Bye guys!! Thanks for everything!!

Ok this is gonna be my last blog and it’s not gonna be a long one because I don’t have too much time. These past 5ish months have been absolutely amazing. I’m can’t even describe how glad I am that I got to have this opportunity and I’d recommend to anyone, in fact I’d ASK someone to do it. It’s one of the best things that will ever happen to you. Tomorrow we head off for our holiday, and then we’re back in Chennai for a couple of days, and then we head back to England on the 14th of March.

I have mixed feelings about this. I’m really excited to go home and see everyone and such, but at the same time I don’t want to leave here. I feel a little guilty for developing really strong relationships with people and then just leaving. I mean I know that I’ll be back sometime and we’ll stay in touch, I just still feel guilty.

I don’t really know what to say on this last blog. I’ve had so many awesome memories and I’m definitely a changed man through it, well at least I like to think so. The experiences God has given have been never-ending. This has changed the way I think about a lot of things I reckon. I also want to say thanks so much to everyone who helped me get here and also to all those of you who kept me in your prayers. It was such a blessing to know that somewhere in the world there were people praying for me.

I think that one of the parts that will stick out the most to me is when we were saying goodbye to the kids. It was heartbreaking! You could really tell we made a difference and some were almost crying when we left. I definitely think it was one of the hardest things I’ve done. Just knowing that we’re leaving the kids and probably not gonna see them again was really tough. They just full of life all the time. Even with only probably two meals a day they were just balls of fun. And their eyes were the most innocent eyes I have ever seen. It was just pretty tough.

Anyway I should be heading out about now, but I’ll see you all soon enough! Bye!

January, about 1 month left!

Wow! Only about a month of work left!! It’s crazy how fast time flies. And I do apologose (again) for the late blog. It seems to become monthly rather than weekly. Anyway we just got back to Mumbai after a week of visiting the other Oasis offices. That’s part of what we’re assigned to do: intercity visits to the other Oasis cities, of which there are three in total in India. Chennai, Bangalore, and Mumbai. The week was so much fun. Everywhere we went there were memories that came back to me (because that’s where I used to live) and we were so busy the whole week. Leena, the person in charge of our Mumbai intercity visit, planned everything for us. On Monday, the day w got there, we went to the tourist part by the Taj Hotel and saw the terrorist damage in Leopold’s Café and went for a wee bit of shopping. On Tuesday we went to visit a slum in a place called Bandra. The slums in Mumbai are a lot poorer than the slums in Chennai, or at least they look that way. Slum life becomes a way of life for these people. Across the river of the slum we were in was another slum, and when we came back to Chennai we found out that the government were offering the people of the slums 1 crore ruppees each to leave, which is a million ruppees, which is about 133,700 pounds, which is about $217,800 each. And can you guess what the slum people said? They want 2 crore, double what they were offered. That’s what I mean when I say it’s a way of life. It’s their home. They’d rather be there than anywhere else, despite what the conditions may be. The theory they go by is one of “my grandad was poor, my father was poor, so I must be poor, as well as my kids.” That’s probably one of the biggest challenges Oasis faces. We have to raise awareness and teach the people that they do deserve more than they have. That there is a life out there for them that doesn’t involve wrestling with rats for food, or worrying about whether their kids will have enough to eat, or not bothering to find a toilet and just going on the side of the street.
That evening we had dinner with a couple called John and Charmaine Nonhebel, who I knew when I was here. That was a lot of fun just because it was cool to just chill out with people.

Then on Wednesday we went to a place called Aruna, and where the Bandra project was focused on teaching English and after-school programmes, Aruna was based in the red light area. The stories we heard and some of the things we saw was horrendous. It was horrible to see with my own eyes some of the things that go on in this this world. Even just being there, everything about it is just messed up. The girls actually have a choice to leave and are free to go. The way the pimps do that is to just trap them and rape them and keep them from real life for the first month or so, until her spirit breaks. By then she won’t go back to her old life because she would be considered a disgrace among her people, and she has nowhere else to go. It’s brainwashing at it’s most horrible form. It’s given me a new passion for something called Stop the Traffik that is Oasis related and it’s aim is to stop the growing crime of people trafficking.

