Udaipur, IN (week 2)

Our work with the DAAN Foundation continues…

Last weekend, we went to the center in Havala Village to hold a Carrom Competition with the kids. The attendance skyrocketed from half a dozen kids to over 20 children, which was extremely encouraging for Dan and I, since we weren’t sure if our efforts in outreaching in the nearby village were in vain. The big finale, had Dan and I against Bhagvanti and Vivek, 2 of the older children in our classes. Of course, despite our best efforts, we completely got skunked and awarded the kids with their prizes.

Sunday was our day off, so we spent it with Sharon and Sarah. We did ALOT of walking. We left the house around 11am and took a 45 minute walk from our home to the bottom of a hill, where we hiked up to reach the temple on the hill’s summit. Normally, this would be a decent stroll, but in 38 degree weather it was a killer. The temple itself was peaceful, shaded and had a cool breeze blowing through. If I had known that its temperature was so nice, I would’ve planned to stay there all day.

After some time, we descended down the hill and then walked to the old city where we enjoyed a late lunch (3:30pm) at one of the rooftop restaurants.

We were too tired to walk back home, so we took a communal tuk tuk back, which meant that we had to share it with however many people the driver decided he wanted to stuff it with.

Throughout the week at the center, we’ve maintained a good attendance rating, (it might have something to do with a contest for perfect attendance that we’re holding). 🙂 As this 2nd week wore on, Sarah has moved on to working with the smaller children (ages 3-4), while Dan and I worked with the older children (ages 5-13).

With each day, we are growing more confident in our teaching and our lesson plans. We’ve been teaching the kids two songs, “Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes” and “The Wheels on the Bus”. As Dan mentioned earlier, the biggest challenge is catering to kids who have a wide-range of skillsets. The younger ones are going through the letters of the alphabet and can draw some of the objects in our songs (i.e. Wheels, bus, horn, baby, elephant – yes, there’s an elephant on the bus, based on the insistance of one of the kids). While the older ones have been taught how to spell the words in English. One particular student, Vivek, is very bright and I’ve been concerned in keeping him challenged and interested in the work.

It looks like we’re succeeding, on Thursday, while the children practiced writing the letter ‘e’ and drawing the parts of faces, we handed out word searches made up of the words to the two songs we’ve recently taught them. One thing to note about the drawings before I move on to the word search, one really cute little kid named Pravine made his face drawing like Dan – with beard and all! It was so cute, because he pointed to his picture and then at Dan, while saying “Dan, sir” – although the way the kids say it sounds more like “dancer”. The ‘Head, Shoulders’ word search was at a normal level and we created “Wheels on the Bus” for the more advanced. Vivek thoroughly enjoyed his word search. He had also mentioned earlier in the week that he wanted to be a doctor, so I wanted to see how much English he really did know and during one of the lessons, while the young ones were working on ‘eyes, ears, mouth and nose’, I gave him a worksheet on the ‘brain, heart, lungs’ etc. and he understood and completed it with flying colors. Sarah, Dan & I have noticed that Vivek looks like he enjoys his classes more than when we first started.

Another success in this week was figuring out how to control the kids. Dan and I appointed Bhagvanti, Vivek and Jeetu as line monitors – so they were responsible in keeping the kids in their line all in a row, they helped out in distributing/collecting the clipboards as well as leading the kids out for their pani (water) break.

On our ‘off hours’, we’ve been making some minor updates to the website, adding new photos and more information.  Dan has had the opportunity to try out Samvit’s Royal Enfield on the Indian roads. He also had the opportunity to drive us girls and Mama to a dinner hosted by the family who’s home we use for the center in Badgaon Village. Dan did very well dodging the cows, dogs, pedestrians, pedal bikes, motorbikes, donkeys, etc., all while us women were back-seat driving. The dinner that we had was Bhati Daal, Bhati is a really dense bread sized and shaped like a baseball, which we used as a utensil for the Daal (lentil soup).

As guests, we were served first, while the family waited along the sidelines – apparently they don’t eat until we leave. We were all seated cross-legged on the floor on top of a mat that the lady of the house sewed together out of rice bags. They provided us with paper plates and aluminum bowls and generously offered us the food, but not before Manju (one of the girls), made her rounds and poured water over our hands into a ceramic bowl. The dinner was quite delicious, but I had only enough room for a bowl of daal and half of the high-density bread.

In addition to the authentic dinner – which was apparently a Rajasthan-specific dish, Sarah, Sharon and I got to cuddle with 2 week old goats who were very soft and small.

Friday was both Sharon and Sarah’s last work day here.  So, we all went to the new center in Badgaon Village to party with Sharon and the kids.  We played games and Sharon gave out a ton of prizes.  Sharon helped start up the new center and she will be going back home to Bermuda after working with DAAN for the past month as the new center’s teacher.  I’m sure all her kids will be missing her very much.

After ‘work’, all four of us volunteers performed a ‘dance & song’ for Samvit and his parents.  We were all dressed up like Samvit and the song (written by Sharon) was all about Samvit and his motorbike.  It was inspired by a facebook posting that Samvit had made sometime last week about wanting to change his name to ‘Sam on the Enfield’.

Since this was our last evening all together, we went out for after-dinner lassis and gulab jamun at a place closer to the old city.

The entrance to the restaurant had a huge door that was comparable to our iStockphoto entrance way.  It opened up to an outdoor garden, with marble tables, dim lights and candlelight.  It was very peaceful and had a great night time view of the lake.