My placement

On Monday morning when we were going to our placements they asked me where I was going and I said St. Jones boys' home and they said no you're not. And it turned out that instead I was going to an all-girls home, and it was the same placement as Raphaelle, one of the French girls who seemed like she liked me the least and who had expressed plainly her desire to be alone in her placement. Nice. But I guess since the time I lent her my computer Raphaelle had decided that I wasn't all bad, and I had resolved to get along with her since we were going to the same placement and going to be roommates, and once we got to the home and interacted with the girls it was a great bonding time, because we were commiserating over our shared experience, and we've both been really nice and accommodating to each other. The biggest thing, though, is that when I see how completely sweet and loving and genuine Raphaelle is to the kids, I have to love her, and I think it applies vice versa as well. When I mentioned to Morgan, one of the volunteers who was here when we arrived, that Raphaelle and I hadn't exactly adored each other a couple days ago, she couldn't believe it. Anyway, everything is fabulous now. Morgan and the other volunteer, Elysia, are great, and the girls are just unbelievably lovable. I'm so glad I'm here. Some of them are a little shy, but they are all really sweet and affectionate.
There are 42 girls from ages 4 to 20 at the home (they don't like to call it an orphanage and will get upset if you do), which is called Jagshanti Ghar and belongs to the organization Udayan Care, if you'd like to google it or something. It's a really nice home, actually, very clean and well-kept-up. The girls are amazingly responsible and do basically everything for themselves. They take turns on "duty" cooking meals and cleaning up, and they dress and bathe themselves and iron their adorable little school uniforms and do their homework dutifully and really don't seem to require any nagging. The whole place runs like a well-oiled machine. It's amazing. There are a few adults who oversee things a bit...the dude in charge is named Brigadier something-or-other (he's a former military man), but he goes by "Uncle," and he is rather stern, from what I hear tell of him. There are a handful of guys who guard the gate, and a handful of women ("aunties") who hang around as well. Besides "Uncle" and the "aunties," the girls consider everyone in the home to be their family, more or less, and they all technically have the same surname (Udayan, after the organization). The volunteers all go by the handle "didi," which is Hindi for older sister, and is a constant refrain around the house. The little girls call the older ones didi as well, so when someone yells "didi!" several people might respond, like if you yell "Mom!" at a family picnic. I love it.
The volunteers don't have much in the way of concrete duties at the home, but we eat with them and play with them and help them with their homework and give them positive feedback. "Didi, my English assignment, 30 out of 30!" or "Rebekah didi, look, my drawing!" There are so many girls that sometimes they pull us in a zillion different directions at once, because everyone needs the didi's undivided attention. It gets a little exhausting, but it's fun, and at least the volunteers have each other's company for when we want to just hang out. Morgan is leaving on Friday, which is really too bad, but the other two girls will be here even after I leave, so we're guaranteed to always have a little adult company who can speak English, unlike the aunties.
The one thing that I'm still having some trouble adjusting to is the heat/humidity, which is insane and oppressive. We take 2 showers a day, and I still always feel like I'm marinating in sweat. Morgan says that eventually I won't notice it, so I really hope that's true. The power died this morning at like 5 something and our fan went off and I woke up because it was so hot. Ayyyy. We don't have hot water, but nobody cares. Seriously, there are two knobs in the shower, and they both say C, which I think is fabulous. We can't actually use the shower head, because like 5 drops of water come out of it, so we use the tap and shower out of a bucket. It's honestly kind of nicer than in the hostel where our shower head was broken off and the water just poured out of a pipe in the wall. There are also, like, no washing machines in India that I am aware of, so we all just hand wash our clothes in the bucket and hang them to dry on the balcony. Clothes dry in no time here...maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's like 100 degrees? It doesn't even get cool at night. Maybe 80s if we're lucky. We've been waking up early a lot for various activities (we went to a meeting with people from the Udayan Care office and volunteers from the other homes yesterday, which was interesting) and are amazed at how much we're sweating when it's only 7 am. Fortunately we have a big old machine at the home that dispenses filtered, treated, and most importantly COLD water, which is amazing, and I feel so much better that I'm not wasting the money and plastic to drink bottled water all the time.
Anyway, I'm off to see if there's somewhere in the vicinity where I can get a water bottle for myself so I can have drinkable water at night, because they lock the doors to the stairwell around midnight so I can't even go down to the kitchen to get water. Also it would be a horrendous hazard if there was a fire, but the lack of access to water is a more pressing issue for me. Last night I didn't have water at dinner because all the cups were in use, and I forgot to get some later, and when I went to bed I was dying of thirst and swore that I would get a bottle asap.

cheers,
Rebekah the sweaty