On Thursday we went to a place called Purnata Bhavan, which is HIV/AIDS care community that my dad helped set up, so you can imagine the memories that came flooding back. That day was so much fun. It was great just hanging out in the countryside with kids that just want your company. I made friends with a little girl called Sonita and let me tell you something, she is going to be the bossiest person in the world when she’s older. It’s great. We spent the afternoon looking for a giant Cobra with the kids (probably not the best of ideas, but hey, I told you she was bossy) and then got back by the evening. On Friday we went to another Oasis office and this was the office that focused on the prevention of people trafficking. They gave a job to map out a list of addresses of where they knew about raids and missing persons and things like that. Then on Saturday we hung out at Leena’s house which was also really cool, just because it was cool being in a family again. We ended up spending the night there and then in the morning went to the Mumbai Marathon. After that we hung out and went swimming with an old friend, Jeanie. All in all, Mumbai was a huge success, and going on the Mumbai trains was the experience of a life time. I’m not gonna try to explain it too much, because the only way to fully experience it is to actually go on one, but, in my father’s words, it’s like a hosepipe of humans being turned on, fighting for seats. Think of the busiest place you’ve been, and I can GUARANTEE that the Mumbai trains are busier at the rush hour. People sit on the roof, hang out the door, things like that.

On Monday we finally headed back to Chennai, and that was rather uneventful, other than the fact that the taxi took in totally the wrong direction. But we made it ok. And something I forgot to tell you is that you know the slum that we lived near? The one we were doing the music class for? It’s gone. It got demolished. And guess when. Over Christmas. How’s that for Santa Claus. It was one of the most awesome (not the good meaning, the literal definition. I was awestruck) things I’d ever seen. One day the slum was there , the next time I looked it wasn’t. It took about two days for them to destroy it, because they want to put pipes in the ground and such. It’s been quite an eventful couple of months, that’s for sure. But anyway, I’ll try write another one of these before our times up. But for now, have fun!!!!!

Christmas!!

Ok so I’m first gonna start with a confession. When I said that thing about people caring more about the wording I used in the previous blog, I stole that from a guy named Tony Campolo. He’s a legend. And I’m not 100% sure I spelt his name right. Anyway it’s been a while since my last blog so I’ll just say a little about what I’ve done. Anyway we went to Bangalore to visit their Oasis section, and had a two day holiday in Mysore on the way. That was a lot of fun. We went to the Mysore Palace, Chamundi Hill, and the zoo. The palace was soooooo cool! The amount of work and money they put into building it is intense. Every room has something different, but extravagant about it. Chamundi Hill is a huge hill with quite a tall temple on top. That was the first time I saw a monkey on this India trip. There were tons of them. We first saw one at the palace, but we saw one about 4 feet away on the way to the temple. And then one the way a really tall statue of a man about to kill a snake we saw tons more. There was like a whole family of them. Family? What do you call a group of monkeys? A pack? A mob? The Potter family? Sorry guys, couldn’t resist. Anyway this Chamundi Hill temple had something like a thousand steps from top to bottom. We did not do all of them. The auto driver met us after about three hundred steps at an extremely large bull carved fully from stone. From there we went back to the hotel we were staying at and my friends paid for a full body massage for me. It was quite an experience, and a really good gift. From Mysore we took a two hour train to Bangalore. Bangalore was a lot of fun. We got to see most of the projects they were doing, and also socialise (don’t worry, only at times we weren’t needed). At the time we were there, they just had a team from New Zealand arrive to help (similar to what we’re doing), and we hit it off with them. They’re all really, really cool. We went to look at the crazy shopping place they have over, and we also went to the Hard Rock Café, which was REALLY COOL!!!! And for the first time ever I voluntarily sang a karaoke song. I feel like I’m becoming a better person haha. The rest of the time from Bangalore up till now has been very calm, because around this time the exams start up, so we haven’t been doing anything with the kids except for football in the mornings and English classes in the office. Last weekend was pretty epic though. It was my friend’s birthday on Saturday, mine on Sunday, and Shanthi’s on Tuesday. I also played a Christmas gig on Friday night for a concert that the church put on. That was a lot of fun. Then on Saturday we celebrated my friend Ebe’s birthday by surprising him and then just hanging out and going for dinner with a ton of people. Then for my birthday we went to church, then went to a slum we haven’t been to before and gave away about two hundred backpacks to the kids as a church, then stopped by the fruit shop, then off to dinner. It was a really busy Sunday and we spent the whole of it with about 16 people. It was a lot of fun. Then from then we have been to other parties, we had a Christmas party, we even started a band and got a few gigs, which are still going on (we played in the City Center last night) and are pretty much just waiting till the schools start back up again so we can go back to teaching the kids and showing them more games. Sorry this blog isn’t up to standard, but I wanted to get something up before Christmas and it’s also been like a month since my last one. Oh yeah… MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

