem brighter and have more gold thread and twinkley bits, the men wear shorts and dhotis (man skirts. Drew-the-volunteer is going to get one. I can't wait to see this...) and everyone's smiles are wide and bright and real. Everywhere in India the men drape arms over each other and hold hands, and are generally very physically intimate with each other (which is lovely). In Delhi the women don't touch each other at all under any circumstances, but here I've noticed a more relaxed attitude and women walk along arm in arm. That's seaside sunshine living for you...

Our 36 hour train ride was pretty pleasent, I've never travelled posh class on the Indian railway before, it was ever so luxurious compared to what I'm used to. We weren't first class, but had sheets on the beds and were in with the middle class educated/business types of Indians which was interesting. One of our compartment mates, whilst emitting the largest quantity of utterly unself-concious bottom burps I've ever encounted, started reading Drew's copy of Paradise Lost (a little light reading for these Oxford educated folks I'm with). Apparently he (the Indian chap) studied some of it at university or something. They also do Shakespeare (understandable) and Chaucer for Goddess sake what's that all about it's bad enough when you're a native English speaker. But then we do Chaucer at A'level where as they don't study him until university, and a BA in India is not really even A'level standard, which makes it quite complicated when they boast about having MAs or PHDs and you know your own level of education probably supersedes theirs by quite some way despite having less letters after your name....

I'm having the best time learning all about bartering and the Indian body language. The key thing about haggling is that it's not a war (as in "I'm happy to fight down to the last ruppee") but a dance. A playful game, a rhythmic display of mutral respect and artistry. Lot's of Westerners don't get this at all, and I still slip up sometimes. But I'm geting there.... I was just getting to grips with a little Hindi when here we are with a whole new language - no more "namaste" but palms together and "one-a-kum" instead. I never got around to learning the numbers in Hindi but I may try in Tamil - my favorites are nine which is "one-ba-du" and nineteen which is "pah-ten-ba-du". Glorious! But you can have whole conversations with people without knowing a word of each others' languages if you understand the subtle nuances of "I am wobbling my head". It doesn't mean yes and it doesn't mean no, it roughly translates as "okay" but has many variations. For example it can mean "I am unable to help you and you are boring me so now I am just politley waiting for you to go away". And it can mean "you have just offended me and I feel deeply disrespected but there is little I can do about it." Or even "No idea what you're talking about, but if I smile widely enough then there's a strong possibility everything's going to work out just fine" (my favorite). There are more - I'll keep you posted. I've started doing it, it works so well when you get the hang of it. It is also used when people are trying to con you as a kind of reassuring soothing rocking, so I shall have to be careful how and when I appropriate it. My Indian style hand gestures are coming along beautifully too - I'm getting ever so expressive. Still doing the wide legged not-very-feminine walking and sitting though, but no chance of turning all dainty for me ;}.

The teaching in the last week in Dehli went well - started to take little groups of beginners grammer and got some positive feedback from Joy. When we went to do outreach at Harsh Nigar, Alison and Drew and I decided to accept an offer from some of the teenage volunteers that attend our daytime school and had come along to help translate to go back to their house for chai. We had been whary of doing this before, as one of them, Vikas, is a 18 year-old young Elvis look a-like who believes himself to be the answer to the problems of womenkind, bless 'im. Perfectly nice chap, just a misguided ego. He didn't seem to be able to distinguish between school and volunteering, and was boasting and making a nuisance of himself in classes. But this week we felt confident that his older brother Nicoole and cousin Rajneesh had got the message across, so off we went. Wow. To have so little and yet give us so much. We were very much on show (you always are in Indian homes, the entire extended family comes around to have a look at you, and they feed you first as the honoured guests which is weird. And feed you, and feed you....Amounst many things eggy bread with corriander, spices and onions stood out a mile). I had the inspired idea of asking if anyone played the tabla; they didnt actually own any, but off someone went to borrow from a neighbour, and so a musical soiree began. We had drumming, singing, and a haunting folk song from one of the sisters. We contibuted "Lean on Me" and "Three Little Birds", and as usual they asked us to sing the Celine Dion Titanic Bleurgh song which is requested everywhere by every male teenager in India. Scarey. We were all settling down to have an evening of it when an elderly monk attached to the temple where we had been teaching showed up which rather put a dampener on things as he didn't speak English and anyway Theravadan Buddhists aren't allowed to listen to music. Oh well, another time. The monks and pretty much anyone attached to the temples are really hard to deal with, basically because of institutionalised sexism which drives me and all the volunteers crazy. We've been training the male volunteers to deflect the questions back to us where ever possible.

