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Hi everyone! Sorry it's been a while, we've tried unsuccessfully a few times to update the blog and have also been really busy the past few weeks. We have now finished our volunteering stint and have been relaxing and seeing the sights of Cochin (kochi) for the last four days. It's a great city with different islands to explore by boat. We're staying in Fort Cochin which is the historic part of the city where the Portugese build their first fort on the Malabar coast. It's touristy but has a lovely atmosphere, good shopping and restaurants. We visited 'Jew Town' (yes it's actually called that!) which is where the Jewish community resided before most of them moved to Israel after being granted residency there a few years ago. Jew Town has now been taken over by shops run by people from Kashmir, some of the antique furniture is beautifully made, it would be a bit tricky fitting it in the old backpack though! Cochin is also great because you get served beer in teapots due to the high licensing laws on alcohol. We've decided beer tastes nicer out of a quaint teapot so are going to carry on the tradition at home!
The last few weeks of volunteering were really good. We did various arts and crafts activities at the different centres which all seemed to go down well with everyone. We particularly enjoyed making masks and cards with the children at the school and girls' home as everyone involved ended up being caked in glitter from head to foot! We had quite a bit of sponsorship money left over at the end and felt it was needed most greatly at the girls' home. The woman who runs the home said the girls didn't have pillows so we thought this would be a great thing to spend the remaining money on. Santha took us to a shop in Tiruvalla and we proceeded to buy 40 pillows and cases. Luckily the womens' centre have a jeep and they offered to take us and the pillows to the girls' home (it would have been pretty difficult to have taken 40 pillows by bus!) The jeep driver was called Joey and he was another maniac driver, at least we had 40 pillows to give us some much needed padding! The pillows and us made it in one piece and the girls seemed very pleased with their new pillows.
The last week of volunteering was very challenging for us. When we arrived at the mental health home on the Monday morning as usual there was a young woman we knew from the orphanage looked in one of the cells. It was very shocking to see her in there as she was very upset and had no bed or chair and only water to drink. The women who work in the home don't speak much english so it was difficult to establish why she was in there. We called Santha to get some advice as the women would not let her out. It transpired that she had become violent at the orphanage the previous night and the hospital would not admit her until the Monday so they took her to the mental health home and locked her in the cell. We tried calling the general secetary of the womens' centre all day to no avail. We tried really hard to get the workers to let us put a bed inside the cell and to go in the cell to talk to the woman but they would not unlock the door. Eventually we spoke to the general secetary and expressed our concern and outrage at what they were doing and pointed out they were breaking the woman's human rights by locking her up. The general secetary was adamant that they didn't have any other choice as she had been violent. She clearly didn't want to listen to out point of view and kept saying that things are different in India. We said we accepted that but they still had no right to lock anyone up, especially with nothing to sleep or sit on. Carly took a photo of the women locked up as evidence and the general secetary pretty much threatened us saying that we had to delete the photo as it was breaking the law.
We felt very torn about the whole volunteering process after this because in one way we felt that Kerala Link should not support an organisation which does this to people. However, on the other hand if they stop sending volunteers then things like that are still going to happen and the people we have so enjoyed working with will miss out on support and fun provided by volunteers. We concluded that volunteering through Kerala Link is good but each volunteer needs to strongly challenge any behaviour like this that they see happening, if this happens hopefully things will gradually improve. We are going to write to Kerala Link about this when we get back.
We also witnessed children being hit with sticks at the school and girls' home. We challenged the teachers and head of the girls home about this. It's difficult to know how much of an impact this had but again all volunteers need to challenge this as it's against the law now in India and obviously very damaging to the children. So it was quite a full-on last week! We definitely felt ready to leave Tiruvalla and move onto the holiday part of our trip. However, overall the volunteering was a life changing experience and we will always remember the children and adults we worked with and will hopefully go back to visit them in the future.
Between volunteering we also spent a weekend in the Ghat mountains and did a jeep safari in the Periyar Wildlife Park where we didn't see elephants or tigers but did see lots of monkeys, birds and giant squirrels! It was quite chilly up in the mountains which was a welcome break from the humidity, we even enjoyed a hot shower! We also went to Varkala for a weekend which has a lovely beach which is great for swimming and body boarding-we finally got to board woohoo!
We're getting the overnight train to Goa tonight, we're very excited! We're going to do sight seeing for the first week and are going to spend the second week on the beach! Can't believe we've only got two weeks left in India, we're not looking forward to coming back to the wind and rain!
We'll update again from Goa, so it's goodbye from Kerala!
Lots of love Beth and Carly xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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