The Curtain Call!

Hello World!

Well...this time next week I'll be back home in the rain, cold, Christmassy place we call England. Naturally, things here are winding down slightly; yesterday we had a treasure hunt with the Kids, today we played party games (Pass the Parcel was such an Alien concept at first!!)

It's clearly been the best 10 weeks of my life (cliche or what?!) and I'm sure I'll blog my post trip thoughts when I get back (It'll be a long post I'm sure) but for now I'd just like to leave you with a short story from today.

Over the 10 weeks we've gotten really close to our community (much closer than the other 5 teams) partially because our construction project allowed for this. Yesterday our hole was 100000% finished and so today it dawned on the community that we were finally going home. The widow whose toilet hole we dug broke down physically into tears in sheer sorrow that we were leaving. Other members of the community were crying too and offered words that were both encouraging and saddening. I think we'll be remembered in a tiny Indian village named Malainta for many many many years because of the toilet we've left behind ( In the words of one village teenage: "We will know that India is a developed country when every house has a toilet") but I'd like to also think we'll be remembered for our being there. When Brother Andrew visited churches in the Eastern Block during Communist times one preist remarked " It's not your sermons that make a difference here: it's your being here" and I'd like to think the same applied to us.

See you all very soon!

Love,

Callum x

The Last Crusade...

Good evening all!

How's is going?

It's a very strange thought that this time in 2 weeks I'll be somewhere over Europe on an aeroplane. Things are coming to a close and we're starting to finalise all sorts of things with our classes and rushing to complete construction projects on time because there are no more volunteers coming to this project after us. The sadness of it all was that last night was the final time that we'd experience the creme de la creme of Indian cuisine that only rolls around once on the two week food cycle...

CHIP NIGHT!

Not such a shame really eh!? The past week's been pretty productive (no weddings!) at work. I did a fruit day with my class last Thursday. The "curriculum" says that they should know the names of fruit etc. so I bought a load of fruit so they could taste it at the same time. I even bought fruits that I'd never tried before such as guava (YUM!) because what are expensive, exotic fruits at home are just the norm in India ( 4 Rs for a guava- that's like 5p and I think that they're at least 70p at home!). I thought that the best way to teach the names of the fruit was to write the name on the board, say it, have the class repeat it and then when they could successfully repeat the name then they get to eat the fruit. This method worked great through all 9 fruits, until we arrived at the 10th fruit. The dialogue goes as follows:

Me: Okay Bulo (say) "Pomegrannate"

Class: (Silence)

Me: Suno Suno (listen) "Po-me-gran-nate"

Class: Sir Ji....

Me: "P-o-me-g-r-a-nn-a-t-e"

Class: P-P-Po..... Anar!! (Anar is the Hindi word for pommegranate)

The last two days have been spent not at work, but instead doing International Development sessions. At first I kind of felt abit opposed to this, after all I wanted to just get on with the work but now I see the point because I've been able to relate the Mellenium Development Goals to the people I work with and the community in which I work. The farmer whose crops harvest too soon, the girls who don't come to school because they have to work in a gender imbalanced society, the family who took an 1100 Rs loan to cover their daughters medical treatment all make sense when we look at development in the wider context.

In other news, we discovered a tiny, backstreet, dirty spoon style cafe round the corner that does the BEST SAMOSAS IN THE WORLD for just 5Rs. The sun is still shining (although it's getting abit cooler again) and I'm still amazed at God's creation every time I look out the window and see the snow capped Himalayas. That view will never grow old.

Love and blessing!

Callum x

P.S. Both photos are taken from outside our house...

Nothing Much...

Hey everybody!

While changing earlier, I noticed the huge tan lines I'm getting... Tan lines in December?!?!

Anyways, things in India remain pretty fine and dandy!

Havn't got enough time to update you on my week, so I thought I'd leave you with a couple of pictures from today and yesterday :-)

Callum <><