The Monsoon Season is Almost Over!

Ok I do apologise for the late blog. I’ll try to not let this happen again. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. These past two weeks have been quite weird. We finished off last week with attending a concert/play. It was really, really weird but really, really cool at the same time. You know what I mean? Yeah one of those things. It was again for the Children’s Day Celebration, and it was a play that the children from some of the orphanages did. The play was amazing. They did the whole play to an audio CD. Then on the weekend I got another earring (because I hadn’t for a while and it was starting to close up. I know some of you will be happy about that, some of you won’t, and most of you probably just don’t care haha) and was very sick (nothing to do with the earring). It was probably the sickest I’ve been for a long time. But let’s not hinder on that little fact. I’m better now, that’s what matters. And actually it kind of gave me a perspective and challenged me a lot. There are people here that feel much worse than I did, and they don’t even have some westerners definition of a house. And let’s not forget the fact of medicine too. If my sickness got too bad I could’ve always gone to the hospital, whereas people that live less than a stone’s throw away don’t even have the money for transportation to the hospital. It got me thinking how easy we have it in the West. Even though you hear some people moan about the recession or not having enough money to get their daily Starbucks or even not getting the right channels on TV, it’s still a hell of a lot better than (money-wise) than over here. And believe me, I’m just as guilty as the next person for taking all our materials for granted, but you realise a few things over here when you see certain things. Like when you see a family of four sleeping on a mattress on the side of the road right outside a restaurant that costs about $25 a head, or when you see an entire slum being demolished and al the occupants being “helped” because the government gives them a tiny house out in the countryside (what they don’t tell them is that it’s too far away for them get a job, so they’re right back where they started, except this time they have to sell the house), or seeing the toilets of the slum (which is just a 20x20 foot concrete slab), or when you see a child cry their eyes out because they lost a shoe that probably cost less than adding toppings on a pizza. I could go on for ages, but don’t worry. But as I was saying, you start noticing the things that matter in this life. The joy on some of these kids faces when the littlest of things happen to them, like just playing games with them, is more than I’ve seen on any child’s face when they’ve got a present or something like that. People value much more than materials here. There’s screen-printing thing going on at the office where we work at the moment, and there are about four or five guys that aren’t on Oasis staff that have stayed for three days, eating in the office and not really sleeping at all, from Thursday morning till today. So actually more than three days. And they do it all without a single complaint. It’s crazy how much of a servant heart these people have.
Sorry about having a challenging blog, but it’s sort of a challenging couple of weeks. Actually on Sunday the water went off as well, so that got me thinking even more about the poor. We have drinking water so really all we couldn’t do was to have a shower and wash, and that made me realise the amount of people that don’t actually any water whatsoever. That must be so difficult. I’m gonna even try to describe what it would be like for a simple reason: I don’t know what it feels. I can’t even begin to comprehend what it would be like not to have the necessities of life when there are 5-star hotels and restaurants that they could smell. That’s another thing that I find astounding. When I used to go to Mexico, the difference between the American border and the Mexico border was astounding. It’s crazy how such different lives can be divided by something as small as a river. And then one of the slums we visit (probably the biggest one we go to) is in the shadow of a 7-star hotel being built. I didn’t even know there was such a rating as 7 stars. It’s really amazing how many people don’t give a shit about the poor. And right now most of you reading will care more about the wording I used than the instances I just told you about. And don’t get me wrong, I’m exactly the same, I’m not trying to sound better than anyone. It all comes down to selfishness. The rich want to get richer and that means, consequently, the poor get poorer.
Right, that’s about as challenging as I’m gonna get, and I do apologize if it was too much. Actually… no I don’t. I’m saying what I want to say. It’s my blog right? But I understand if a few people stop reading it, but let me just end with this challenge: God put us on this earth, in this location, with these opportunities and resources for a reason. Are we living up to that reason? I know I could definitely do a better job at that. What about you?

