Borivali National Park

The Borivali National Park or Sanjay Gandhi National Park is a piece of true rainforest in the middle of Mumbai. With its 104 square kilometers, it is considered the lungs of the city as it helps to purify the air pollution. Moreover, it is rich in wildlife with its around 800 types of flowering plants, 284 kinds of birds, 5,000 species of insects, 36 types of mammals, 50 types of reptiles and 150 species of butterfly, some of which are endangered. At the same time, the park is an amazing place to escape to from the busy town. It is easily accessible by suburban train, the entrance is just opposite the Borivali train station.

Despite heavy rains and my severe cold, I have decided one July Sunday to go for a trekking to this park with Sujeet and his friends Chandan, Makhdum and Parveen. We drove in the car to a point, where visitors would normally take train called Vanrani (Jungle Queen). But we just left the car on the parking place, went a bit back and took a trail across the river, that lead us to the wild nature, not accessible to the standard visitors.

Climbing up through the jungle, partially using the trails, partially walking in the riverbed, we reached a beautiful waterfall, hidden between the rocks. The guys jumped in the waterfall in their clothes and just enjoyed it in the Indian way… Gujarati lunch was served afterwards and I just kept eating more and more teplas, yum!

After another climb up along the rocks that looked like a wall of a castle of Sleeping Beauty, we reached the Kanheri Caves. These were carved by Buddhist monks, the oldest ones about 2,400 years ago.

Despite the rain, many families came here for a walk and enjoyed the stream between the caves. I was astonished to see how the young and old truly enjoyed the refreshing water. Even the ladies did not mind wetting their sarees and salwar kameezes! My new friends were amazed by a different fact – there was a real fog! Apparently, there is not much fog in the sunny India… :)

When we were descending from the hill, it started to rain quite heavily. I was coughing and so did Parveen. Still, looking at a deer family just few meters from the road, I felt very happy in my heart … though rainy, it was such a beautiful day!

If you do not look for the way, you cannot find it

Creation of a vision, that will not be just on the paper, but that will be owned by all at Nareshwadi and that will represent the school externally... such a vision starts of course with the children! Who else should know what is Nareshwadi about, what makes it different, unique? That is why we organized a big “Logo Workshop” for all 500 children on 15 July.

The project team was quite big: Sandra (US volunteer), Leena (Indian volunteer), Amit (HR consultant), Dipesh (call centre agent and leader of Youth for People), Matt (graphic designer) and me. Later on Nina and Sujeet (both from the same company as Dipesh), as well as former students of Nareshwadi joined. From the very beginning, I tried to plan properly: What is the goal of the workshop? Who should be involved and how? How will the day look like? How will we engage both children and teachers? Where can it take place? What resources are needed? What is the budget? What are the actions? … Well, we did discuss, how to explain what a logo is and how to approach 500 children. But we would not agree the details and most of the questions above, before we actually got to Nareshwadi.

I at least updated the project summary and met the teachers to give them a briefing and ask them for help. The reaction was rather cold: Why should we come on Sunday? How does a vision or a strategy concern us? You volunteers always come with yet another idea…but we are just teachers! We had quite a good discussion about these concerns. Thanks God that I didn’t experience this kind of resistance for the first time in my life, I have got quite a good training from our Sales team in Czech republic. :) Finally, we would laugh and all teachers would greet me: “Dobry den!” in Czech. They got relaxed and some even excited.

On the day D, I hoped to finally agree the process and roles on the way in the car… The others, however, remained calm, having a nap before we have reached Nareshwadi. At the big meeting with teachers, Amit for the first time explained to everybody, what will be going on. One teacher and a volunteer were allocated to each class. At the same time, we have finalized the logo presentation, because the original one got lost during the night. Ready, let’s go and to talk to the children!

