Hey guys!
Well its day five of our adventure in India! Had such a good day! This morning we headed down to the centre of Mumbai to the Pratham Office as we were supposed to meet Kishor, but he was sick so we had a change of plans last minute! Instead Ruchita took us to Dharavi- the slums that were on the tv show a few months back! Anyone who watched it will know how crazy it looked...but nothing could have prepared us for the smells/sights/sounds and the reactions of everyone! We cannot believe that anyone can live in an environment like it and not realise how dirty it is! (dirty being a major understatement!!) We had to cross the road from the train station to the slums which was a near death experience in itself (a road as wide as a dual carriage way complete with bikes/rickshaws/lorrys/taxis/cars all driving wherever the hell they wanted and us 3 trying to get across -road crossings dont appear to exist here and even if they did no one would pay attention to them!!) We got the usual responses from ppl as we walked through- people either love us or hate us! We headed for the Pratham building- next to the school and it has 3 purposes- pratham, a nursery and an adult ed building where adults can learn skills to enable them to work eg working a sewing machine etc! We had everything that Pratham do there explained to us- they do the usual stuff that we had previously learned about -health/education/child labour rescue. they also work with the disabled children that live there- disabilities range from mental handicaps to amputees.
Then we went to explore the slums....we met some of the children who were absolutely gorgeous! They followed us all around the slums- we felt like the pied piper...at one point there was about 20 kids behind us!! One little girl kept copying everything claire did- when claire put a hand on her hip she did etc it was so funny! Claire taught her to catch kisses when they were blown as well because she kept blowing us kisses! The school children were going crazy when they saw us, they all gathered around and were shouting and wooping it was really funny! Theres a gorgeous photo of them all in their uniforms- once we'd taken it they all kept pushing and shoving each other trying to see it on the camera! We also went into some of the factories in the slums and saw some success cases where pratham has helped make them non-child labour factories "green zones" which was really interesting! The only downside was they were upstairs so we had to climb the ladders...really high and not good for lisa who doesnt like hights!!! After we'd finished at the slums Ruchita took us shopping to Bhandra! There was a mixture of shops and market stalls and we bought some gorgeous jewellery! Then we headed for MacDonalds for dinner- I know shock horror lisa ate a macdonalds meal! Claire was VERY happy!!!! We think we might head back to Bhandra on our day off on Sunday for some more shopping and we'll definately be taking more money! stuff is so cheap but theres so much to buy- gorgeous sandals/jewellery/belts/tunic tops etc etc!! Bring on Sunday!
Tomorrow we're heading to Govandi to the dumping ground (as seen on the programme!) should be interesting/disgusting sights!!
missing you all but having a blast,
love lisa and claire xxx
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