Green Lion

Green Lion was the company we did our volunteering with. All their coordinators were very helpful and everything went smoothly. We did two projects with them, we helped out in an elderly home in the mornings and then worked in the slums in the afternoons.

The old people's home was an experience to say the least. I can't say it was fun but we did definitely have many laughs there. There were about 8 of them there, but only three spoke English.

Napoleon was the first, he asked us to call him Nappy. This took a little adjusting to. He used to be a sailor so had many stories to tell us about how he used to get drunk and court the ladies with his fellow sailors. We played a lot of cards with him where taught him cheat, though I'm not entirely sure he got the hang of it. He put down 'two ones' on my three tens, but he seemed to giggle after every move so at least he was having fun. We also played musical chairs and statues with him. I suggested musical bumps also but Tash thought a few too many emergency calls would have to be made as a result. He was great, and looked like an Indian Robin Williams. Good old Nappy.

Next was Flavio. He was a character and a half. Tash had the joy of being cornered by him on the first day and could not escape, she said he asked her many riddles and if she got the answer wrong, he'd slap her. Apparently he also called her his girlfriend and told her all about her menstrual cycle. I thought she must be exaggerating but no no, day two was my turn. He told me how he smoked 100 cigarettes a day, and used to drink a bottle of whiskey a day, until he was put into a mental home. He told me all about his family, how his wife cheated on him and he disowned his son. He told me about how he used to be a teacher but was fired for beating the pupils, but despite all of this he had faith and pulled through. He then asked me many a question, and after I answered I would get a 'WHAAAT?', at least three times before he heard my answer. He then proceeded to predict my future, I've been sworn to secrecy and apparently if I tell anyone about it I will die. Let's just say the outcome to all of the scenarios he predicted was an impending death. He said he was doing me a favour and usually he would charge 10000 rupees (£120) for the predictions. Looks like I owe him one. He was such a character and did indeed slap me and try to kiss me.

The last English speaker was an elderly woman. Her name was Jesus.
Tash: "Hi, I'm Tash, what's your name?"
Her: "Jesus"
Tash: "Jesus Christ, as in the Son of God?"
Her: "Yes"
Tash: "Oh cool, what's it like to be Jesus?"
Her: "It's ok"
Apparently she's been Jesus for about 2 and a half years now and about 100 people know. No biggy. She says she's praying every second of the day and she got very angry at us for playing cards as it's an immortal sin.
Tash and I had the absolute honour of bathing Jesus Christ on the third day...not many people can say that. It was truly an out of body experience.

I'm not going to lie, we did count down the seconds until we could leave each lunchtime but there was entertainment value, and I'd like to think we entertained them for the week.

Our afternoons were filled teaching and playing in the slums. We really enjoyed our time here and wished we could have stayed much longer. We taught them English, mainly just the alphabet and numbers as we had the younger children, for an hour to start with. They were all so eager to learn and laughed at all my attempted drawings of apples, bees, cars, doors, eggs etc! Whenever they got something right they earned a high five, which they took as a challenge to hit our hands as hard as possible.

Then it was break time and we handed out biscuits and fizzy drinks. My favourite child was a little girl (the only girl) called Lakshmir, who had a daily ritual of opening her biscuit, licking out the cream, closing it and then giving me the remains. So thoughtful.

At 4pm each day we would play an hour of football. Let's just say, a whole hour of football, in the blistering heat, against boys from a slum, with no shoes on...is not our forte. But we mucked in, got laughed at and actually scored a few goals. It was surprisingly very fun!

On Friday we took the boys to the beach. It was such an amazing day, most of them had never been in a car before so that was the first excitement, all of them eagerly riding along, sticking their heads out the windows. As soon as we arrived they all ran onto the beach, dumped their stuff and ran into the sea with gusto. We weren't expecting to go in the sea but ended up getting soaked from head to toe. We body surfed, had splashing wars, jumped the waves and attempted to play volley ball. It was an incredible day as they were all so happy, and an amazing way to finish off our week.

We both want to say a massive thank you to everyone at Green Lion for giving us such an experience in just two weeks. Short but sweet. It has been a definite highlight of the trip.

Love from
Two very happy girls XXX