India

It’s great to be back here at the orphanage – the kids have all grown up a lot in the last 3 years and many of the older ones have spread their wings and moved away, either working or going on to further study. It’s like we never left and most of the names and even Hindi phrases have returned to us quite easily.

The day starts with a 6:45 breakfast, taken with everyone in the main dining room, then work starts after  7:30am and knock-off is at 5:30 – there’s a fair few breaks in the day which is good since the temperature is hovering around 38 degrees most days.

The new school being built here is almost completed, and my brother Ash and I have been spending our days working on the security system as well as some manual labour preparing the bathrooms for plumbing and tiling. Miriam has been working in the office and in the kitchen, assisting in the preparation of meals.

The biggest changes from our perspective is the number of western volunteers here at the moment – far more than we experienced before with 2 families (with kids) staying for at least a year and also 3 others from Australia (excluding us) on short term visits.The evening meal is taken with the Shipway family, single staff members and volunteers making it a very full room at dinner. The other big change

is the quality of the meals here – when we were here last it was primarily vegetarian and quite bland, but there has been a concerted effort to lift the standard of meals and the children now receive 2 meat meals a week, more fruit and the flavours and variety has improved also.