Udaipur

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The bus journey was quite a long one, from ten at night till five in the morning. We were in the sleeping compartments which you have to reach by climbing little metal ladders from the seats. Most of us were in doubles and I was sharing with Wes. He is an expert at sleeping and went to sleep soon so I did not have too bad a time. Some of the others found the journey really wearying.

When we arrived we went back to sleep for a few hours. I am sharing with Ed who is the oldest and who seems to be quite a leader type. Then we had breakfast and a bit more time to relax before the first orientation. We met some other volunteers who were already here, Cameron whose 21st birthday is on Tuesday and who comes from New York and Sheena who is from Scotland.

On Saturday we had more orientation and visited the town with Cameron. Udaipur is famous for its Lake Palace but unfortunately the recent drought has emptied it and the palace seems to stand in a marsh. We bouhgt some drink on the way back and had a bit of a party that evening. We had our first Hindi lesson which included a lot of things that will be usefull during lessons. On Sunday we finished the orientation and did lesson planning for the first lesson and new volunteers arirved to renovate the orphanage.

The journey to and from the school each day is always interesting and we often encounter flocks of sheep or goats being herded to and fro. There are always cows to be seen by or on the roads and we see women working the fields and walking with pots or heavy loads on their heads.

The facilities at the school are more basic than in Thailand. There are no desks and no chairs. There is a chair for the teacher but I never used it as it is better to keep your face at the same level as the kids. They don't have any pens or pencils of their own and we have to take everything with us and bring it back afterwards.

We went to the school to teach every morning after breakfast, leaving at 9.30 or soon afterwards. The official start of the lesson was 10 am and the end 11.30 but if we got there early we would start early. Also the car to pick us up was sometimes late, so we had to plan for lessons that might be quite a bit longer than one and a half hours.

The route to the school was very scenic and we would see all sorts of things on the way there and back. Once, on the way back from teh school the minibus was held up by a long caravan of camels. There wer3e about three dozen or so, wending there way up the same country track that we were trying to get down.

Their cargo was an odd one, baby goats (the literal version of kids) being carried in sacks suspended on either side of each camel. We could see their tiny faces poking through and the Aussie girls all thought it was the cutest thing ever - especially Liz, who is given to exagerration.

After the camels, which took some time to pass us, there came another procession of adult goats being herded along by women. We thought they were nomadic deset dwellers who had crossed Rajasthan and happened to pass through Udaipur. I imagine they weren't used to seeing cars in the way of their camels and were probably thinking they were in the big city now, though there wasn't a single bulding in sight from where they were.

Every lesson at the school started with a song and ended with a song. The Good Morning song was the one we would start with:

Say "good morning",
Say "good morning",
"How are you?,
"How are you?"
Let the day be joyful,
Let the day be joyful,
For you and me,
For you and me!

This is sung to the tune of Frere Jacques while standing in a big circle and there are lots of hand movements to go with it.

It really is very catchy!

To get the kids in a circ;e you can try a circling sort of hand gesture, but it was often better to use the rudimentary Hindi that Guarav and Ritu had inculcated in us and say "Gola banao". Other useful expressions were "Line banao" for make a line, Kedda Ko Jao for stand up, Beth jao or betho for sit down, chup, chup, for be quiet, jao for go, shaitani nahin for don't be naughty. We also learned some Hindi words for linking to the English equivalent - this was particularly useful for days of the week.

At the end of each day we would sing the Bye Bye song:

Bye, bye, bye my friends,
Thank you for today,
Toodly, toodly,
Toodly, toodly,
See you soon again.

Although it looks silly, the best part of this was the toodly, toodly bit where you move your legs up and down and the end, when you point to your eye to elucidate3 the meaning of "see". This song is sung to the tune of Row, row, row the Boat.

This was sung in a circle as well and was really enjoyable.

In between, we tried to teach a bit.

There was a lot of conversation practice - I'm fine, How are you? I'm from England, Where are you from? (a large proportion of my class was from India, unsurprisingly!) My name's Steve, What's your name? And so on.

Incidentally, a large number of Indians seem to have been taugth to say "What is your good name?" instead of "What's your name?". I've no idea why this should be be. I wonder if Indians have two or more names only one of which is regarded as good. I suppose this would be useful if you wanted to hide your identity when doing somehting illicit, just use the "bad" name, while reserving the good name for proper conduct.

We also taught vocbulary and the syllabus dictated which words should be known to each grade. Some choices seemed odd but may have had a cultural significance. I was also told to teach a particular sort of pronunciation for some words - the fruit "pear# was to be pronounced pier and yacht as yach. But other volunteers were not told this and taught the normal English or American or Aussie pronunciation.

Maths, or Math if you favour (or favor) the US variant was also to be taught a few days each week. My class never got beyond simple additions and subtractions though other classes seemed to do more.

Classes would also incude some more songs and dances (One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Once I Caught a Fish Alive (with which they were already familiar), I Can Sing a Rainbow, Ring a Ring of Roses, The Grand Old Duke of York, Old McDonald Had a Farm (could get a bit rowdy), If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands, I'm H A P P Y etc.

I introduced my class to Hangman and, after an iffy start when I was uncertain as to whether they were deliberately trying to get the man hanged (most tof the boys put their hands around their necks and made horrible gurgling sounds when this happened) they became quite good at it.

Nevertheless, and despite the help that I hoped the last song listed above mighjt have provided, they failed to get the word "Happy".

There could also be free drawing although more usually I would get the class to draw and colur in something we had just been talking about - lots of black dogs and grey elephants etc.

It was amazing for me, being able to perform in front of a class. They reaqlly loved my singing! And they could often identify my drawings of dogs and cats and elephants etc.

