Geoff's Motorcycle Adventures: Day 7 Slum School

Friday - We have now got into a routine in Delhi. Jumped on a auto and spent the usual 45 minutes to East Delhi, as usual had to show the driver exactly where we needed to go. Started to get to know South Delhi quite well. (available for hire if anybody needs a tour guide).

Today was a lesson about body parts and the children had to label a body drawn on the board. They were good, some spelling was a bit off but was impressed. One child even told us we had 32 teeth. I didn't even know that!

We then went outside with chalk and the children drew around each other and labelled the body parts. They had great fun. Farzana from yesterday was in the class and she can't speak english but knew 5 and 5 were 10 when drawing on toes. Her little face was a picture joining in with the class especially the sing along (Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle).
We ended the lesson with emotional bingo (happy, sad etc).

The girls and the younglings class was cancelled due to the womens empowerment meeting (Indian WI).

The people turned up at the centre during lunch to talk to Farzana about returning her home. She had her belongings wrapped up in a cloth with her. The people took Farzana to a safe childrens home and would be producung her to a court so she can be returned home to Bihar. When she left it was a little bit emotional (and choked up) she looked so scared but she was not safe at the slum and the best place for her was home. We managed to snatch a photo and a cuddle before she left.

Following lunch we were taken into the slum and shown around. Its very compact with tiny alleyways between buildings. The slum houses were small, we went into one house and had Chai and cake which was about the size of my garden shed: it slept 6 people. Everybody was very welcoming and everybody invited us in to their houses we met loads of the children and we had a Pied Pipier moment with all them tagging along. They had an open sewer but all the pathways were concrete. It was colourful and seemed a pleasant place to live.

In the afternoon we were the star guests at the womens meeting. They asked us loads of questions about us, our life and our reasons for being in India. They have a very British view of us and the best question was "How many servants and maids do you have?" "One me" I replied. I think they still believe that the stereotypical British Raj still exists. Although we are not rich by any means we are compared to their lives.
At the end of the meeting the ladies sung some songs and had both me and Mrs G up dancing Indian style.

At the end of the day we travelled back to the apartment and met with Polly and Alex. Friday was Alex's last night so we went out for dinner. We went to a local Punjab restaurant in a local mall. Very posh but reasonable prices. The food was fantastic. We all ate veg and had a Kingfisher beer (or 3) with the meal. Great laugh with good company. We then went into the sports bar next door and had as couple more beers before retiring home exhausted in an auto.

A very hot sweaty night and complicated by Delhi Belly. We had decided before the trip we would go out to Agra to see the Taj Mahal but what with the heat, late nights and early mornings we abandoned the idea to stay in Delhi. We are still going to Amritsar next weekend by train.

Weekend off to relax catch up on sleep and plan for next week. Going to see the Lotus Temple today and possibly a market tomorrow. A new volunteer arrives tomorrow as Alex flew home today.

Bye for now Blog fans weekend update coming soon - Need some soft toilet tissue.