Anyway, now we're in Chennai, and so far no monks to be seen. We visited the hostel today for the second time, and it has the most loving and friendly energy of any buildings I have ever been in. It's super super basic school-cum-accomadation for 49 children and 5 supervising adults, and a long 45 minute bus ride through industrial waste lands, petrolium refineries belching fire and smoke, and rubbish dumps. But when you arrrive - oh! Such friendly, happy, well-loved children, it's got an energy you wouldn't believe. We did games and learning names things yesterday, then started teaching today. I did simple questions like what's your name? and how are you? and "head, shoulders knees and toes" and "Simon Says" and with the youngest group, then reading comprehension with the oldest ones. They asked us lots of questions; when asked about hobbies Drew and Alison said reading and singing so I said sport and cricket which went down well but now they keep asking me which cricket players I like and I'm stumped...They're not orphans - well some of them are but most have parents but their parents lost their livelihoods in the tsunami. The whole thing is beautifully run and the children, though they have nothing and sleep up to 12 to a tiny room on the floor, are smilley and cherished and really happy to be there. You get the feeling that the Tsunami might actually have been good for these chosen few....

They are Ambedkarites. Mean nothing? No, me neither until I did the training in Leiscester in September. These children are Buddhists, but until the 1950s, Buddism had virtually disappeared from India, it's birthplace. Now about one percent of Indians are Buddhist, and that number can almost entirely be credited to one man, Dr Ambedkar. He was born a Dalit - "The Oppressed Ones" otherwise known as Untouchables or those beneath the caste system - the ultimate lowest of the low. Not being allowed to drink from the same wells as everyone else, that type of thing. A combination of an excellent IQ, hard graft and grants and sponsership saw Ambedkar gain the highest Indian degree, then a PHD in New York and then pass the Bar exams in London. Having practised as a barrister in London for five years, he returned to India and became a politician fighting for the rights of his people, the Dalit. He was a contemporary of Gandi's, though they were politically opposed rather than allies, but the interesting thing is that in India Ambedkar is more widely known and revered that Gandi (no really). But the West don't seem to have heard of him.... Ambedkar decided that he would not die a Hindu (and therefore a slave of the caste system) and when he converted to Buddhism, in about 1956, around 40,000 Dalits converted too. More and more followed, so that now, a generation on, the Indian Buddhists, or Ambedkarites as they are known, are still the poorest and some of the least educated, but they have access to opportunities their parents couldn't have dreamt of. These children we're working with here have a very basic understanding of what Buddhism means (because the Dharma teaches they have don't have really pure Dharma understanding themselves.) But they have new dignity, and a fierce determination to reach higher education which is amazing. It's the coolest thing to be hear helping the Tsunami victims, who are also some of th emost needy people in this country....


