Last week we were finally able to make a trip out to Deep Griha's two
rural projects, City of Knowledge and City of Child. City of Knowledge,
or Deep Griha Academy, is an English medium school providing quality
English education that would not otherwise be available in the rural
areas. Over the next ten years the plan is to expand up to standard ten
and include a vocational training centre, community health awareness
and education and agriculture training. Currently the school serves 130
children through standard three, 40% of whom are on scholarship. We
spent the morning doing activities with the kindergarten class, playing
with playdoh and it was a lot of fun. Nearby the school is City of
Child, a residential project which provides a safe home for orphans
where they can study, play and develop away from the challenging
circumstances of the slums. The children who live there were all at
school so the place was quiet and peaceful. City of Child is really
trying to promote sustainability; they had solar powered ovens and water
purifiers and huge fields and gardens growing all the food that they
serve the children. It was really amazing to see and we hope to spend a
week out there, away from the hustle and bustle of Pune, sometime soon
and help out with the kids.
Also last week all of the international
volunteers living in the cultural centre took a trip to Mumbai to go to
'Asia's largest water park'! We left at 6:30am as we had been told the
drive would take about 3 hours. However, a confused driver, paired with a
flat tire and Mumbai traffic resulted in us not reaching the water park
until 1:00. Despite the lengthy journey, the water park was a lot of
fun! We went on every single ride and many of them more than once. We
just made sure to keep our mouths closed while going down the slides
though!
On the weekend, two of our local volunteer friends, Prateek
and Gaurav invited us to go Dandiya dancing for the Navratri Festival.
We all got dressed up in our Indian attire and arrived at a very loud
and colourful tent filled with hundreds of people whirling and twirling
and banging sticks together in a special dance for the festival.
Friends attempted to teach us the dance, we didn't quite get it but we
still had a lot of fun. People kept joining our circle and at one point
we were the largest one in the room. Everyone was dressed in their
finest saris and clothes and they had a best dressed competition and
best dancer competition. It was really nice to be a part of the
celebration and we feel that tourists generally wouldn't get to
experience something like this. The dancing goes on non-stop for ten
days until Dussera which celebrates the victory of Lord Ram over the
demon Ravana (or at least that’s what I understood from the
explanation...) We’ve been hearing drums and dancing and fireworks
every night for the whole celebration. We had the day off for Dussera
and Prateek and Gaurav took us to Sinhagad Fortress about 40km outside
of Pune. It was high on top of a hill with a beautiful view of the lake
and Pune. We walked among the ruins and had some delicious onion
bhajis and roasted corn. It was a great day. Sadly, our adopted
daughter Sholeh has left us, we already miss having her crazy spirit
here with us.
Love,
The Wandering Two
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| Play-doh! |
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| We later got in trouble for having too many kids on the swing... |
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| lunch time |
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| Dandiya! |
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| trying really hard |
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| the girls |
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| the whole gang |
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| Ping-pong champions, Abhishek and I |
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| playing with the kids at the DISHA drop-in centre |
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| English class with the DISHA ladies (thanks iPad) |
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| My little helper Rama |
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| Painting diya lights to sell for Diwali |
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| Sholeh and Olivia at the Sinhagad Fortress |
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| Mandatory jumping shot |
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| Man grilling some corn |
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| Man eating some corn :) |
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| Enjoying the view |
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| Best onion bhajis ever! Until Sholeh's lips swelled up from the spicy sauce! |
