Instead of waking up to the sound
of traffic coming from the streets of Mumbai, we awoke to the cock-a-doodle-doo
of the roosters and the mooing of the cows.
After a delicious breakfast of agila
and chapatti (both pancake like
foods), we walked from our homestays to Krishna’s house for some morning
activities. We were delighted to see the familiar faces of some of the school
children we had played with the previous day joining our games. After they went
off to school, we prepared for our first lesson in Yakshagana, a traditional religious dance performed at many ceremonies.
It’s so valued that our Yakshagana teacher, Shinivas’s dance team is booked
for the next 20 years. After he performed a seemingly complex
dance, we were very intimidated. But after over an hour of drumming and
dancing, we felt pretty comfortable, until we were told that we would have to
perform it in front of the whole village on Sunday… with only three days of
practice — talk about intimidation!
A couple of
water, or niru, breaks later, we were
ready to start harvesting peanuts. We thought we were making good progress in
our field, until we looked up to see the local men and women picking twice as
fast as we were. They tried to come over and teach us, but it’s easier said
than done. We hope to finish a whole field by the time we leave (but we’re not
getting our hopes up). After all that work, we decided it was time for some
lunch, so we went back to our homestays and ate another delicious meal. After stepping
out of the cold shower (and being immediately covered in sweat again), we
walked over to Krishna’s for some down time, where we were able to play some
games and write in our journals.
We were
excited to go back to the local school to play games with the kids again. We
(somehow) corralled all the kids and taught them Row, Row, Row Your Boat and
Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. We even got the kids to sing Row, Row, Row
Your Boat in a round! We are impressed every day by their enthusiasm, kindness,
and English language skills. Their excitement continued into our game of What
Time is it Mr. Fox. It inspired them to teach us a new game that they call Lagori. We would try to explain it if we
had fully understood what was happening, but we know it involved two teams, one
throwing a ball to knock down a stack of coconut shells, but after that the
rules were lost on us. The kids knew exactly what to do, and beat us every
time. Oh well. Then they creamed us at a game that they taught us yesterday,
where we hop on one leg. One of the boys single handedly tagged all of us out
in one round, whereas it took all 15 of us BC kids to get most of the kids out.
After
another long and sweaty day, we went back to Krishna’s house, accompanied by
some of the kids. There, we did ANCHOR, played a few more calm games, and did a
meditation guided by Susan. We were then joined by some local teenagers, most
of which are our host siblings. We played some name games and icebreakers for
about an hour before heading back to our respective homes. Another cold shower
and amazing meal later, we spent some quality bonding time with our families,
playing games and talking. After this amazing day full of hard work and fun
games, it’s safe to say we all crashed pretty hard. J
-Lily and Gabby
