Tuesday 26th May - Deonar again!!

Today I had to get up early and catch a taxi in order to meet the yellow bus at 9.00am. Neethi, one of the teachers, got a taxi to my accommodation and I join her for the journey to the Vision Rescue kitchen in Mahim. All was going well until we got a puncture. The taxi driver told us it would only take a couple of minutes to fix so we waited. He then informed us that he was unable to fix the puncture and we had to catch another taxi which was not easy as we were on a main road. Eventually, I flagged down a taxi and we arrived in Mahim at 9.20.am. As the bus had gone to fill up with diesel, Neethi and I had to wait 15mins for them to return. During that time, Albaz and Imran ( two of the boys who lives by the kitchen) showed me how they play ' Marbles' in India. This is a very popular game that many of the kids play in the street and it occupies them for hours. Unfortunately I did not have time to challenge them to a game but maybe next time.

We set off in the bus to the first stop, Kurla. There are not many children at this location and quite a few of them are now in school so the need is not as great as it was to start with. Vision Rescue are actually going to find a new location to start teaching at instead of coming to Kurla. The teaching for today was English writing and they children were learning how to write the words 'Apple', 'Ball' and 'Cat'. Neethi did a great job with the lesson and I wrote down some of my observations during the lesson. I then gave her some feedback on how I thought it had gone. There were some areas where I needed her to explain again as she teaches in Hindi so I didn't fully pick up what she was telling the children.

The second location was Chunnabatti. I was informed by the teachers that this is an area where many gang and tribal people live. Some of them have quite aggressive personalities so the teachers have to keep everything peaceful and not upsetting the parents by remove a child from the bus or telling them off. Neethi pointed out to me a home where two of the children live. They did not come onto the bus yeaterday or today because on Sunday their father had hung himself outside the family home. As there are many other family members, it was not a situation where Vision Rescue needed to immediately step in help the children but I am sure they may well need some counselling if and when they return to the bus. Manoj, the other teacher on the bus, taught the lesson at Chunnabatti. It was the same content just a slightly different activity that he used.

Next it was Deonar, the rubbish dumping groud, which I visited on Saturday. I don't think I have ever had to interact with so many flies before - they are everywhere. The flies will land all over the children- in their eyes, on their lips, in their hair- but they do not seemed bothered by in. When I could see a child with 8 or 9 flies on their face, I just wanted to swat them all away, but to them it is a daily occurence. I was then told that on Monday, as the bus was arriving at Deonar, the driver spotted a dead 2 month old baby by the side of the road amongst the rubbish. I was totally shocked!! It was a baby girl that had been dumped because the mother did not want her. How another human has the ability to do such a thing I will never know. Apparently, it is quite common for this to happen to baby girls. Many slum families want boys because they will earn them more money working. If the baby is a girl, they will sometimes dumped them amongst the rubbish to die. The Vision Rescue Team were so upset that no one had told them. Often they will hear about unwanted children and will take them into one of their homes to look after them. This is one life they could have saved if they knew!

There are a lot of kids that come onto the bus at Deonar and their are still lots more who don't go to school and don't get any teaching. For this reason, Vision Rescue is going to start up another feeding and teaching location at the other end of the dumping ground.

The last stop was Mankhurd. As the bus was late here, the children were all queuing up nicely ready for the arrival of the bus. I have never seen such an enthusiastic bunch of children waiting for school to start. At the end of all the teaching, I chatted to Neethi and Manoj about at the teaching I had seen and will be working through some of the points I made in the remaining training sessions. They need quite a bit of training on phonics as this is not used as much as it should. We then headed back to the kitchen for lunch and then it was back to the Vision Rescue office. A very tiring day!! More football tomorrow!