Hugkiss Tam x

What an extraordinary week! My learning curve has been pushed so hard and reached such new levels that it's no longer a curve but a bullet straight line reaching up several hundred metres onto the air. Okay, occasionally it has a few wobbles and wiggles, and even crumples up into a little heap on the floor and goes "I don't know what I'm doing, HELP!" But essentially it's keeping straight and true, and being added to every minute. I've even started to learn just a smidgen about the science of the English language. That's the toughest part for me (and for many of the other volunteers with no official teacher training/TEFL as we're from the generation that never had to learn "this is a noun, this is a pronoun, this is the past participial tense".) Fortunately I don't need to worry too much, since in grammar classes I play assistant to the more experienced teachers, and my strengths are more in guiding discussions in conversation classes, and bouncing about doing nursery rhymes with the little 'uns. Also I will be doing movement and song and drama and art stuff when I go down to Thamil Nadu on Wednesday, as those Tsunami orphans need learning through fun and relaxation and gentleness more than anything else by the sound of things (and they will also be having lots of English grammar classes with Drew and Alison, the two other volunteers I'm going down there with). Dance and singing are things I can do! And then perhaps the rules of word orders and verb tenses will stop running through my head all night…. I think I said in my last letter that we do the school four days a week for 15 – 25 year olds, Tuesday through Friday, here in the same buildings we live in (and play in, and eat in, and meditate in, and prepare lessons in…). These young adults come in from the less comfortable areas we travel to at the weekends. On Saturdays and Sundays we can do the work that matters most to me – go to do outreach with the children in some of the poorest areas (and sometimes women only classes for their mothers). We say "poorer areas" but when I saw a doctor for some blood tests and described what we are doing to him, when I mentioned the location he said "slums" (he had perfect English). I corrected him politely, and he smiled, and looked happy to be corrected, obviously caring about His India and how it is perceived. The residents of these areas think of them selves as "middle class" which is interesting in a sad way as it demonstrates just how deprived the lowest castes must be. There is no proper sanitation in the two areas we go to, Harsh Vihar and Ashok Nigar, and a couple of the children have matted hair. The thing is though, I have never before had the privilege of witnessing such community, such family in action. Everyone knows each other. Everyone is related to everyone else! Such humor, such love, such sharing. And we have been shown such kindnesses… This was my day yesterday…. Having spent a large part of the morning making a b c cards (and finding apples, balls and cups to take with us), assembling felt-tip pens and drinking water bottles, and photocopying grammar sheets for the older ones, it's time for the off. It really feels like planning to go into battle, and that has nothing to do with aggression or fear on either side, but more to do with Entering The Unknown. How many children you'll have, what ages and abilities, and how many "helpful" local "English" teachers will turn up and interfere are always mysteries. After lunch one or two of the local lads, Vikas and Rajneesh, that attend our daytime school and live in Harsh Vihar, arrive to collect us. We don't really need their assistance now we know where we're going, but they come out of respect and gratitude, which is wonderful.

Love to you, Tinku-Tam (little boy Tam :})

