Wir sind dann mal weg... Paula und Hannah in Indien: Welcome to Abhaya! ENG

This Blogarticle was written at the beginning of the last week.

Welcome to Abhaya!

This blog article is written from the terrace of Abhaya Children’s Home. Here we live already for more than a week. We have not written you until now, because there is always a lot to do in a Children’s Home and we also have had some difficulties with the Internet. Short Update: We are fine! We arrived well in our project and were warmly welcomed!

During the last days in the KKID we had interesting, informative and helpful seminar lessons (health advisory, self defence, discussions about the integration in the project…). During that we also got to know our mentor, who is really nice and just five years older than us. As well we want to say thank you to the last volunteers, who left a start-package in the KKID with a lot of useful things, which we will definitely use!

When we arrived here in Abhaya on Wednesday (19.08) (after driving only half an hour with the taxi) 25 smiling girls lively welcomed as with flowers and a blessing. Our director was also here to say hello and to introduce us to the girls. He is very nice and really tried to make a good start possible for us. In our room we found some toast, butter, jam and bananas, in case we get stomach problems from the Indian food (but we love it!!).

The last days were filled with a really complicated police registration, with settling down here in the project and with getting to know the daily routine and the different staff members. On Saturday we were invited to a daytrip to Ooty, a place in the mountains nearby. It was an adventurous journey, but it was worth it, not just because of the monkeys next to the road, but also because of the incredible view, the breathtaking landscape and the green tea fields. However, we nearly caught ourselves a cold due to the fact that our bodies are not used to temperatures under 20°C anymore. Furthermore we went shopping with our mentor and bought our first saree for we are invited to a marriage on Saturday.

Living one week in Abhaya we can say that we slowly settle down in everyday-life, which we are really happy about! After a warm and substantial breakfast we join the younger girls on their way to school. Then there is time to prepare the afternoon programme and to do some documentation work. However, next week we will use this time to visit other projects of our NGO “NMCT”, in which we will also participate.

After finishing school all girls have “chai” and then there is time for “Cycling Class”, which they all like very much. Since yesterday we also give “English Classes”. They are popular as well. In addition to that a lot of games are played like Halli Galli and Memory. Despite this we have to say our schoolgirls study a lot. This begins already after waking up with 1 ½ hours “Study Time” before breakfast! Indian school starts (later than in Germany) at 9 o’clock. But also before dinner there is a time period of two hours for homework.

To give you a deeper insight into our daily life: this blog article was written in different blocks, due to the fact that the girls were coming home from school just when we were writing this. They were all very curious about what we were up to: “Hello Sister!”, “what are you doing sister?”… and suddenly we were surrounded by ten small girls who are full of positive energy. The expression “sister” is common here. The girls call each other “akka” and “tangacci” which is both Tamil for sister. Even though we noticed that the people at the street use the same expressions, we think that they fit very well to the atmosphere here in Abhaya, which reminds us of the atmosphere in a family. The girls help each other a lot and also offer us their help.

As we mentioned at the beginning we are very happy with our project and excited what will come in the following weeks (we have enough plans ;))!

Greetings

Hannah and Paula