Blog

I’m pretty excited, Ash is on his way. It doesn’t seem a moment ago since we were saying good-bye in Mumbai, and the three months ahead seemed a long time. A lot has happened since then; Ash has finished his Medicine studies, Hunar Ghar has sprouted three new classrooms and three new coordinators, and I’ve refined my project based learning skills and understanding considerably. Also as good as Ash arriving, he’ll have my saxophone in toe.

On another note completely, I’m kind of aware that I don’t really ever blog about the children and what they are up to. The main reason being, I don’t know what it is in enough detail to write anything especially relevant. The kids, and teachers, are now on holiday, but after this I’ll try and increase the blogs about our pedegogy and things, rather than only about weather and building work the whole time!

I just sent another £6000 across to India. Looking at the accounts, we’ve only got £2900 left in the UK. This is the first time that I’ve ever been worried about our finances – costs have gone up, especially with the rubbish pound exchange rate, and donations down for out early hay-days. Best try and find some from somewhere!

There’s a typhoon which has been rolling up the side of India and into Pakistan, bringing welcome rain to us and terrible flooding to Pakistan. Unfortunately, yesterday it blew with a bit too much gusto and de-tiled a significant proportion of our classrooms, throwing and smashing them all over the place and allowing the inside to get drenched. One classroom carelessly built by Bhuriya didn’t provide any water protection from run off from the slope it at the bottom of and it duly flooded. That flooding wasn’t helped by the fact that the roof was also poorly built. We’d been planning to sort it out, but this weather came unexpectedly. Fortunately for us Teddy is there sorting it all out, but it adds to his already tight schedule of work to be done before leaving at the end of July.

It is probably a good dry run, as it were, before the real monsoons arrive.

Deepak, Teddy and Paritta have been making excellent progress with the installation of a solar kitchen at Hunar Ghar. Deepak and Paritta will shortly be visiting a place in Gujarat where they are developing and sell solar technology. We will be installing, for around Rs 25,000 ( GBP350) a solar kitchen that will be able to handle 200 solar meals a day. It will pay for itself in less than two years, as we will be consuming much lass firewood (some will still be needed for during rainy weather, not that there is much of that).

It is more important though in that we will be minimising our impact of deforestation quite considerably, it will now pretty much be only windows and doors that we’ll need to cut wood for. It will also be a great demonstration to the village about solar technology, something which in later years we hope to expand. I am hoping that there may be some kind ot attachment available so that when it isn’t cooking food it is instead generating electricity or boiling water to purify it. That would be totally awesome, and we could later develop ways in which the village can have its own micro solar power electricity generation station.

Yesterday morning it started raining in Kerala, the Southern most state in India. What it means is that the monsoons are on their way. In the great annual excitement, the clouds and storms will move slowly upwards, reaching where I live in Gujarat in about three weeks and Hunar Ghar a week after that. I love the anticipation of the rain. I like to imagine all over India children and dogs dancing in the streets as the first waters spot upon dusty roads and the joy of running around in the deluge, completely soaked and happy.

The rains will we most welcomed by me too, what with it having risen about 48 degrees for three consecutive days this week. Mercifully today is a little cooler. But my temperature preference isn’t why the clock is ticking. It is because of the building work at Hunar Ghar. We have walls, but no roof yet on the new buildings. Cast your mind back to 2007 and when the BBC were out filming us and you’ll remember a couple of walls collapse in the rain. To explain, mud walls are jolly strong, but only if you keep the rain off them. This job is usually taken up by a roof which will sit there happily, casting water off this way and that and generally keeping the wall dry and stong and most importantly, up. But as we are constructing and are having problems finding a bamboo supply, we currently sit open to all the elements and rain that might try and send our rocks and muddy mortar back to the ground from whence they came.

So Teddy, Paritta, Deepak; 4 weeks and counting!