BlogNumeroDeux! Hey guys! Me again, coming at you with another blog of my Indian ways and travels etc! I’m not writing it up as days any more because everything is very similar each day, instead I will bunch everything together and you’ll get a sub-plot type story! Nice!

Palampur
Camp Bandla is the tiny little village we’re staying in for the 9 weeks we’re here, which is in Palampar. The village has a few shops, a tailors, a music shop and some tiny stores that don’t look like anything but have things inside. One shop even has a chicken sign on it but no chickens for sale or to eat, so I don’t get what that does! There is a bus that runs up and down the mountain, a tourist jeep that costs 5 rupee each, which is about 7p! It also has a tiny rock pool and a load of animals running around including donkeys, cattle, goats, monkeys and eagles flying around above! The monkeys are little troublemakers, chasing people and stealing things! They chased me when I was out going for a jog (what’s more unbelievable, the monkey story or me going for a jog!) and stole biscuits off of a lad Solomon! I walked passed as the monkey was enjoying them. All the locals throw stones at them usually but I think we’re all a bit too scared to do that!

The house we’re staying in is awesome! A big 3 storey house which you can see from high up in the mountains and with an awesome chef living inside, awesome in the way that he has only ever cooked vegetables and yet I always go up for seconds! (I was hoping to lose weight while I was here but I’m starting to think it may not happen!). We sleep 4 in a room on horrible squeaky bunk beds and have shared hot water taps on each floor, with a bucket and jug as a shower, which isn’t that bad!

Outside of camp and in town there is Palampar market that is like a dangerous version of Camden in London, speaking from experience. The market stalls are the paths so you walk in the road rubbing elbows with wing mirrors! In the town you can find any type of cloth and any kind of fruit (which tastes nothing like the fruit back home!) and any type of prescription drug! Then you have a restaurant, which sells meat, coming in handy for those who can’t live without it for the ten weeks. I’ve been here 2 weeks and eaten there twice!

Drovi School
The reason myself and all the other volunteers are here is to teach in the local schools and also help with development in the country. All this involves is us teaching English and Math and then in the afternoons there is plantation, construction and women empowerment classes we can be involved in. At the moment I am doing construction at another school Malanta, working on making their school playground level and building a fence. This sounds simple and in England no doubt would be but here the temparature slows you down and their tools are somewhat behind the times! We use big fruit bowls to carry mud, rather than wheelbarrows and use odd shaped spades to dig with but other than that everything is fine. Although I have noticed that here usually the women do most of the hard work on construction sites, carrying cement and things like that on their head! Also, on the site we’re on I saw a poisonous snake! This is something I wouldn’t get back at home!

The school is not really a school, more a garage size building with desks inside! The schools are very dusty and the playgrounds are more of a flat surface on top of a rock face, meaning the views are fantastic but there is a danger one of the children could harm themselves! It is difficult to explain the level the children are at because the school looks like its very slow and one class uses the classroom while the other classes wait for their turn teching themselves, as there is one teacher between 5 classes! Yet their ages are from 5 to 10 and they have learnt another language! We don’t learn another language until the age of 11 in the U.K! we only have to teach them Math and English for two hours a day and it is quite hard as everything is really repetitive but at the same time you can see small differnces in the children everyday so it is very rewarding at the same time!

The Locals
Everybody in the village knows the reason why we are here as Platform2 volunteers have been stayng in the house for quite some time, so they are really nice and friendly and interested in us. However, in town everyone just stares in amazement at you and whispers or laughs! Near the school there is a local shop and the other day we were invited to his house to eat with him and the villagers which equalled with 16 of us, 50 odd people! They all think we are doing a great job and so we were made very welcome and it was an enjoyable experience and one of the most Indian I have experienced since being here, eating with fingers off of a leaf and eating before all the women did! Around the house all the young local children invite us everywhere they go, to swim, to play football, they invite us back to their house for water and biscuits and call us their friends and learn our names. It’s really good!

The Group
The group I have come to India with is made up of 46 young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 who have all at one time or another experienced difficulties in their lives and may not have had the opportunity to travel had Platform2 not helped them. Thre are 30 odd girls and nearly 20 guys and thus far everyone has been getting on hunky dory except a few tiffs and issues which is to be expected! It is quite a weird experience in the sense that it is a house very much alike Big Brother except no diary room, no pool, no cameras, we don’t have to do tasks…. Okay nothing like Big Brother apart from we never knew each other before coming into the house!

Either way it is a very emotional experience for everyone from what you see in the streets, what you do in the schools and having your space interupted by strangers daily. Very quickly though we are becoming very, very good friends.

I myself am enjoying all the new people and enjoy the groups that are starting to appear so I can jump from one to another and enjoy different jokes, experiences, stories and so on. I am finding it hard to be out here and missing the normal things and still trying to help others when they are down. I’m sure it will make me that little bit stronger etc! the simple things you miss are beer, showers and baths, not being stared at, being free to take your top off (although this is something I very rarely do anyway, but still!) and the foods we are used to.