Here comes the rain

Blog time!! This week’s been pretty chill actually. This blog isn’t gonna be as long as the others, sorry, so if you have any complaints, by all means complain, I just probably won’t read them. Anyway, sorry back to business. The reason for the chillness for this week has been the rain. When it rains over here, it pours. And whatever picture you have in you head when I say it pours, add twice that amount of water and you might be getting there. It rained for most of the week. Football was cancelled because the football pitch had so much water on it that if we tried to play we’d be playing water polo instead of football. It’s crazy how quickly the weather can change here. We were at the school having our little games session thing and from leaving the classroom (which had windows) to the corridoor (which had windows) it went from sunny to pouring. Like I literally mean it changed like that when we walked through the door. It’s just unreal. But then Thursday we really didn’t do much either. On Friday we have a South African concert that we took the funstation kids to and also a competition near us. Me and Laurie decided that we’d go to the concert while Tom went to the competition. We supposed to document them both. Then it started raining. Like mad. And me and Laurie had walk about half a kilometre to get to the van. I feel sorry for Laurie, cause what I’m about to tell happened right after he woke up from a two hour nap. We had to run in the rain that whole half a kilometre. Now you might think “that’s not that big of a deal” but let me just say a few things. At day time the roads are filthy, so you dodge all the filth, but when it’s raining and it’s dark you can’t see anything clearly enough to dodge. Another thing is that this water was almost a foot high in some places. And another thing is that it get’s like that because the drains overflow, so just think abut that for a second. Oh yeah, one more thing, we were barefoot because our flip flops kept falling off. In all honesty, I don’t think I’ve ever had that much fun in the rain before. I felt like a kid, it was so amazing. So anyway, when we got to the concert we were absolutely frozen because the concert hall had AC in it. That was the first time I’d felt too cold over here. It was a weird feeling. Anyway the concert was pretty good, but it wasn’t the right thing to play to a bunch of kids. Oh yeah I forgot to tell you that the reason of all these competitions and concerts (most of which are being cancelled or moved because of the rain) is because it’s Children’s Day on the 14th of November. Children’s Day was created by a guy named Nehru simply to celebrate children. It’s a great thing. But back to the concert. The music was classical piano and cello with an English story thrown in there (bearing in mind there were probably 20 people out of the 100 who could speak English). They were amazing musicians, I just think they should’ve chosen something different for the kids. There was a team there from England that came down to see what we were up to and one of the guys there, Russ, bought me and Laurie a new, dry t-shirt so that we didn’t freeze to death. It was quite nice of him. After the concert the driver dropped us off outside the flat so we didn’t get that wet going back. It was just crazy seeing that much water with bikes and cars and autos just bouncing through it. I loved it.
This Saturday was the first day where we did pretty much nothing. The only thing we did was go to the Fruit Shop (such an amazing place. It’s the most delicious fruit juice on the planet I swear) and then go to Dosa Calling, which is a vegetarian restaurant and also delicious. So far I haven’t had anything edible that I didn’t like. Everything seems to be amazingly delicious over here. It’s gonna be tough not to get fat. Anyway that was an adventure too, because it was raining epically hard again and we decided we’d walk a way we didn’t know to get from the Fruit Shop to Dosa Calling. We… were… drenched. And the restaurant still let us in. The seats were soaked after we were done, but they were like plasticy sort of seats so it wasn’t that bad for them. Then on Sunday I had be at church for 8:30 cause I was playing again, and other than that the Sunday was pretty much the same as normal. We went to the youth thing afterwards, and then to the church office to kill time playing table tennis. After that about 10 of us went to Fruit Shop and then over to a guy named Blesson’s house to watch the Man U-Chelsea game. Chelsea won 1-0, which was good news for Laurie, the most avid Chelsea fan I’ve ever seen, but bad for the two Man U fans who were with us. After that we all decided to go to a ice cream shop for dessert at like 11:30. We never got there. I ended up riding on the back of the bike of the guy who was the biggest Man U fan there. It was quite an adventure. I learned that when a motorbike does a wheelie with someone on the back, the chances of staying on are very slim. I’ll let your imagination decide for you what happened on that ride. I’ll just say that we stopped twice, and never got to our destination because in the end he just took me back to the flat. It’s not as bad as you think though. I’m alive and I had a good conversation with him as well. Anyway that was Sunday, and then on Monday we did absolutely nothing because the rain had cancelled everything. And then today we might go to the school and have two fun stations, as well as a poker night till the wee hours of the morning. And that was my week. How was yours?

