Visitors from England

After one and a half weeks a group of young people from the England came over to do some activities with the children, meet some people, get to know India and to build bridges from the UK to India and overcome the gap the Indian and Pakistani Government always create.

The group, consisting of seven students of different heritage and all boys between 15-18 and four staff, stayed for two weeks and I was always with them. It was a really interesting, hard working, exhausting, but also happy and funny time and meant a good break for me and gave me good company.

At the blind school in Dang

The main aim of the group was to spend time with the children in the schools. Therefore we stayed in Dang at the blind school for about tree days and did a lot of activities. We had tree main groups: music, arts & crafts and sports. I was mainly involved in music, because this is what I’ll be mainly doing for the next few months. On the first day we brought many different rhythmic instruments and showed the children how to use them. They started playing immediately and hardly ever stopped. It was hard to give it a structure, also because they didn’t know western music and didn’t seem to have the same feeling for beats rhythms as we have. On the second day we chose to do some singing and began to teach them and easy African song, because the melody was very easy to understand and the words always the same. The song had only four lines and the last was the same as the first one. Still it was not quite easy to explain the song, because the always copied us and it seemed as if they’d never heard anything about an ostinato (a simple second melody, parallel going) or a round. Thus we split the group and I went practicing with the girls, while Don, the music teacher from the U.K., had the boys. The girls did really well and because of ‘my personal translator’ and one of the girls who was very good in singing, we finally managed to sing it in a round with two groups. For the boys the song seemed to be much harder and as soon as we put both groups together, it was hard to see any structure. The few percussion instruments we tried to use, made it even worse, but still the sound was great.

The children really enjoyed us staying at their school and did, beside music, a lot of arts & crafts like painting, paper chain making, fan making, scoobies, ballgames etc. and especially the boys loved to play cricket.

It was a great time for me and the group and we made a lot of experiences, but it was also very exhausting, because we had to stay at a different place, because of the lack of proper buildings, which was each ¾ hours drive away. In addition to that it was very hot and dusty with only few sheltered places, but the excitement of the children and their joy were of great importance to us. Unfortunately it was not as easy as in the deaf school to get in contact with the children. I never really knew how much they could actually see and sometimes a smile was answered but sometimes only words could help and unfortunately I’m still not able to speak Gujarati, except for some words and sentences.

Back in Navsari

As soon we got back, we tried to spend as much time as possible with the children in the deaf school and the school for mentally challenged children. They really liked our activities which were basically the same as at the blind school, except for music. Very interesting and nearly shocking was the first day for me, when we took out all sports equipment and games the group from England had brought. The children immediately grabbed things and started playing with such a passion that it became really hard for some to share and also fur us sometimes impossible to show them the actual purpose, because many times they didn’t know how to use the equipment properly.

When the children first saw me unicycling they hardly could even shut their mouths again. It was a big attraction but impossible to teach any of the students, because it was just too much. The students were grabbing it and everybody wanted to have a go first, but didn’t give others a proper chance. Finally some girls decided it would be better to put the unicycle away again, because it caused a lot of trouble. I hope I can get a small group of people to teach and show them some circus skills after the holidays.

Beside these activities, the group and I had to give interviews for TV and newspapers and we went to many different places like a hospital and a Muslim wedding, for which we extra bought Indian dresses.

Before the group left, the children did a big dancing performance and finally made a leaving ceremony with speeches and flower chains… for this occasion we had to do again a little press conference and now I’ve been in the newspapers so many times that visitors and people on the street already recognize me and know my name, before I’ve even met them.

Today was the last day in school for the children and all of them went on holidays. It’s Diwali – Indian Christmas and new-year – and the schools will be closed for three weeks.