And boy, should Angela have taken that advice!
The sweep-up went very well, working in Madiphur for a couple of hours. We worked with the same people as yesterday, but in a different area. We visited the homes of the children known to the project – and that’s about every under-5 in the area – to innoculte the ones who didn’t turn up yesterday. It was very poor by our standards, but not bad by local ones. Again, everyone was welcoming and smiling and the kids followed us around in a huge pack. The odd thing is that nobody ever asks you for anything, except to take their photograph!
The trouble started as we were about to leave. There was a BBC film crew in the area, covering the event and at the same time doing some filming for Rotary as Eve, the director, just happened to be a Rotarian. As we weren’t in a hurry to get back to the hotel as the rest of our party was (they were heading for Jaipur that afternoon) we were ‘volunteered’ to go with them and be filmed doing the house to house work again, as the crew had arrived too late to do it in the morning.
So far, so good. Angela and I, and Chris, a fellow from Bungay, really didn’t mind going back and doing it again as it had been quite a pleasant experience. The film crew, however, wanted something a bit ‘special’.
We’d seen a huge rubbish dump as we had driven into Madiphur. What we hadn’t realised was that it is home to hundreds of people who make a living out of going through the rubbish –Delhi rubbish at that – and being, literally, a human recycling plant.
It’s five hours since we got back and I still can’t get the stink out of my nostrils. We wound our way through heaps of rubbish that are people’s homes. The paths were covered in mud and God knows what else. Flies were thick everywhere. Cows and buffalo were roaming around. And people lived there, in you can’t believe what kind of conditions. They brought their kids out, and we inoculated them. We didn’t find one that wasn’t crawling, but we just got on with it. I probably don’t want to say any more about it at this particular time.
And then we came back, and went off to a lovely middle-class craft fair at one of the Government buildings, where we bumped into the Chief Minister again. Isn’t it wonderful to be upwardly mobile?
The sweep-up went very well, working in Madiphur for a couple of hours. We worked with the same people as yesterday, but in a different area. We visited the homes of the children known to the project – and that’s about every under-5 in the area – to innoculte the ones who didn’t turn up yesterday. It was very poor by our standards, but not bad by local ones. Again, everyone was welcoming and smiling and the kids followed us around in a huge pack. The odd thing is that nobody ever asks you for anything, except to take their photograph!
The trouble started as we were about to leave. There was a BBC film crew in the area, covering the event and at the same time doing some filming for Rotary as Eve, the director, just happened to be a Rotarian. As we weren’t in a hurry to get back to the hotel as the rest of our party was (they were heading for Jaipur that afternoon) we were ‘volunteered’ to go with them and be filmed doing the house to house work again, as the crew had arrived too late to do it in the morning.
So far, so good. Angela and I, and Chris, a fellow from Bungay, really didn’t mind going back and doing it again as it had been quite a pleasant experience. The film crew, however, wanted something a bit ‘special’.
We’d seen a huge rubbish dump as we had driven into Madiphur. What we hadn’t realised was that it is home to hundreds of people who make a living out of going through the rubbish –Delhi rubbish at that – and being, literally, a human recycling plant.
It’s five hours since we got back and I still can’t get the stink out of my nostrils. We wound our way through heaps of rubbish that are people’s homes. The paths were covered in mud and God knows what else. Flies were thick everywhere. Cows and buffalo were roaming around. And people lived there, in you can’t believe what kind of conditions. They brought their kids out, and we inoculated them. We didn’t find one that wasn’t crawling, but we just got on with it. I probably don’t want to say any more about it at this particular time.
And then we came back, and went off to a lovely middle-class craft fair at one of the Government buildings, where we bumped into the Chief Minister again. Isn’t it wonderful to be upwardly mobile?
No comments:
Post a Comment