Happy New Year! Turning up here on Christmas Eve was certainly one for
Tam's Surreal Hall Of Fame. "Here" is a Buddhist Charity and Buddhist
Monks, the aim being to reach as many Buddhist students as possible… and I
find myself helping to make Christmas cards and singing Christmas carols.
Huh?! Actually it was the students decision not the staff, everyone in
India celebrates every festival they can. Fair do's, why not, it makes for
a jolly celebratory spirit just about all the time, well, just about
always or that's what it feels like. Though not at six every morning when
the Jain Temple opposite does it's celebrating with drums and chanting.
Surreal event number two was singing Celine Dion's dreadful Titanic song
with another volunteer to a group of 15 or so blissed out Indian boys.
They had requested it apparently, so it was kind of a Christmas treat, and
I agreed to play along. Weird… They all tell you though, how "my favorite
movies, Mam, romance movies Mam". Hah! If only teenagers were like that at
home. I have just finished an absolute cracker of a year with the
discovery on the very last day of 2005 that I Love Teaching. I think it's
a bit too soon to have a t-shirt printed with the slogan, but the good
news is that it all seems to be fitting into place and I reckon I'm going
to have an amazing experience. I'm really enjoying it – tiny tots, bolshy
higher caste adults with ego issues – bring 'em on, I'm having a great
time! No clue as to how the English language actually fits together of
course, but seem to be successfully winging it. So far so good…. So
what am I actually doing? For four days during the week we teach 15-25
year olds, a very full on timetable that includes an evening session as
well. As a result of apron strings, arranged marriages and religion, the
average 15 year old is about 12 maturity wise, and the average 25 year old
about 17. At least that's the boys; it's harder to tell with the girls
because they tend to do a lot of giggling and whispering in Hindi, but
roughly similar. Put it this way, I was amazed to see the group get fully
involved in pass-the-parcel during the end of year party but I suppose it
is not a cultural norm and any encouragement of Having Fun is so unlikely
in a school setting for them that they welcome any opportunity to let
their hair down. I refer to them as girls and boys because that is how
they refer to themselves, in fact they get offended if you say men and
women, that only happens after marriage or something. But the whole point
of the project as far as I understand it is not the "product" we're
offering – i.e. English lessons – but the method of teaching them –
encouraging respect, equality and having fun whilst learning – ideas that
are very alien to those brought up in the Indian school system. So my
personal mini project is to get the older ones to start referring to them
selves as the young men and woman they are, not boys and girls. Watch this
space…. They think I'm eighteen so I'm refusing to tell them my age and
just leaving it at that - might as well, it'll be the last time in my life
(yerright Millsie) that a large group of people collectively think I'm a
teenager. The other volunteers have been here for seven weeks so I was
momentarily an object of fascination, but my "shave off your hair and
Indian men won't fancy you and will leave you alone" has worked
beautifully and I have faded back into the background. The other three
younger female volunteers catch their attention and there is a regular
presentation of homemade cards, poems and even a rose. I got one too last
week (a home-made card with a ballerina on it). I am highly amused to
observe my vanity kicking in and I have the odd moments of longing for
long hair and floaty girl clothes to fit in with all the extreme dainty
femininity that goes on around here. Don't worry, it doesn't last long. I
must learn to play street cricket properly than they can just get on with
relating to me as a boy. I have got my self one or two floaty scarves as a
small concession to my inner-girly but it feels like I'm doing it a bit
wrong - I'm wearing them in more of a French style than in the Indian way
where you sort of balance it over your shoulders. Sod that it means poise
and daintiness and anyway it's never going to work quite right without a
long elegant plait halfway down your back. On the fashion front I find
myself in a familiar time warp - the boys wear v-neck jumpers and tank
tops and lurid brightly patterned shirts that remind me of the stuff I
wore in my late teens and early twenties (but I did it with flares). And
everywhere is all that twickly, shiny, embroidered,
little-square-plastic-mirror-adorned hippy stuff that I was so into as a
teenager and scoured Camden Market for. The one bit of Indian Youth
Fashion I long for but can't have is a moustache - I've always fancied
myself in a bit of facial hair and this is the one country where you can
easily get away with it – if you're male. I've been trying to convince the
male volunteers that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to
experiment with facial furniture but they're not having any of it. Wasted
opportunity in my opinion but there you go. As a bald titchy woman I
don't have anything like the kudos (hence the longing for a bit of a face
wig) but my technique is to be super firm at the same time as super smiley
and encouraging, with the occaisional addition of a good dose of make 'em
all laugh and it seems to be working a treat. But I MUST learn something
about cricket… The really bizarre
thing clothes-wise is I have had to buy jumpers what's all that about then
its India. But it's freezing at night and I wear my hiking thermals to bed
and we have loads of blankets and a tiny super-dodgy one bar heater that
emits worrying sparks as it heats up but never mind being frazzled by
dodgy electrics we need HEAT dagnamit.... And the good thing about the
jumper shopping is who knew! - they have thrift stores in Delhi, loads of
them, at least three right outside our apartment so I can get my fix
hurrah and it's VERY exiting because they're just carts piled up with old
clothes but they only come out In The Dark which is a very clever ploy
because you can't actually see what you're buying (colour wise and holes
wise) so it's always a gamble and quite the best way to go clothes
shopping in my opinion.... The other stalls I like are the bangle stalls
(oooo so twinkly) but I have to watch myself because I have an unnaturally