The opening was done by the school principal, followed by Amit, who quickly generated energy in the big hall. After asking simple questions like: “If you were not here, what would you miss about Nareshwadi?,” children started to call out: Playground! Chickoos! My teacher! Friends! Then, Amit let children guess, what companies stand behind a few examples of logos. Even if children do not use any brands, they did get the Parle G biscuits or Pepsi. Well done! After a short summary, what a logo is, they all got a pack of 12 crayons (Quite a difference to the standard chalk or a pen) and went with their class to play some games before they would actually start drawing a “logo” of the school.

While I was passing through all the classrooms with Amit, I got really impressed by the number of ideas that the children were able to generate. School building, hostel, palm trees, children playing on the ground, water pump, milk van… a lot of the photos were a kind of thank you for the big ifacilities mprovements, which took place in the last year, often with help of volunteers. So many colors, so many nice things that children appreciate!

During the special, festive lunch, the big team of “judges” somehow disintegrated. Teachers went home for their own lunch, some volunteers fell a sleep after the nightshift or stayed with the kids. Nevertheless, we managed to select the final 16 pictures representing the best pieces of work of all 10 classes. They all were so insightful! From my friend Katarina from Czech, we had exactly 16 prizes and thus could start the big celebration!

All 500 children gathered in the community hall. Watching a slideshow with the workshop photos, they laughed so much! Look at him! Look at her! Then Amit announced the winners one by one, their pictures appeared on the big screen and the student got the prize from our special guests (see video for the overall winner). Cheering, clapping hands, sweets for each of them and finally some Bollywood dancing by Nina and me. :)




And what is the winning logo, that Matt finalized? It is made by a student from the 7th standard and it pictures a colorful maze with a motto: “If you do not look for the way, you cannot find it.”

When the whole project team was about to leave back to Mumbai, I decided to stay and enjoy the amazing atmosphere with kids. I would not be able to explain why. But I fell in love with this place!
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If you would like to see more photos from this event, see http://picasaweb.google.com/inusska01/.

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I have also noted some first TIPS, that would be definitely useful for my volunteer work here in India:

LEARNING 1: Always start to learn the people and disclose quite some personal information before you try to engage them in any of your great projects. Applicable not only in India. :)

LEARNING 2: Do plan to make sure that the project will be successful. But remain flexible till the very last moment and do not expect others to plan too. During the process, enjoy the miracle of teamwork, while making sure that things get actually done. Believe in success and celebrate! Easy to say, ha? :)

500 smiling faces of Nareshwadi

Surprisingly, there has never been a common tracking system of Nareshwadi students, not even one list with all their names. To learn all the students, generate some energy and have a quick win, we have decided to make this the first project.

Sandra, my colleague, simply collected the names from the different teachers and invited all children class by class into the big dining hall. I really admired how they were all calmly sitting in rows on the floor, waiting for their name to be called. Sister Phadke and the “farm in charge” Sanjeev helped us to call out the names and check the spelling in English. It was running so smoothly, that we were able to take all photos during 2 afternoons! To give you an idea, I include some of the 500 smiling faces.

The plan is now to collect basic information about the children, from their parent’s details, contact address, or health status, upto school results.

Finally, one of the office clerks should be trained by Sandra and will responsible for the database update. I wonder how will this work! :o)

Nareshwadi – the spirit of “mulana”

If you are coming from Mumbai, the Dundhalwadi area (120 km from Mumbai) would be like a small heaven to you. In the middle of these green fields and plantations, the Nareshwadi school has been established by Dr. Somaiya 30 years ago with the aim to set up an “integrated rural development model of education, health, agricultural development and economic self-reliance for the tribal community”.

When I arrived to Nareshwadi, several smiling faces have greeted me from the distance. And while we were working with Patricia, my boss and the “chief mentor” of the school staff, first children dropped in to say hello. Later that day, the 14 year old Pooja and her friends brought me to their classroom and invited me for the evening prayer. Clapping each others hands, we sang together my first Hindi prayers and I knew that Pooja would be my best friend here. After the prayer, the priest gave me medailon with “Bapu” and the big group of children around me, admiring his gesture, made me wear it. The dinner was about to be served and the children found me a spare plate (which is truly difficult!), so that I can have dinner with them. One of the 6 year old girls brought me a seat as I am not supposed to sit on the ground. I made her sit on it on her own and started to eat the rice and dal with my right hand. While the adults moved to their dining room, we sat in the dark hall and the children completely took care of me. I have never felt so welcome.

