Odds and ends

After a few more downbeat posts, I wanted to lighten the tone with some short anecdotes which fall short of being worthy of entire posts by themselves.

When I first arrived, I was shocked at how the pre-novices would pile their plates at breakfast with slice after slice of white bread, sometimes just taking half or whole loaves at a time and painting each part with thick butter. Meanwhile, I just took a couple of slices, as I might back at home, with a bit of tea. I find it funny how quickly my stomach has adapted though and now I can’t survive the morning unless I’ve had at least (at least!) 5 slices of bread with 3 cups of chai. I’m looking forward to getting back to cereals when I get home…

I once caught one of the pre-novices singing ‘Never Be The Same Again’ over breakfast. I had to question him on this, as it made a change from the usual humming of church hymns. ‘Hold on! Are you singing Mel C?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, sheepishly, ‘I like her music.’

I only discovered recently that as well as football, volleyball and basketball practice, the boys also get the chance to attend karate training during their afternoon games. Today I went along and so had my first ever taste of karate class. I found the idea of me even trying to do karate frankly hilarious – as anyone who knows me might – and, fortunately, so did the boys. I was sweating profusely, struggling to keep up with the teacher’s instructions and utterly failing to keep a straight face – and that was just the warm up! It was really good fun and the boys impressed me with how good they were. Although the teacher did say that it’s a constant struggle to keep the boys interested when they’d rather be off ‘playing football or basketball or tennis or badminton’. I’m not sure that the boys do play badminton, but I take his point nonetheless.

Since a couple of volunteers left a fortnight ago, I’ve been filling in for them at an orphanage just across the road from Bosco Boys. I go in the early evening to help out during the kids’ study time. It’s a wonderful place: the 18 boys and girls are lovely, the atmosphere is relaxing (relative to Bosco Boys, I suppose that is) and the Sister who runs the home by herself always goes out of her way to make sure that I’m well fed, which is obviously very important. She also makes sure that a couple of boys walk me back to Bosco Boys in the evening once it’s dark. On one occasion, as she let us out, I commented that it was so dark I could hardly see a thing. She replied, ‘Well, I can see you because your skin is so white I can see it in the dark!’

So much for my tan, then.