Back in England for a holiday!

Just to let you know that I have stop my blog whilst I am back in England for a few weeks. I will be returning to India in July so will start up again then! I am already missing the buzz of India so am looking forward to going back.

Thursday 11th June - A very rewarding day!

How to Climb a tree!

In order to see all the Vision Rescue teachers, I needed to go on the 2nd bus rote today which unfortunately meant no football but I am very glad I went. As many of the teachers seem to miss some of the injuries that the children have, I been keeping an extra eye out and this morning I spotted yet another septic wound at the first location, Kurla. An 8 yr old boy (called Manoj) had a large gash on the side on his foot which had not been treated and was going septic. When I asked one of the teachers (also called Manoj) to find out how he had got the wound, he said that he had caught his foot in his bicycle chain about two weeks ago. Manoj (teacher) and I decided to take Manoj to his home in the slum and speak to his parents. His parents said they wanted him to go to the doctor to get it looked at but he refused to go because he was scared they were going to cut his foot off (this is what most children think). Big Manoj reassured little Manoj that this would not happen and that we would go with him to the clinic, as it was close by. Another helper, Sanjeet, also came with us. We walked for about 10 mins to get to the clinic and when we arrived there was a small queue. Sanjeet and little Manoj sat and waited in the queue whilst Big Manoj and I waited outside. Whilst we were waiting, Big Manoj got chatting to a boy (Rahul) who he used to teach on the bus. He was washing one of the moterbikes outside the clinic. Rahul is 12 years old and now attends school but neither of his parents are able to work. This means that he has to earn his own money to pay for his schooling. He does this by washing motorbikes. He is trying to save up to buy himself a school uniform, his school books, a bag and a geometry set. All of that costs about 750 rupees. I then found out that he earns 300 rupees (4 pounds) a month for washing motorbikes. 4 pounds a month - I was shocked! It would take him 3 months just to earn enough to buy all the things he needed for school. This would result in him missing some of school (which will start on Monday ) so he can earn more money. Here was a situation where a simple need could be met! I asked Manoj if I could pay for Rahul's school uniform and equipment. He agreed that it would really help Rahul and his family out. I gave Manoj enough money to cover all the equipemnt and 2 school uniforms and he took Rahul and Rahul's mother to the shops to buy all the stuff! I will never forget the look of delight on Rahul's face!! It is amazing how something so small to us can mean the world to some of these children!

Meanwhile, little manoj had been given a tetnus injection and his wound had been cleaned and bandaged. Sanjeet had also been given some other pills that little Manoj had to take each morning and evening. We paid the doctor and then headed back to the bus. We dropped little Manoj back at his home and Sanjeet explained about the pills. He will need to go back to the clinic in two days time to have the dressing changed!
When I returned to the bus, I was given a demonstartion on how to climb a tree by two boys. They made it look so easy and there were no branches to use.
We then headed off to the next two stops, Deonar (the rubbish dumping ground) and Mankhurd where I was able to watch the teaching. Deonar was yet again an investation of flies but I tried hard to ignore them rather than doing my Jackie Chan karate impression in order to get rid of them. At Mankhurd, the children were again very nicely in two lines when we arrived, and there were loads of them. Unfortunately, there was not enough room on the bus so quite a few of them had to wait outside while the teaching was going on. I was very impressed with today's lessons. The children were very attentive and work hard during the 45 mins. I made some notes during the lesson and fed back to the teacher what I had observed and where she could improve. After the feeding at Mankhurd, we headed back to the kitchen for lunch and then went for a cup of tea and banana fritters at a cafe in Mahim.
I then got a taxi back to my accomodation where I started to type up the days events.
A tiring but very rewarding day. Tomorrow it will be back to the football and the last teacher training session of first visit.

