Speaking of scooters.....finally pictures (taken by Fanny, our old flatmate, who visited us for a week from Syria!):
I'm still too scared to drive....but Francesco has mad skills at navigating the streets of Delhi, flicking off other drivers, and honking his horn long and loud, ALL AT THE SAME TIME!
Work has been going really well - I'm making a lot of progress in my (two) programs and getting really cool things accomplished. I have successfully grown the City Walk to cater to over 250 people and raise over 1.25 lakhs a month consistently (thats over $2,500). I thought of, organized and helped to design a series of postcards, which will be printed and for sale soon! Here's a preview:
In terms of volunteers - I have over 30 right now (not including Corporate Social Responsibility groups who come in for day events only). Most of the volunteers are doing really cool things - from Korean culture workshops using chopstick games to English teaching, from multi-media courses to breakdancing, from medical checkups to drawing and art classes - they chose projects from the project list I have developed and I also have a resource of specific activities as well. To support volunteers also, apart from a weekly meeting, I have created, catalogued, and systemized (with the help of a volunteer :) ) an extensive library from which they can borrow books to help in their placement and in their general area of study. I have also just started (with a lot of help from my good friend and long-time fellow SBT volunteer-plus, Nick) to create a research survey to do across all our centers and programs, to get detailed information from all the children willing to share. The project started with a simple request for stories of all the children - to be used for fundraising and marketing purposes - but we have expanded it to a research project that will hopefully give insights into the background of the kids - where they come from, why they ended up in Delhi, what their experiences were like before and after living on the street, how well they've adjusted to SBT, and how we can better develop them according to their needs, etc. We'll see how it turns out but I'm positive we will collect interesting information!
Speaking of SBT stories (and enough bragging) - I have a few simple ones for you.
-First, a link, to one of our "famous" photographers, one of the favorite success stories of SBT children at the moment. His name is Vicky Roy - he just had an exhibition opening at the American Center here in Delhi showcasing his photographs from the 6 months he spent in NYC documenting the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. He was one of 3 or 4 photographers chosen from around the world - http://vickyroyphotography.com/wtc.htm - the American ambassador spoke and as well as praising Vicky, announced that one of my City Walk boys, Brijesh, has been selected to study abroad in the USA in an exchange between community colleges and the open-schooling system in India (which is a bit like home-schooling in a way)
- There are two new boys at Aasra shelter home, where my office is located as well; I don't know either of their names. They come into my office everyday, one of them crying like crazy, claiming that he wants to go home, and the other shyly waiting in the background for notice and recognition. Slowly, slowly they are both changing. The crying king (lets call him Rona, for 'to cry' in Hindi) is bright and smiling, the tears being replaced by laughter. Every now and then you can still see concern cloud his face but with just a little bit of distractions (including drawing ships with sailors and cats with big whiskers) he forgets that he's trying to not enjoy himself. And the quiet one (lets call him Sharmana for 'shy' in Hindi), when given just a little bit of space, will start talking like crazy - about clowns and gods and trees and anything else that pops into his head.
Rona has taken to the computer. When asked what Shahadutt's laptop was he replied with over-confidence to hide his lack of knowledge that it was an 'ipod'. When he realized that wasn't correct, he tried 'China Mobile'. He has never ever been exposed to a laptop or computer before. Regardless of this, he had the whole thing figured out in 5 minutes, with the simple instructions to 'give a punch' to the mousepad and double click on anything. before anyone could realize he had pulled up pictures of half naked women and movies of bears fishing which he thought were dogs. He also tried to transfer his newfound knowledge to the desktop computer in my office. Ever so carefully he moved the mouse to be exactly in the center of every icon, then lifted the whole mouse and banged it down 2 times, giving the mouse a punch. I explained to him how to click - but took the mouse away from him before he could figure out how to destroy all our documents...
Sharmana lives a childhood of sweets and circuses. Everyday, without fail, he comes into my office and waits until I stop working for a moment and then ever so tenderly and patiently asks me for a ladoo (an Indian sweet). Everytime I say no and everytime he asks again. One day while doing some drawing distraction (I spend my best time doing drawing distractions :) ) Dev Ji (the coordinator of the Family Health program focusing on HIV/AIDS) came in with a bunch of red balloons. Dev wouldn't give one to Sharmana but he inspired an unprompted dialogue about taking balloons outside so they could float up and be with the trees and then they could keep floating and go close to Bhagwan (god).
Both of these boys also used to ask me for rupees - as if they were children at a traffic light (which perhaps they used to be). But now instead of asking for rupees, they give me biscuits...
- There's another boy at Aasra named Akash. He has a squinty eye and a clever streak. Yesterday I spent a few hours drawing a to-scale model of the shelter home to help with discussions on how to redo the center to allow more space for the children. He saw the drawing and immediately identified it as the center - with no hints of help from us (when Nick knew what I was doing and still had trouble recognizing it). Akash insisted on doing a model himself - and without prompts (again) asked for a ruler so he could make a scale. This 10 year old boy took his piece of paper, pencil, eraser, and straight edge and sat (or rather stood because he's too small for the chair) at a huge table, licked his lips, and tilted his head so his good eye was focused on the paper and diligently set about making a model of the center. He finished a day later and after all the drawing, erasing, redo-ing and moving offices from 'upar' to 'niche' (up to down) I have a very nice model which isn't so great with orientation but has an incredible sense of perception for a 10 year old. I think we have a future architect on our hands.
Akash is the same boy who sits in on any meeting I have just to be a part of a meeting, and seriously claims that he will first 'learn drawing' before shifting to the shelter for older boys to concentrate on education.
Also some events from the past weeks:
- I attended a two-day training conference (of which I only lasted a half day) on the resilience of children. I didn't learn anything about facilitating discussions with children to promote resilience, but I did learn that I am quite critical of freaky white people in India who can quote things like "the essence of our being is love" all day.
-Francesco and I attended the Jaipur literature festival with our friend Nicolas. We used his car and driver, and my connections (an SBT trustee produced the whole event) to have a nice, posh, delegate weekend. We survived the road to Jaipur despite the huge trucks driving as if they were scooters, and had access to unlimited food and wine, and books! We have quite a few new favorite authors and a collection of books we need to read.
-We also used my connections yet again (thanks SBT!) to attend a posh and exclusive opening to a whole new season of a TV show called 'I'm too sexy for my shoes' - we spent an evening mingling next to national TV personalities, having no idea who they were since we have no TV and gossiping with a fellow SBT staff in the corner :) I am no closer to understanding what the show is about....
-Friday was a holiday - one of the one million holidays in India - which celebrates the union of Shiva (the god) with his partner. Apparently to please Shiva on this particular day, one is supposed to graciously feed milk to a temple snake (sometimes figuratively and sometimes literally) because Shiva's mascot (so to say) was a snake worn around his neck. When I enquired about this tradition to a few (skeptical) Indian volunteers I have at SBT with questions like 'do snakes even like milk?!' I was greeted with very illogical explanations about how actually, scientifically snakes are allergic to milk and by trying to please the god, his followers are really poisoning his companion. Whoops....
I have other superstitions about solar eclipses and non-veg food, but I will get to that later. Also I was going to give you a few of the '60 reasons to love India' which was published in the newspaper for the 60th anniversary of the republic this year...but those will have to wait too because I'm awfully tired and I have another 6 day week ahead of me.....
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