My first week in India

My first few days in India – 11^th April

I was met from the plane in Bangalore by Molly, a lady who lives near Washington DC who will be working with me in Hassan. She has also quit her job and will be in India for somewhere between 3 and 6 months. She had been in the airport since 1am (my flight arrived about 8am) – she had waited so that the Salesian Sisters didn’t need to collect both of us at different times.

Just after 8.30am a nun appeared in white and helped us with our bags to a car that transported us back to the provincial house. We arrived to find some nuns on retreat (so they couldn’t talk for 6 days) and some kind hearted nuns who greeted us with chapattis and coconut sauce, fruit (lovely sweet bananas and green oranges) and tea. We were also given another snack and supper by these nuns before a well-deserved sleep.

The next day a car had been organised by one of the nuns to take us to Hassan. They had packed us a bag of goodies for the journey (chocolate cookies, peanut crunch, oranges) which was lovely of them as this will probably have come out of their own pocket. The journey in the air conditioned car was pleasant as most of the roads were (surprisingly) new and smooth and, once we found the orphanage, we were greeted by 40+ excited girls who treated us to a song (I noted that they could sing which boded well for the musical!) and helped us with our bags. Sister Mary gave us both a beautiful flower and welcomed us with a handshake and a hug. We were given coconut water (which was nice and refreshing)and shown to our room – a twin room with basic beds, mosquito nets, a desk and a balcony. All we need really! After a little while we came down to be pounced on by the girls. Each one wanted to ask questions, to hold my hand and to be close to me. They were fascinated by my camera and insisted that I take photos of them each in turn. My camera then disappeared and it only came back when the card was full and they were struggling to take more photos. I have since looked at the photos and the latter 20 have all been taken through a smudged lens – obviously someone has put grubby fingers all over it!

Sister Mary informed us that there are 42 girls here currently and 30 will join us on the surfing trip on 23rd. She also told us that most of these girls will go home after the surfing, leaving only 8. Our initial plan was to stage “The Wiz” to an audience over a one week period after 5 weeks of rehearsals with 30 girls. Now the plan has changed drastically. We have 9 days before surfing, in which time Sister Mary has asked us to teach the 42 girls as much as we can! We will learn some of the musical numbers and I will ask the girls to help to choreograph as well. I have most of the costumes already for the lead characters and, in downtime in between learning the songs, we will make masks and other costumes for the other characters. The plan (which will probably change about 20 times before we go surfing!) will be to perform the numbers we have, in costume, with a backdrop created on a sheet with the 42 girls the day before we go surfing. After we get back from surfing and the number of girls drops to 8 Molly and I will have to further plan during the surfing trip. I genuinely have no idea what we’re going to do – scary and fun in equal measure!

16^th April update:

We’ve been rehearsing for 4 days now. We have learned “He’s the Wiz” and we have learned the dance (which was choreographed during the night when my jetlag wouldn’t allow me to sleep!) and “Brand New Day” (also choreographed at 3am!). We have decided that, because we have very little time, we will do a condensed version of the story and we will have narrators who will read from a sheet of paper so that no-one needs to learn the script as it’s in their second language. We handed out the costumes yesterday to the lead characters and they were over the moon! They were very excited to put the costumes on and they all looked brilliant. It brought a lump to my throat. The lion that Mum made is a particular favourite of mine along with the Tinman costume that I borrowed from Upstage Centre. Molly and I made monkey masks yesterday for 4 flying monkeys – Molly is great at crafts and I am enjoying being creative again (even if my job yesterday only consisted of cutting out the card and fur that Molly had outlined!). Molly will work with the children over the coming days to create a backdrop (some of them are quite good at drawing) and a scaled down version of a hot air balloon and I will choreograph the tornado dance. Mary is playing Dorothy and she is working super hard. She is trying to learn the finale song and she has spent hours so far with the CD trying to memorise the words and the tune! She will be wonderful. Swetha, our little Wicked Witch, has no inhibitions so she is running up to everyone and scaring them – she’s brilliant and takes direction very well.

Aside from doing the show, the girls take a lot of naps, spend quite a lot of time praying and play with the ball (throwing and catching) for hours. Their favourite phrase currently is “Please put up, Auntie” when they’d like me to throw the ball high for them. They’re getting very good at catching it from height and getting better at saying please (they learned quickly when they realised I wouldn’t do it when I was ordered to!!!)

Molly and I were taken around the very small village where the boarding house is today by Kavitha and Jennifer. They both speak English very well so it was a pleasure to spend some time with them. We saw the schools (one for years 1-7 and one for years 8 to 10), the church and the river (or where the river should have been as it is dry season so it is just soil). The female locals were very interested in us – one lady asked us our names and volunteered her own and one lady invited us to sit on her porch to chat to her via our young translators. We made sure that we didn’t make eye contact with the men as this is seen as a sexual advance (!) and we waved at the boys who were waving and fishing in the mud. Once again they wanted us to take their photo.

We have 4 more days before we perform (and 5 more days before the 15 hour bus ride to surfing!!). Hopefully we can pull off something special! At the very least we’ve all tried hard and had a good time rehearsing!