Wednesday 10th June

Rahul (The middle boy wearing orange and grey)

Mukesh

It was a pretty standard day today! I got to Mahim at 10.00am to play football with the street kids. They are now getting the hang of passing the ball and are even practicing their goal celebrations. One lad, Mukesh (see picture), was showing off his hand spring today. Very impressive!! Another 12 year old lad, Manoor, school two great goals - one with his head and one with his backside (One of the funniest things I've seen!!). The rest of the morning I spent observing and feeding back to teachers. It is great to see them trying new things. The kids are picking up on the phonics and I know they will see great results by the end of the year! At Bandra, the teachers had to talk to a few children about begging as they had been seen out on the streets. When they come to the bus for food they are told that the begging stops because Vision Rescue is feeding them. If they continue to beg then they will not be fed. One 6 year old boy, Rahul (see picture), does not have any parents and lives with his aunt. When she was spoken to about his begging she did not seem interested. This is the attitude that Vision Rescue sometimes has to battle against. Other times thay will have to persuade the parents not to beat or hit their children for begging. Rahul has got a place in a christian boarding school so his aunt will not have to look after him from next week.

I had the afternoon / evening off and spent it with some of the Vision Rescue team at Biju and Secu's house. You will be glad to hear that we took the boy with the swollen eye into hospital today where they released the fluid from his eyelid. They put some lotion on it and patch his eye up. He has to go back next monday to have the patched removed.

Tuesday 9th June - Indian school!

Some of the local schools went back after their summer holidays yesterday and this morning I went into Ryan International School which is an Indian fee paying school. Some of the Vision Rescue team do an assembly in the school and today they were working on some drama and music with some of the children. The children were excellent. They were immaculately dressed in their school uniform, were very attentive and worked so well together. The fact they wofked so well was made even more impressive because there was a roller-skating lesson go on in the same room. We were in the basement and every child in the school is taught how to roller-skate to improve their balance and coordination. It was very interesting to watch. The behaviour of all the children were fantastic and the school sets very high standards. I will be going back into the same school on Thursday morning. I had some free time this afternoon and then went with the bus on the late shift. This meant I got to visit Reay Road and see how the children were getting on with their new school uniform. As we arrived I was delighted to find lots of children running towards the bus with their red t-shirts on. They all looked so smart!! I was amazed that so many of them were clean which means they are looking after them which is great. Some of the smaller children who come just for the feeding still look very dirty and so we gave them some water to wash themselves. One 10 year old boy's eye was closed up and very swollen. I asked Joshi (one of the teachers) to investigate and the boy has boils under the eyelid. The boy said he had seen a doctor but nothing had happened. When we found his mother she told us that it was the local medicine man, from the slum, they had seen but the medicine he gave the boy had no effect. Knowing that he needed to be seen by a proper doctor, Joshi made some calls. The mother was very keen that we help her son so one of the Vision Rescue team is going to pick them up in the morning and take them to the hospital - I will update you with how he gets on! A lot of the kids at Reay Road are quite small and some live with other relatives in the slum because both their parents have died. One of these children is Dongu, who is the little girl in the picture above. She is only 4 and has very wild hair. Despite her situation she was so cheeful whilst waiting for her food.

Monday 8th June

Water has been restored back to normal working order. No more burgers! First stop today was Mahim Gardens but not after sitting in a huge traffic jam. It is bad enough in England but with India you get the added heat. We were in a taxi so there was no A/C. Got through two litres of water. We eventually arrived at 10.20am so unfortunately it was too late for me to play football. The twenty boys who turned up played their own game with Jaywanth which was great. They were all very keen to try and tell me about it and how many goals they had scored - shame I couldn't understand most of what they said! I went with the bus to Mahim Creek to meet the drug addicts and we had a shocking discovery. One of the men had died from an over dose in the middle of the night. He was still lying in the same position as all the other addicts will just ignore the body. Hopefully it will make some of them see the need to get themselves of the drugs. We told the police and they very reluctantly came and dealt with the situation. The police have the attitude that if these men decide to take drugs then it is not the responibility of the police if they die so they wont normally deal with it. After feeding about 70 addicts, we moved onto Bandra. Today, I was observing the hygiene levels of the children and the response from the teaching staff. It is so important that the children are encouraged to be as hygienic as possible and the teachers are acting as good role model through there own hygiene and actions.
At three o'clock, I was running a training session for the teachers so I had some time to get luch at the Vision Rescue kitchen. Simon, the main chef, is a wonderful cook. The children can actually tell when someone else has cooked the food other than Simon - that is how good he is! He had made some wonderful fish cooked in Indian spices. Due to finances, the fish was not de-boned but you can't have everything! As usual, there were kids playing in the street and I introduced a couple of them (Albaz and Ani), to the ipod touch. They loved listening to the music and they played one of the games. Even though they enjoyed the novelty of it, I would say that the marbles game they play and the spinning tops they use are much move interesting and sociable!
At the teachers session, I introduced then to some extension activities for quick finishers, went through Health and safety, and hygiene, talked about spotting abuse and taught them 'The Wheels on the Bus'. No doubt I will be seeing that on the bus this week!
Tomorrow I am going into one of the local schools to see the headteacher and to meet some of the children. This will be the first time I have been inside an Indian School!