As I have learnt, almost 500 students in the age of 4 to 14 attend the school, out of which around 35 children come from Mumbai from HIV/AIDS affected families. Some of them are already orphans, others have infected parents who cannot take care of them.

Almost all children stay in one of the two hostels on the campus all year around. The majority goes back to their families at least during main holidays, but apparently the orphans or “abandoned” children don’t. If they are “lucky,” they stay in the smaller hostel which is provided by the government. There are only 3 rooms, each housing beds for 30 children. In the other hostel built by Somaiya trust, there are 10 rooms, each of them for upto 50 children, which, almost randomly mixed, sleep on mattresses and ground. And because it is monsoon and rain comes through the roof and windows inside, children sleep even in the corridors next to the toilets. However toilets, as currently built by Dutch volunteers from the former storage rooms and corridors, are a big pride of the Nareshwadi school, because for the first time the hostel can fulfill the criteria of 1 toilet per 7 students and get a governmental grant.

I must say I felt really strange, when I went through the dark rooms with hundreds of small nicely packed wet clothes, which were the children’ s only possessions. The strange feeling has not disappear since. The filthy medical room with empty health register did not convince me there is some proper documentation even in the crucial areas. But most importantly, the disputes and fights among the staff that I observed clearly even without knowing a single Mharathi word, showed to me that it will be a difficult job to get anything implemented here in a sustainable way and move forward.

Later that day, Patricia told me the story of Pooja, whose parents died of AIDS, so Pooja thus had to take care of her younger sister Chandni and brother Akshay on her own. However, her uncle thought that the children would be a good source of income as child slaves and he planned to raise some more money also by marrying Pooja soon. To keep them from their uncle and to ensure proper education, nutrition, health care and accommodation, SAHAS did its best to move them all to Nareshwadi. The social workers managed to get a signature from their closest relative, their grandmother, who by the way abandoned them, confirming that they could be brought up at Nareshwadi. And here they are, eager for love, eager to live better lives and to help others…as Pooja said should would like to become either as a lawyer or a nurse.

Patricia added, that the school teachers just do their jobs and so do the so called “houseparents.” They simply perform their tasks, or more often, they don’t even do that, but there is actually nobody to take care of the hearts and souls of these children. That is why they love volunteers who come and spend time with them. I was really touched and promised myself to do my best to make their lives better, remembering the words that Patricia kept saying on the staff meeting: “mul ana” – “for the kids.”

Inauguration of paddy field

To secure successful rice harvest for our trust, the Nareshwadi horticulturalists were carrying a coconut, rice, some spices and incense sticks to perform a prayer, so called pooja, when they met us riding back to Mumbai on July 4. We have decided to stop at the paddy field and I have received the honor to undertake the pooja, while the others were clapping their hands and cheering on.

As I was trying to light the incense sticks covered by several big umbrellas, my burnt hand did not help. When I then washed a stone and started to pound on it with the coconut, which I covered with other ingredients, the stone broke twice before the coconut finally broke. The audience was astonished – not only the stone broke twice, but the coconut broke apart sharply from east to west – what a promising sign!

Faint with happiness, we have started to take photos and suddenly… my brand new camera fell into the paddy field. Oh no!!! Having been in the mud for a few seconds, nothing helped to save her. Well, “what to do?” as an Indian would say. After checking all possibilities and some tough negotiations, I have decided to go for exchange at an official Canon shop near VT station and got the very same Canon Powershot A640 for 9.300,- Rs instead of 16.000,- Rs. This time with a bag though!

So please enjoy these photos, they are truly precious! And even if the manual does not state it, never drop your camera into the paddy field, the official guarantee does not apply on this circumstance. J