strong urge to grab great handfuls of them and FLING them up in the air
and watch them go rolling and dancing down the street between all the
rickshaws and assorted cows. And the mattress making men right outside our
building – the way you buy a new mattress is brilliant; you buy it by the
pound! You ask for a certain quality of inner fluff, high or medium grade,
then you ask for the weight you want, and they have big scales and they
weigh it out right there for you. Then you choose your cloth, and then
they say "no no Mam, you should have the higher grade fluff and really you
want twice as much weight I think Mam" well I think they say that but I'm
not exactly sure because I don't speak Hindi. Then they do their beautiful
sew-sew embroider-embroider with huge needles and it's all quite amazing.
My other personal mission is to get them to smile at me it's a tough job I
can tell you but don't worry I'll get there. They too only come out
night so goodness knows what they stick in the mattress to make up the
weight when you're not looking…. There's the Indian Hair Sell Loon which I
quite fancy visiting for a hair buzz some time, and the quite delightful
"Bengal Departmental Store: Reliable and Reesonabal Point" which is a two
metre box selling chewing tobacco and shoelaces. Ooo the best of all is
shopping for eggs, it's quite the most exiting shopping experience I've
had in a long time. We are living in a predominantly vegetarian area, but
in India vegetarian means no eggs, which they count as meat. Lots of
people eat them but you have to buy them on the sly in case the neighbors
see. There's a local black market and it's all done clandestinely – if we
want to buy eggs we have to ask an Indian to come with us and we go to the
shop and he whispers "wait wait" with big hand gestures and goes over the
road to the shop to have a "subtle" conference with the man, then he comes
back and mutters out of the corner of his mouth "he has twelve" so we say
yes please 'cause we're a big household of at least 15. And only then can
we go over to pay and the eggs are all wrapped in newspaper but you have
to hand over the money first and pretend your buying toilet paper to
detract attention but quite frankly toilet paper is nearly as scandalous
and every body think we're utterly filthy for using such a technique and
that we should convert to water and proper hand washing. I may shock you
here but if you think about it carefully you'll see they're right. And
then we go home and there's eggs for tea which is always a Good Thing the
Chakmas put them in curries it's yummy. It's a bizarre situation because
it's really two charities combined, the British Buddhists I'm volunteering
for but we're living with and sharing living (and teaching and shrine room
and cooking and eating) space - all the same spaces as it goes - a group
of Chakma Theravadan monks and their assorted Friends and Relations. All
males. All quite charming and they cook fantastic curries and are quite
lovely and who go out of their way to accommodate our strange Western ways
although we do have to keep a strict eye on them when they spice the food
or an extra couple of handfuls of chilies go in "by accident". Another
volunteer who has just arrived like me brought gravy granules from the UK
and watching these poor fellers pretend to enjoy mash potatoes and veggie
stew and gravy was interesting, they
grinned and bared it quite beautifully whilst you see every pore screaming
SALT! CHILLIE! FLAVOUR! Bless 'em. But they have been sharing in the
delights of the biggest Thorntons hamper you can buy sent by a
senior team member’s family for Christmas, and one of them loves mince
pies...
The Chakma Tribe lives in the Chittagong Hills in the South East part of
Bangladesh. They have been Buddhists for thousands of years quietly living
in their mountains and getting on with their business, but now the Muslims
are being mean to them and trying to push them off their mountains (aren't
people horrid to each other?) and lots of them are refugees in India or
England. Hence the Chakmas in Delhi – the British Buddhist Charity I am
volunteering with (the Amida Trust) are funding their home and education
here. And teaching the English to the local Buddhists (well anyone who is
poor actually but aiming for Buddhists). The two little ones, are
adorable but little monkeys, I think they are about ten and 14 though no
one actually knows with the littlest one because he is a rescued peanut
selling street urchin type who will come to England some time soon, it's a
regular Cinderella Story and all very heart warming. But the two boys
won't talk to me 'cause I'm new and female which is another very good
reason why I must learn to play cricket STOP LAUGHING if I can learn to
teach 35 Indian two to ten years olds all on my tod just by wading in the
deep end and getting on with it then cricket is going to be a walk in the
park believe me.... I really
like teaching so far it's great fun though I wish I actually knew how my
language actually works rather than just know it by instinct so I am going
to put in lots of effort and do a self taught TEFL in conjunction with
actually doing it. At the weekends we go to do outreach work in really
poor parts of Delhi, much younger children of between two and 15 (which is
where the "Tam, do you think you can manage that group of little ones on
your own" came in last Saturday). I did and it was fantastic but it's
chaos - if you so much as offer a piece of paper with "'A' is for Apple"
on it to the group there is a stampede I'm not exaggerating Don't even ask
about the felt tip pens. At the end there is always a rush for a hand
shake and sometimes they ask for your autograph (!) but I said no 'cause
I'm being all strict (Hah! Yerright imagine me trying to be strict!) But I
am trying and you have to watch it because if you give any thing to one
child they all want it and an autograph could turn into an hour-long
session and there is precious little free time here and we have to guard
it very carefully indeed. When you mark books (Marking! Woo-Hoo! I love it
it's brilliant I get to tick things - I'm a natural) you can only write
positive things because otherwise their parents might hit them so of
course I'm in my element 'cause I wouldn't dream of writing any thing
else. But it removes the pressure - it's only 'well done' and "excellent"
and that's just how I like it. The ultimate accolade is a gold star they
get so exited and proud and I'm talking about the 20 something's now, not
just the little ones. Bizarre.

