Catch-up One: Exploring

Hello again! This is an entry I wrote to put on here last month, but couldn’t get on the internet. It’s a little out-of-date, but it’s a start!

Last week the children were off on holiday, so it was very quiet around the compound with just the sisters and house girls (who cook for the sisters and boarders) for company. We used the time to do a bit of exploring!
Firstly, we took the bus into the city (Madurai). The school is less than 5 miles from the city centre, but the roads are very bad so it takes about half an hour to drive in. The nearest bus stop is about a 15 minute walk away, so getting into the centre can take quite a while. We found the right bus though, and the conductor was very helpful and made sure we got off at the right stop. We thought the city centre might be more westernised than the suburbs, but it is nothing like Manchester or Bolton! There are lots of small shops, but also a lot of street sellers on the pavement so you often have to walk on the road. The traffic is terrible and crossing the road can be very scary! Only the main roads are tarmac; most of the roads are just dirt/sand, even in the city centre. There are often also cows at the side of the road that you have to walk around. There are no recognisable shops like McDonalds or ASDA, and most of the signs are written in Tamil so we just have to look in to see what they sell. The people are very friendly, and as we walked down the street many came up to say hello or to ask us where we were from. We walked to the Meenakshi temple (that isn’t the full name but I can’t spell it!) which is a massive Hindu temple with a dozen towers and 33 million statues! The first day, we just walked around the outside, but went back to go inside another day. It’s really spectacular!
It’s just coming up to rainy season here, and it began to rain quite heavily so we started to walk back to the bus station. However, as we came to the main road we found that it had flooded and was under about a foot of water! We had to wade through the water to cross to the bus station, and at times the water was above our knees so we got rather wet! We waited for an hour for a bus before giving up and taking an auto back to the school. On the way we realised that the buses couldn’t manage to cross the flooded road so some (including ours) were turning around at the train station. The water was so deep that it came into the bottom of the auto, I’m not sure how we made it through! We made it back in the end though.
Another day, we went to the Gandhi museum. The people here are understandably very proud of Gandhi, and 2nd October is Gandhi day which is celebrated across the country. The museum details some of the history of India, and I must admit that at several points I felt ashamed of the way the British treated the Indian people. There was also a large section on Gandhi himself, including some really inspirational things he did to encourage co-operation between different religions and castes and to lead a peaceful protest against British rule.
At the end of the week we went on a day trip with the sisters to Tiruchirapalli (Trichy for short). We had to get up at 4am and walk up the road to meet the bus, as the road outside the school has collapsed following heavy rain. The sisters have a noviciate in Trichy (where women train to become a sister) and we arrived there in time for mass at around 7:30am. After breakfast we went to visit the priest’s house then went to a dam across a large river, which is a local tourist spot as it’s a bit like the seaside beyond the dam. Some water was coming through the dam, and all the sisters stopped to wash their hair in it! This might seem very strange, but in a place where most people have to wash using water out of a bucket, having a shower is a bit of a novelty so they wanted to make the most of it! The weather is so warm that their hair was dry again within a few minutes.
That’s all I have time for now, but we’ll be on again soon!

Love Mrs Ball