Poker Nights

Last Tuesday was the weekly poker night, and, as you can probably guess, I didn’t get very far. Theoretically in poker the newbies should get pretty far because nobody knows how to read them, but noooo, not for me. Then on Wednesday a guy called Dave came down here from Mumbai to start recording a CD with us. The CD is for n English workbook. You know, the type of CD that the kids in the class make fun of? Yeah, that one. We practiced on Wednesday and Thursday. Which was pretty funny actually. There are certain things in the English language that if you keep repeating and say it slowly, it sounds absolutely stupid. For instance, one of the phrases we repeated the most was the question “What do you do?” (as in ’what’s your occupation’). You try say that with the emphasis on the right part and slowly. See what I mean? Anyway we recorded the CD on Friday in an actual recording studio at one of the staff’s house. Her brother is a musician and it’s a really sweet get up he’s got going on. We ended up being there the whole day, from 10:30 till 6:00, but we managed to get it all done. We also managed to take some sweet pictures too. One of the guys we were with thought he was a model and, because that’s so contagious, it didn’t take long for the rest of us to think that. You’ll see the pictures soon enough. Facebook. After the recording we went to the cinema and let me tell you, no cinema I’ve ever been too compares to this one. It cost about two pounds (3.50ish dollars) a ticket and each seat was like one of those single sofa thingys that nobody really knows the name of. You know, like a really cushiony chair? Anyway, yeah, every seat was like that except for the front row that was wooden chairs (but they cost 13p, about 19 cence) and the sound and picture was just as good as any other cinema, but the building was so much bigger than any others at home. The film we saw (it wasn’t my choice, it was the girls we were with) was the Michael Jackson one. I forgot the name of it. After seeing it I finally have a set opinion about ol’ Jacko. Are you ready for it? I think he’s probably one of the weirdest guys I’ve ever seen, but he’s a musical genius. Some of the things he comes up with is amazing. And the way they filmed it wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought they’d do it so that he’d be glorified as the greatest person on earth, but it wasn’t actually that way. Some of the parts seemed filmed in such a way that it seemed like they were planning on people laughing at him. But anyway, like I said, musical genius. So after that we all went to girls house again to play poker. I went with a guy named Blesson to go get the poker chips. We ended up reaching 100 km/hour on a motorbike. That was a thrill and a half. Oh and he also let me drive his bike while he was waiting for his friend. It was the first time I’d ridden a motorbike and I didn’t stall it!! Well, I didn’t when I started it but then I found myself headed straight for a wall and he didn’t tell me the breaks so in that split second of a brick wall coming to greet me I decided it would be best if I stalled it to stop it. Don’t laugh at me, it’s the only way I knew how. Then we headed back to girls place with me sitting on the back holding the poker chips, and that was when we hit 100, with me holding on to the poker chips with one hand, and the back of the bike with the other. Good stuff. And in the end we didn’t even play poker. We just hung out, which was pretty cool too though. Then on Saturday Dave left, and we went to Spencer’s Plaza (a big mall near us) and just looked around and bought a few things. From there we went to Sparky’s Diner and helped out with their Halloween bash thing they had. I was in charge of a game that involved darts and balloons. The aim of the game was to pop the balloons with darts. The balloons were all lined up on a board that the darts were supposed to stick into. Yeah they didn’t. Darts are very scary when thy bounce back after someone throws them. Especially when you’re sitting about a foot and a half away from the board. I got stabbed with them at least three times (and when I say ‘stabbed’ I mean pricked, but when I say I got ‘pricked’ three times it doesn’t quite have the same effect). But anyway we got free food cause we worked so that was pretty cool. Then Sunday we ended up not going to church because my phone (the alarm) died halfway through the night. But we did go to the youth thingy afterwards and ended up leading a church in the evening the other side of Chennai. Oh yeah, and throughout all of this my phone was changing sim cards because none of them decided to work. I had 4 sim cards in 4 days. On the way to leading the church we past a bridge that had collapsed with a lorry that had two wheels on the road and the rest was leaning into the collapsed bridge. That at was pretty epic. After the service we headed back, stopped at Coffee Day (the equivalent to Starbucks) and then went to Sparky’s for Dinner, our traditional Sunday dinner. Monday was pretty much the same as usual, and then Tuesday was another poker night, one which, again, I didn’t get very far in, although Tom, one of the guys I’m with, came second. Good stuff.