Water difficulties!

Yesterday, was another day in the office as I had a couple of meetings to attend about the education program and micro-finance. I wont bore you with the details - It was a very uneventful day.

Today I was up early for another football sessions - and what a great one was! The kids are getting very enthusiastic about the football and I can see real improvement. We have about 14 regular kids and some of them are ready for coaching. Next week I will try more coaching drills with them. The feeding for the last few days has been different. The Vision Rescue kitchen was informed on Thursday evening that they may not be any water available for four days due to pipe work. I asked Radjesh what they were going to do and he said that there would be know feeding on those days. I suggested that we buy in some water but he said it would be too difficult to organise. The other option was to buy in some food and when we did the calculations I was amazed at how cheap it was to feed 700 children for the day so I gave Rajesh enough money to cover the four days of water shortage. They bought vegetable samosas that they placed in bread rolls to make veggie burgers. Each child also had a banana. At one location (Bandra), as soon as the word got out that there were veggie burgers being given out, there was a huge flock of kids and mothers who wouldn't normally come to the bus. Unfortunately, due to having to supply food at other locations, we had to turn so of them away - sad!
Being Saturday, there was no teaching today as they show the children a DVD. Today was Ali Ba-Ba and the forty thieves - The kids loved it! Their faces are always a picture when they are watching a DVD. They are so engrossed in the story.
Lunch as usual was at the Vision Rescue kitchen and with a small amount of water they made a different lunch for the staff. In the evening I arranged to meet up with a chat called Amin who is a Mumbai Tour Guide. He has friends in England who gave me his details. He was born in Mumbai but at the aged of 5 he found himself out on the streets. He suffered on the streets for 3 years until he was rescued and taken to an orphange when he was 8 where he stayed till he was 18. He is a really nice guy and speaks very good English. When I return to Mumbai in July, he has agreed to take me to the orphage where he grew up and to some of the other homes run by the same people. He was also interested in the Vision Rescue project so I will arrange for him to spend a day on the bus with me. After coffee with Amin, myself and Ranjeet (who had come with me) got a taxi back home. On the way I saw a very interesting site. One of the main roads that we were travelling along was lined with parked up motorbikes with couples sitting on them. Apparently, Bandra is the romantic area of Mumbai and men bring their girlfriends to that road on a bike. I wish had my camera. It looked like a scene out of Grease!
The weather was cooler today so I think the rain will start soon!

Thursday 4th June

Yesterday I spent all day in the office, priniting out some resources for the buses, preparing teaching notes and creating proposals for some news areas of Vision Rescue. As it was not that exciting I will leave it to your imagination and skip to today! Unfortunately, I have developed a sore throat so I have gone out and bought some strepsils - I just hope they work!

This morning, we dropped Elizabeth at the airport as she is flying on to Goa. From there we went to Mahim Garden. As my throat is still sore, I decided not to play football this morning but watched and gave tips from the sidelines. I stayed around and chatted to the kids whilst they were having their food. They are teaching me Hindi and I am teaching them some English!

