Day 2

I've arrived! I'm posting a couple of entries from yesterday and earlier today.

Oct. 12, morning
I awoke at 5:06 this morning to the Ding! Ding! Ding! Of a bell being rung for a morning pooja (prayer) on the riverbank below us. The sky was light and rainbow-hued in the east across the river, and people and animals were moving about. Prashant was still sleeping, so Andria and I ventured out for the first time without his guidance, climbing down the stone steps to the area near the river, and heading to a chai shop for tea. We passed several groups of women gathered in circles chanting and doing something with flowers and holy water in the middle of the circle – some kind of pooja. At the chai shop, a little stall right on one of the sets of steps, a young boy of about 10 intruduced himself to us as Bablo, and started to talk with us in remarkably good English. He was the nephew of the chai-wallah, and talked to us about his family, Varanasi, and other foreigners he has met, and asked us a lot about ourselves and Canada. When we were done our tea and ready to go for an exploratory walk, he offered to be our guide. We wandered along the river, passing people bathing in the river up to their necks at some of the Ghats. Several boys and girls, no older than 7 or 8, followed us for a while trying to convince us to buy the candles they were selling, to launch them on the river and “bring good karma”. As they walked with us they chattered to us about various subjects in hindi and English, and one little girl named Nandini pointed out a troupe of monkeys leaping across the balconies above us, and told me their hindi name. After a while we left the river, and Bablo led us through some of the narrow, winding streets between the houses and shops and high walls, dodging the odd motercycle or child or cow. It was good to start to see what the city looks like as you move away from the waterfront.

Afternoon:
The morning at the office started at 9:30 with the ataff I’d met yesterday, a few new ones, and six of the kids from the morning’s childrens’ programming gathering for morning prayer, and then the morning was spent in getting to know the staff, and a visit to Tulsi Kunj, the new building around the corner that was just acquired, to see it and visit the childrens’ program which has now been moved there. The building is beautiful – two stories of marble floors and white archways around a courtyard – and the spaces where we plan to have the new library Andria’s working on, and the gallery/boutique for the items sewn by the womens’ income generation projects are perfect sizes and well laid out. The ground floor, where the childrens’ program is located, has a number of lovely small classrooms. The childrens’ program serves 2 groups of kids – those who are in school but need extra help with homework, tutoring etc (from poor families, and often with illiterate parents), and those kids who are not in school but are hoping that, with some extra help, they can catch up and pass school entrance exams. Ths morning the group at Tulsi Kunsj were non-schoolgoers, mostly little girls of about six or seven. It was fun to visit their classroom, make weak attempts to greet them in Hindi, and check out some of the classroom’s beautiful Varanasi handmade wooden toys, one of which Andria and I used to practice our shaky hindi counting on in front of a classroom full of children, to general amusement.
After the Tulsi visit, Pravin took us to visit a very ancient holy place – a kind of very deep well, with rough stone steps leading down to it on three sides, perhaps a100 feet down. Near the bottom of the steps is a shrine to the sun, and apparently during the monsoon season, when the water level rises to cover the shrine, it is believed that the combined power of the holy river Ganga and the sun make the site even more powerful. This is a site of pilgrimage and bathing for women hoping for fertility. There was no-one else there, and we were able to sit in silence for a few minutes. It was breathtaking – I wish I had a photo to share, but photography there wasn’t ok.
We’ve had another yummy Indian lunch, and are now hanging about and dozing for a bit. This afternoon we meet with the managers to discuss our work plans for the next six months. This place is wild, and I love it.