Dear all
After some frustrating days in Chennai and a visit inland to Palini which was a nightmare on roads destroyed by repeated flooding, we have at last managed to reach the hostel.We hope that we will have another couple of days there before returning to Delhi.

It is a learning experience to see how fragile life is for some of the most impoverished people in the world. 42 died in Chennai the other day when they were crushes queuing for relief aid. Plans not working out helps make us more resilient and in this case led to us unexpectedly going to Palini where future possibilities have become clearer.

It was a great experience teaching the children there and a very challenging one as instead of the expected 50 children over 100 turned up aged from 3 to 18. They are very much in need of both educastion and encouragement to make the most of their lives.

Jenny Sarah and sonna were brilliant in adapting their teaching to them and are all keen to come back. I have a feeling amida could link up very fruitfully there in more enduring way. They will return without my presence and this will be a very good test for the Sakyan organisation. They are much wanted and needed there and are keen and confident to do it. Also the farm at Palini is a very safe place. It is great to see their confidence and abilities develop. They are turning into very good teachers and are very good role models for the children. Their age has been no barrier, in fact Due to their age they connect even better than I do.

Overall, despite floods and the sakya peoples inexperience, Tamil Nadu is much safer than Delhi and I am starting to have thoughts about possibly gradually developing things more there in future years. We will learn much more from our visits in February and March. Drew and alison and Lesley will join me in Chennai and Sirkali for most of february while Sonna Jenny and sarah will go to Palini for a week or 10 days in March.

On this next visit most of the teaching will be in the hands of volunteers as I will focus more on leading retreats and giving talks and trainings. There have been pleas from Chennai, Palini and Madurai. Also I hope to link up with a woman activist in Pondicherry who i met at the INEB conference.

Delhi has been in good hands with Joy, Drew, Alison and Maggie. I look forward to hearing the details when we get back on Boxing Day.

It has been impressive how well the volunteers have taken on responsibilties. however, above all, it is touching to see the childrens and students responses to them. They thrive on learning in very different conditions to those they encounter in their schools. though it is challenging in the first few meeting with new groups building relationships and identifying their needs. Barriers to relationship set in place by the routinised and often violent school conditions have to be dismantled. This is done more than anything by our demonstrating different behaviour and a loving concern for students welfare. We do not preach buddhism - we demonstrate Buddhist ideals.

Hope all are having fun. We went shopping for Christmas decorations the other night to decorate the hostel and our train carriage for the journey back to delhi! Christmas on the train great fun! But I don't know what we will have for christmas dinner.
If I can find a way i will try to put up some photos soon.
love to all.
modgala
Namo Amida Bu

Welcome to the Amida Volunteer weblog. A blog created for all of you based around the world, particularly the volunteers, for you to write and share some of your experiences with the wider Amida community. To view this blog please go to
http://amidavolunteer.blogspot.com/.
We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Love from all at the Buddhist House.

hello everyone, amidavolunteers.blogspot.com has moved to amidavolunteer.blogspot.com due to technical difficulties.