Some Thoughts....

Hello there,

We are now sitting in a plush computer lab fully furnished with top of the range computers and internet access which was donated by a Dutch company to Sister Cyril’s school.

We are now on overnight stop in Loreto Day School, Sealdah. Tomorrow we are going on an eight hour bus journey to Bankura, a jungle in the middle of West Bengal, where we have been informed there will be no shops for 20 miles around! An exciting prospect! It makes the experience all the more authentic! As a consequence all the local shops are sold out of any tasty biscuits and dairy milk chocolate they had in stock.

The previous week we have spent working hard on the building site, a couple of kilometres outside of Diamond Harbour. Assisting us on the site were ‘mistry’s the Bengali word for mason the only English words they knew were ‘cement’ ‘NO!’ and ‘water and ‘bricks’. They repeatedly shouted these at us with a bit of Bengali thrown in for good measure when trying to tell us that whatever we were doing was complete rubbish. They were gruff in their manner but they always meant well and they were an invaluable asset on the building site.

We had a constant audience that we picked up every morning while trundling along in our auto rickshaws on the way to the site. They were young and old wrinkled and fresh faced, dirty and clean, all standing with there mouths open staring at us. They were there all day long every day of the week. They never got bored of watching us working away. And regularly shouting “hello goodbye!” Or “what is your name?”

When walking the long brick road home some of the days the rickshaw didn’t come, we walked past young woman draped in vibrant sarrees and shy smiles fascinated by the passing foreigners who dressed just like boys. Scantily clad children skipped along beside us. And Muslim men with perfectly trimmed beards nodded their heads.

Well we’d better sign off now as we have to say goodnight to the rainbow children before they go back to bed. Hoping the weather in Ireland is better than here (its pouring rain!)

Tonnes of love,

Ellen and Sita!