Another good song, though I only did it once in class by myself, is the Crocodile song.

I saw a crocodile,
An eagle fly,
A little fish,
And a big monkey,
A rabbit,
A tiger,
A crazy elephant
Da da da da da da da
Da da da da da da da.

The point with this song is that hand movements represent all teh animals. You only sing it in full once and then gradually leave animals out (whilst retaining the hand signals) until you finally get back to the da da da da da da.

After school we would drive back to the apartment and have lunch. Then there'd be free time until we went to the orphanage or to the evening school later on, though we would have to do some planning for that too and write an evaluation of how the lesson had gone. For the first fortnight it was one evening at the evening school and the rest at the orphanage, but due to the monsoon weather evening school was cancelled for the last week I was there and for the next month or so.

I really enjoyed the evening school on the two times I went there. First we would do a community walk to pick up students for the school and then gather in a piece of land a local person let us use. There was a shrine on the site so we all had to take our shoes off. After teh lesson we would wash and dry teh hands of the students.

The orphanage was also a nice place to teach and the students here were a lot brighter and more proactive than those I taught at school (partly because they were older - I taght fourth grade at school and 6th and 7th at the orphanage). At the end of each lesson here we did games (or free painting on Wednesday) and this was grat fun. One day they did skipping and one boy did 92 skips I think it was over the skipping rope I was twirling - and he wasn't wearing shooes - and the ground was uneven and stony.

After orphanage or evening school it was time for dinenr and then free time again - though you did have to plan the next day's lessons.

As I say, I was sharing with Ed and we would have long conversations before going to sleep talking ethics and English Literature and nonsense. I was mostly responsible for the nonsense side of things.

During my first week a group joined us to work on renovating the orphanage. Large parts of it were already transformed by the tmie I left.

For the first weekend that I was there most of teh others went off on a jaunt to Agra and a tiger reserve. I hadn't booked for this because I knew I'd do Agra by myself and it seemed silly to visit the Taj Mahal whilst staying in Udaipur. I think I had a point there because the travelling was cetainly not that good according to those who went. Neither was the accomodation, though Wes did capture a massive bug, two and a half inches long. I saw it back at the apartment after his return but he was unable to preserve it so as to take it with hinm back to teh States. I expect he'd have had to declare it at Customs anyway.

They did see a tiger, but not in the safari park. It came down to theroad outside to see what was going on.

They were lucky, though, becasue the Sunday they went was a day on which entry to the Taj Mahal was free and when access was allowed to the actual underground tombs of Shah Jehan and Mumtaz.

That Saturday, I and Gerogia and Marcia (both renovaters) went to see the Kumbhalgarh fort and the Jain temple at Ranakpur.

The fort was worth seeing, high up in the Aravali mountians so that we were actually in the low monsoon clouds when we climbed to the top of the fort, We could feel the water vapour of the clouds, not just from above like rain, but from all sides. However, the cloud cover did impair the views which I am assured could be glorious.

The temple was flat out the most impressive live temple I had yet seen. The Golden Temple at Amritsar is impressive too, but in very different ways. It's an amazing building with, it is said, 1,444 pillars all uniquely carved. It is also said, though, that no one can count the pillars in teh temple. I didn't bother to even try!

One could spend ages there, it is a uniquely peacful place.

My birthday was on 25th July and Jit's was on the 23rd, so we had a joint meal out and I also had a party on teh Saturday! This was when I started to feel a bit ill and hadn't fully recovered by the time I left, though I was a lot better. I only had to miss one day of school through being ill.

I also missed the orpahange on my last teaching day because Richard (who wasn't very well at all himself) went with me to show me how to climb up to the mountain top temple we could see from teh apartment. It wasn't very hard in the end, though there were 532 (approximately) steps up and quite a few slopes to plod up as well. The views from teh top were woderful and it was interesting to see a country shrine like that in a place difficult to get to (though several cows were grazing nearby the summit).

They have a spirit of perversity, those cows. Wandering along highways when they could graze in nearby verdant fields and climbing mountains toi eat nettles when they could have eaten lush grass in the valley. Maybe they are just bored.

The walk was certainy worthwhile because not only did we climb the mountain and see the temple and see the view, but we found Pat.

Pat, the three legged donkey had not been seen for some time and Rich feared for its life. On my way to evening school once I had seen a severed donkey's head cluthced in teh mouth of a dog while other dogs feasted on the remnants of the corpse. That wasn't Pat. We knew that. He'd been seen after that. But it was a graphic warning of the dangers awaiting local donkeys, even those with a full complement of legs.

But we saw Pat. He was safe and sound and grazig near teh apartment. Richard gave hinm two mangoes which he ate happily, wobbling from side to side ( his other name is wonky donkey, but Richard thinks this unkind).

Richard had moved into Ed's and my room after Jitan and Anand left and was a perfect room mate.

Pat was not the only animal that l;iked to browse by the apartment. One afternoon (actually it was when I made a failed solo attempt on the mountain) a large camel was eating leaves off a bush just outside. It was as wonderful for me to be living where such things happen as it was in Ao Luk when our garden had mango and coconut and banana trees.

I want to keep in touch with Ed and Rich and also with Cameron and Carl and the others.

I flew out of Udaipur to Amritsar (via Delhi) on Saturday.

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Photos

My birthday!
Featuring Cameron and Rich

Camel near our apartment
Someone had lost their camel

Channel Youth apartment
With cow

Channel Youth apartment
With cow and camel

Recreation room
Note the swastika

Pat
The three legged donkey

Me
atop the "mountain"

Last night dinner
Left to right:
Wes, MC, Rich, me, Carl, ED, Teal and Cameron