Food and Hygiene (not sure why I've done them both in the same blog?!)

Food:

I have been a vegetarian since coming to India (except for some prawns and a chicken wrap that I had at the beach from a Cockney man’s coffee house) and so far my body is enjoying it.I very occasionally get cravings for lamb or beef but these pass quickly.

The food we get at the boarding house is plentiful and I haven’t really felt overwhelmingly hungry since I’ve been here. I was surprised initially at how good it tastes as well. There is rice for every meal, including most breakfasts, and there are usually 2 or 3 vegetable dishes to go with them. The dishes are not usually very spicy and the chillies are usually pretty easy to spot (although one meal time Molly and I both managed to accidentally eat a chilli at the same time. We had synchronised tears running down our faces as we both desperately reached for the water!). There are lots of green beans, ‘lady fingers’, onions and squashes in the dishes and, to my surprise, very few tomatoes (as I would usually choose a tomato based dish when I eat Indian food in UK). We usually get an egg dish each day, my favourite being the egg with spicy cabbage) to give us the protein we need and on occasion we have had lentils and chickpeas. They also do a very nice boiled carrot dish that is seasoned with black pepper and they do the same with potatoes. We usually eat the same food for dinner as we had for lunch which can get a little repetitive but I feel full after each meal and that is the main thing. One thing I am missing in my diet is calcium as I am not drinking the milk (the one thing that made me ill in Nepal) but I will rectify this when I get to a big city to get some supplements.

My favourite breakfast so far has been chapattis and spicy peas. We were also quite enjoying the noodles for breakfast (there was something slightly naughty and student-like about eating them) until we realised that they were packet noodles that had just been boiled up and served. I watched the children make their own chapattis in the first week that I was here and I’m very glad to say that these were not the chapattis that we ate. The reason for this is that each chapatti is handled by at least 5 children before it is cooked. The chapattis are rolled out on newspaper (for added lead poisoning!) and the balls of dough are thrown across the floor as they are shared out to be rolled. Molly and I have been asked to do some training with the girls on hygiene and this will feature in the session!!

We are always offered a desert after each meal and this is usually papaya, banana, watermelon or Jack Fruit. The bananas are tiny and very sweet and the Jack Fruit has an interesting floral taste. I am still undecided on the Jack Fruit but I will continue to eat it as it’s not offensive. Apparently we ate some of the Jack Fruit for breakfast the other day – they can make it into a curry then it is not quite ripe. I melted my Easter egg that Mum got me in the sun about a week ago and made chocolate covered banana for all of the Nuns – it was a good day (and, ironically, helped with my calcium deficiency!)!!!

Snacks are interesting in India. Because they have a ‘the guest is God’ belief in India we are given tea and snacks at around 11am and 4.30pm every day. It took them a while to come to terms with the fact that both Molly and I were asking for black tea (they make their tea with milk instead of water here) and they still don’t understand that we don’t take sugar! Every snack here is either tooth decay or heart attack on a plate! Most of the snacks that we have had have been pleasant but most of them have a very different texture to what you would expect (it’s almost as if the taste and texture don’t marry up). My favourite snack is either the spicy peanuts (that have been fried, of course!) or the Bombay mix, similar to the mix that you would get back in UK.They also offer us a strange sweet snack that seems to be fried honey/ sugar. I don’t like this at all – it’s far too sweet.

Usually we eat at the table in the dining area with the Nuns and the girls eat on the floor in the main room of the boarding house with metal plates and metal beakers. When we went surfing we ate with the girls in the restaurants that the surfers had picked out. I was very surprised to see that a lot of the girls didn’t eat their vegetables, like lots of the children in UK. Considering that most of the children have come from very poor backgrounds where food is scarce, I was surprised to see them turning down food. The girls had also never eaten prawns before and had no idea what they were (which is understandable as none of them had ever been to the coast before!). The water at mealtimes at the beach was always ice cold – another thing that the girls found strange as they usually just drink from the tap which is, at best, luke warm. All of the girls eat with their right hand (the left is used for cleaning after going to the restroom) and it’s actually an impressive skill that I am yet to master. They even managed to eat rapidly melting ice-cream with their hands and were surprised to see Molly and I eating it with spoons!

Hygiene:

Yesterday Molly and I had to clean wounds that 3 of the girls had got at the beach (they had only just told us 2 – 4 days after they cut themselves). The girls didn’t know that they needed to clean cuts and grazes or they would get infected so two of the girls were in a bit of pain. This will be another thing that Molly and I will educate them on.

Angel has been at the boarding house for about a year now. Before that she was living on the streets with her sister, Roselin which explains a lot of what I am about to tell you. Angel’s left knee is constantly weeping pus. Apparently she has had this ailment for about 3 weeks but not told anyone (this may have been learned on the streets: bad leg = more money from begging?). The reason that the leg got this bad is because Angel, like lots of the girls here, doesn’t wash very often at all. As there is a water crisis here the girls are limited to 3-4 baths per week (and unlimited hand-washing) but Angel doesn’t wash anywhere near as often as that. We’re not sure if this is, again, learned from being on the streets (dirtier = more money from begging), whether she is unaware that washing is essential to good health or whether she’s just lazy. Molly and I will put together a training session on the importance of washing and how to wash (as lots of the girls wash with underwear on which means that the most important bits aren’t getting cleaned – we’ve noticed a lot of scratching in this area recently!).

Yesterday I took the girls in groups of four and showed them the proper way to wash their hands. I explained that they need to use soap each time they wash and I showed them the NHS approved hand washing technique. A lot of them were very surprised to learn that I have a qualification in hand washing (I have a certificate and everything!!!) and I think this made them realise how important it is to do it right. Most of them listened to me and took in the information – let’s see if it can become common practice now! At the end of the training sessions I looked a little shrivelled as I’d washed my hands about 10 times (and then I proceeded to wash my hands again for dinner, just to be sure!)!

Headlice are a real problem here. Thankfully Molly and I have been pretty careful with our hair (mine is permanently plastered to my head) so we haven’t got them. We’re also very careful about letting the girls touch our heads or letting their hair get too close to ours. Lots of the girls, particularly the younger girls, have very itchy heads. They sit outside and groom each other – they remove the eggs, crush them between their nails to kill them and then wipe them on their clothes! Molly and I would like to buy them some headlice removal kits but this is only part of the problem. We will also have to provide education on how they are transferred from child to child to prevent them from getting them again when they go back to school or when the other girls come back from spending their summer at home.

I had my first run in with bed bugs the other night. We spent the night at one of the orphanages in Kerala (about 4-5 hours away from the beach that we surfed at) so that we could breakdown the journey a little bit. I woke up the next morning covered in bites. They looked different to mosquito bites (although I had a couple of them too) so I checked on the internet and I’m pretty sure that the bed was infested with bed bugs. I spent the 16 hour bus ride home the next day feeling very itchy indeed – it’s died down a bit now!Thankfully I won’t need to stay there again!