Happy Holi!

We have been lucky enough to celebrate one of the biggest Indian festivals in the heart of India, happy Holi!

The day before Holi there is a sort of mini Holi called Choti Holi. This is like the equivalent of Christmas Eve. Choti Holi was supposed to be a working day for us but very little work got done. After about an hour working in the office we decided to call it a day and start playing. The whole basis of Holi is to throw powdered paint and water at each other and...well, that’s about it. After lots of mess and screaming like kids, we decided to head home only to find that our water had run out. Great. We decided to spend the evening in our apartment, having a few drinks and generally getting in the ‘festive’ spirit.

The next day we slept in and missed Holi. Holi is traditionally celebrated in the morning and by the time we got up at midday it was pretty much over. Covered in yesterdays paint and sporting foggy heads, we braved the streets to get to the office. During Holi the streets are a dangerous place unless you like being attacked with water bombs everywhere you go. We got to the office, meeting a few of the staff members who were all more than a little intoxicated, even the shy little man Prakida who made everyone tea and dinner every day. It was in fact a little disturbing but he was clearly having a great time. After a half hearted day of Holi on the office roof we headed home to find that we still had no water. There was nothing to do but sleep. It was an eventful couple of days to say the least!

My 6th, 7th and 8th weeks at school

These last few weeks at school have been very eventful. We have been doing lots of painting, mainly the cartoon murals on the 'Thankfulness wall'. We have had contractors in who have built play apparatus and benches out of bamboo, which we painted. They also helped make benches out of scrap metal, which we painted. They also made a bamboo compost pit, which we painted. As well as all of this painting, we had to cut, order and staple endless amounts of books for our new library. All in all it has been an exhausting but overall rewarding few weeks!

Being a woman in Delhi

Before we set off for India the Delhi rape case was hitting the headlines and everyone had the same reaction when I told them I was going to India for 3 months; “Oh...!”

Undeterred, I did my research and realised that being a woman was going to be pretty different even without the news headlines. So with my ‘appropriate’ clothing packed I was on my way. On arrival we were briefed about etiquette and appropriate behaviour e.g. if you meet a friend of the opposite sex in the street, you have to shake hands rather than hug. We were told that in many areas even married couples can’t hold hands in public.

Though women here are generally ‘repressed’ compared to women in the UK, I have met a few feminists out here. I do find it a little bit difficult to see the way these women think as, in the UK I have every bit of freedom I could want and it would seem bizarre for me to be controlled by a man. My reason for finding the Indian feminists views odd are that though these women claim to believe in empowerment and equality, they still insist on men escorting them places as they believe it is unsafe otherwise. This frustrates me somewhat as in my views, if a woman claims to need a man to help her then men will continue to believe that she is helpless. But then again, who am I to judge other people’s views? I obviously don’t know everything about life here and maybe it is safer to travel with a man, I don’t know, but for now it will remain a mystery to me.

My 4th and 5th weeks at school

These past couple of weeks I have realised how unorganised it can be here. When the Headmistress is away for the day, most of the government teachers don’t seem to care what the kids get up to. This includes not making them come to the English and Gardening sessions we hold for them. This can be frustrating at times but we’ve learnt to adapt and find other work to do instead. One thing we are never short of is work.

The school has 5 key values to uphold: Thankfulness, Independence, Growth, Excellence and Respect, or TIGER for short. We have designated 5 areas to represent these values around the school. This week we started on ‘the Thankfulness wall’, some volunteers came in to help whitewash the walls, which was pretty tricky given our tools (large brushes made from straw). Very messy.

This week also included the biggest day yet in terms of progress in the garden. Thursday 21st February was grass laying day! 5 volunteers came to school and in 1 day we laid 700 square feet of grass throughout the garden. It was not easy either! It was a hot day with no shade to protect us but we powered on nevertheless and there was a real sense of achievement when we finished.

The rest of these 2 weeks were spent planting more plants including the cacti in the front of the school and the book cupboards arrived so we had a lot more painting to do.

Night life

From what we have experienced, there doesn't seem to be a huge drinking culture in India; there are no casual bars down the street to have a few casual beers after work (not that we saw anyway). We were told that it would be difficult for us to get alcohol but some of our more laid back Indian volunteers offered to take us out drinking. We all crammed into autos and headed off to a place called Hauz Khas village. This was basically the equivalent of the local strip and was pretty westernised. Most of the music is western and it’s one of those places where you feel like you could be anywhere in the world. Most of the places seem to close around 1am, when the police shut them down. Delhi is definitely the city that always sleeps. Don’t expect to buy anything after 11pm, you might have to travel for ages to find anywhere still open at that time.