Alright, here it is, the promised description of the Institute. There are about 100 girls there, minimum age is supposed to be 16 on the birth certificate - however many of them don't know their age, and whole villages will apply with the same birthdates for everyone, or sisters who are a few days apart. Over the past week a new group of girls has been slowly moving in, with more coming almost every day. They should be almost all here by now, and will be here for 6 months, so I get them almost from start to finish!
There is one main building, which has 3 dormitories - basically just large rooms, which are essentially empty during the day, and at night they roll out thin mattresses along both walls to sleep there. The girls have a common bathroom, and there are two large classrooms. There are also two staff rooms and the volunteer bedroom, where I live. Upstairs is the kitchen and another large room, where we eat our meals and they use for some group stuff during the day as well as formal occasions. There is also a large open space (which is really the roof of the stuff downstairs) where they keep the girls dishes and have taps for washing up after meals. Our meals are usually cooked by solar heat, though lately it's been mostly over wood fire or gas because with the monsoon there isn't enough sun most of the time. There is also a guest room on this floor and one downstairs as well.
Next to the main building on one side is Janak and Jimmy's house. They run the Institute, and are really great people. Janak is native to India and has been here since the Institute started, and Jimmy is from Ireland, though now much browned by the Indian sun.
Opposite Janak and Jimmy's house is what was a workshop and before that the only building here, and is currently torn down and being rebuilt. Next to that is the office, which contains the library (albeit a very small one) and a computer room, and Janak and Jimmy each have their own offices.
Behind the office is farmland. We grow mangos, bananas, papayas (i think), lemons, mint, pumpkins and some other stuff. We also possess about 6 or 7 peacocks - which make a sound not unlike that of a gigantic cat meowing - some dogs, two cats and now 3 two-week-old kittens. Plus Jimmy thinks the other cat is pregnant too! Anybody want to adopt some cats? We're allowed to take whatever we want from the gardens, but unfortunately not too much is growing right now except for lemons and some terribly unripe mangoes.
First thing in the morning is farmwork of some kind with the girls. It's hard to sleep too much past 6:30 around here as there are girls making noise all over the courtyard which is right outside my window. I've only been able to actually get myself moving at that hour for the past two days though.
At 9:00 breakfast is served - the girls always have Poha, wich is basically sort of a fried rice with onions and stuff in it. It's ok, but I couldn't eat it all the time. So instead Elisa and I go to the kitchen and make Chapatis! In the kitchen is Manju, who calls us "bitte" (meaning my child), and teaches us words like "ata" and "gundo" meaning, respectively, flour and dough, while we mix the chapati dough. Then once it's mixed you pinch a small ball off and roll it up, douse it in some ata and start rolling it out into a nice flat round disc. We're usually two slow though, and before long someone else takes the rolling pin out of our hands and tells us not to work and go sit while they make it for us. The Chapati disc gets thrown on the cooker to puff up until it's nicely browned, then we take them down to our room and eat them with Janak's homemade mango jam. YUM!
After breakfast we normally do some kind of office work or whatever needs to be done. I've been doing some sewing this past week, and eventually will be teaching some of the more advanced girls (who know some english) to do some patterning, so that they can teach the other girls. The past two days Elisa and I have started planting a garden in front of Janak and Jimmy's house where we'll grow some western herbs and vegetables, which will be nice.
And that's enough for now! I hope you appreciate it, as I've missed lunch while writing this! Hopefully Elisa will have saved some for me though. We'll see. Good news: Jimmy has a card reader, so I can get my digital pictures online! I probably won't get a chance to do so until next week or so though. Take care and much love,
Me.