Settling in

Right, the new schedule works wonders. It’s amazing what a little extra sleep can give you. We tried it for a week, and, although we’re still knackered, it’s a lot better. This week was intense though. Last Saturday we slept in till two pm, causing the AC to burn out, and that still hasn’t been fully fixed. The list of broken things in our flat is slowly building up. But luckily it’s nothing that’s too drastic. The AC is probably the biggest thing. I feel kinda bad for saying that because people living just a stone’s throw away from us don’t even have food to eat and we’re complaining about the AC, so I’m trying to forget the fact that things break.
Anyway, last weekend, hence the sleep-in, was very restful; the absolute opposite of this weekend. The week worked out very well. One thing I’ve found out is over here people like to do things on a whim. Like Tuesday night for example. After getting up at 5:30 we went to football (soccer) practice, came home, slept for like an hour, then had lunch and came to the office. There were people visiting the office from Oasis Bangalore, and as we were leaving the office at 5 ish everyone decided they would go bowling. We all went along and ended up staying up until about one (after buying Pizza Hut out of business). That was fine for me and Tom who had to be at the office at 9 but Laurie had to pull the 5:30 card. I felt a little sorry, but it fun to just hang out with a ton of people. The rest of the week was pretty normal. And when I say normal I mean the usual death-defying auto drivers, skin-frying heat, sweat-pulling humidity, and all round craziness of the Indian lifestyle. I love it. Thursday we had a games night at the local church we were at. The church is held at the Sparky’s restaurant I was on about and the owner, Thom (the guy American I talked about before. I spelt his name wrong before, sorry) held the games night at his house. His house is amazing. It’s like a bachelor’s palace. That was pretty cool. We got to meet a few new people and the food was AMAZING. We stayed till like 11 playing Beatles Rock Band. Good stuff. Then came the weekend.
On Saturday we woke up at 5:30 again to go to a football (soccer) tournament. The youth group we were going to invited us to join the team. The first game was gonna be the first time we played as a team, and also the first time some of us met. It was a knock out competition and we ended up coming fourth out of 19, which was pretty cool, seen as the majority of us weren’t expecting to get anywhere. The fourth place was 2,500 rupees for the team, which is about 35 pounds (about 20 dollars). Turns out we make a pretty good team. By the end of Saturday we were exhausted because me and Tom went straight to the church office to practice for Sunday because we were asked to play for the service. We ended up getting home about 7 ish after chasing Laurie down because he had the keys and had own little adventure. But we got back safe in the end. Sunday was pretty busy too. We managed to catch the Man United Liverpool game in the evening, and that was probably the first full football (soccer) game I watched since France should’ve beaten Italy in the 2006 World Cup final. It was pretty cool to be back in front of God’s game.
On Monday there was a birthday party that again lasted till about one in the morning. It seems lat nights are gonna be a theme for me, cause tonight’s gonna be one too. There’s a poker night at Thom’s house.
But that’s enough about social antics. The real reason why I’m here, is, as you probably know, to help people. That’s going really good as well. We’re running a music class, English class, and games sessions after school. We’re also gonna start teaching the staff of Oasis English and some girls that work in a company called Jacob’s Well. We’ll also hold after-school sports sessions in the school where we work. And, as before, we are still helping coach football (soccer). All in all we’re having a blast while doing probably the most good I’ve ever done.