From Mahim, we travelled to Juhu to watch the teaching. The lesson was Hindi so it was difficult for me to understand but I got general outline of what was being taught. The teaching at Juhu takes place in a sheltered area at the YMCA centre so there is no bus. This means they have more time for the teaching. Lots of the children here are street children so they are quite chatty and they have a big age range. The youngest child is about 2 and the oldest is about 14. This does put added pressure on the teacher to keep control. You may remember that last time I was at Juhu, there was a child with a septic foot. He travels on the railway alot and he is currently somewhere on the outskirts of Mumbai. His cousin was in the teaching session today and she is going to let us know if he returns to the city centre. We took a quick stroll along the beach before heading back to Mahim for lunch. I was due to go to Raey Road today to see the children in their uniforms again but there is a bit of political unrest due to the attacks on Indian students in Australia. For that reason, I have been advised not to go till next week by which time it will have died down. It has been very hot today with temperatures reaching up to 38 degrees. Biju has flown of to Sydney so I will catch up with him when I return to India in July / August. He was due to fly on to London but will now be staying in Sydney to have his back properly treated.

Tuesday 2nd June

Today I was joined by another Brit! Elizabeth from Birmingham is in Mumbai for a couple of days before she goed to Goa. She wanted to see the work of Vision Rescue so she joined Rajesh and me at Mahim Gardens. This morning was another exhausting football session with the boys but very enjoyable. I introduced them to the 'throw on' today and it took a while for them to get the hang of it. Rajesh did not play today but Jaywanth joined in as usual. I am hoping to train up some of the staff next week by showing them some of the football drills they can do with the boys. After the football we took a trip to the dumping ground for Elizabeth to see but as the bus was not there we did not stay. We had lunch at the Vision Rescue kitchen and I had a bit of time to teach Albaz and his friends how to balance sticks on their hands - it was most entertaining.
We then went with th bus to the first location of the evening bus, Wadala. Here I was able to watch Ishwa, who is one of the teachers. He was teaching some English Greetings and it was a good job I was there because there were a few errors which I very quietly informed him about. English is the subject that the teachers find the toughest to teach and so it is important that I give them as much input as possible. After Wadala, we headed home as Elizabeth needed to get back to her accomodation. I was hoping to carry on to Reay Road but I will leave that till Thurday. Tomorrow I will be in the office all day, preparing teaching sessions and printing out resources.

Lazy dog!

Now here is something you don't see everyday!!

Monday 1st June

Today I started off in the Vision Rescue office printing out resource for my teacher training session this afternoon. I was treated to coffee by one of the Vision Rescue staff and then was picked up by Rajesh and we headed for Mahim. We stopped off at Mahim Gardens first but were too late for football today. Jaywanth had got there earlier and played a game with them. However, they were all there to greet me and I promised them a game tomorrow. I am getting to know the street kids in this area really well and will occasionally see them when in Mahim eating or driving along. From here we went onto Mahim Creek to see the drug addicts and then onto Bandra to watch the teaching. It was only a short lesson today as the bus had been held up at Mahim Creek. We grabbed lunck at the Vision Rescue kitchen and it was great to see my friends Albaz, Imran and Anni. I have been entertaining them by balancing a cricket bat on my nose - they love it! Rajesh and I then drove to some shoe shops to look for some trainers for the street kids when they play football. I thing we managed to sort out a deal with one of the shop owners so we will go back in the next few days and buy some. It was then onto the church hall for the next teacher training session on phonics. I am really keen for the teachers to use phonics to help the children to read and write as they currently use capital letters and the letter names. Some of them struggled with the sounds but will be fine with practice. It was a really good session and I know it will have an impact on the teaching of English on the buses. In the evening I visited Biju in hospital and also and met his mother. What a lovely lady! She kept offering me cashew nuts to eat and also banana chips. Banana chips are like potato crisps but are made of banana and they are nicer. Biju has a couple more days in hospital and then he is off to Australia. Here he will get his back sorted properly by Steve the physio.
Tomorrow is more football and then I will be visiting Reay Road to see the kids again in their smart t-shirts.