Tag Archives: India

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Tales of the unexpected.

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One aspect of being involved in Chennai Challenge is the unexpected. Many times in India we have had an unexpected situation that we have had to deal with, some positive and some not, all of which have added to the experience. This weekend is a little unexpected. Well not the weekend itself, but the fact that I am NOT training a team to go to Chennai. As part of the training for Chennai Challenge we normally use the early May bank holiday to take the team to a camp site a practise the activities they will be leading in Chennai, to fill in visa forms, to make sure they know the kit list and look at what it is like in Chennai. However, this year we are not taking a team, but doing a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ work to make sure the Charity is running efficiently and continue to help both volunteers from the UK and people in Chennai.  If you had asked me 18 months ago, I would not have expected this to happen.

I would like to share with you a few ‘unexpected’ stories from my experiences and encourage you to embrace the chance to have some unexpected experiences of your own.

My first trip to Chennai was rather unexpected. All the way back in 2000 I was still studying Chemistry at university. Without really expecting it, I had the chance to get involved with a project run by Guildford YMCA, to go and help in Chennai. A slightly random connection as I was studying in York, but my then girlfriend (now wife) was in Guildford. I didn’t really expect that I would go to India to try and help, but some how I did.

When I arrived in Chennai, it was not what I had expected. Even with people who had been before telling me what to expect, my mental picture was different to the reality. The thing that I found to most unexpected however was the way in which we were welcomed. On the same evening as we had arrived we were taken out to dinner by Madras YMCA. At this point in time I was tired after spending so long travelling and still trying to adjust to being in India. I, and others on the team, bumbled out to dinner wearing what we had travelled in. We arrived at a very nice restaurant. Far nicer than the sort of place I would normally go to in the UK. I felt completely under dressed and quite bemused at why our host were taking us to somewhere so nice, when we had done nothing for them and they didn’t even know most of us. It was totally unexpected by me and a very generous offer of hospitality.  Later I could see the benefits it had, we had no local currency, so would not have been able to buy a meal ourselves on the first night, also the Madras YMCA were thankful for the fact that we had gone there, even before we had started to do work.

I hadn’t expected it, but by the end of the trip I did not have to decide if I wanted  to go to Chennai again, I knew that I had to. So I did, twice more under Guildford YMCA. During those projects so many unexpected things happened, quite often to do with where we we gong and at what time, that just gave a great character to the experience I had.

There is one conversation that I can remember, and I certainly was not expecting at the time. On my last trip with the YMCA I was talking to the head of Madras YMCA (the Late Dr. G. Ebinesan), who told me that I should bring a team of people out. This was a bolt from the blue for me as I expected to keep being a team member more than a leader. Initially this didn’t really change much, however within a few years I would be leading teams out to Chennai with Chennai Challenge.

I didn’t expect that Guildford YMCA would have to stop taking a project to India. This, and the words from Dr G. Ebinesan, were a huge motivation for me in being part of setting up Chennai Challenge with Cathy and Isaac. We didn’t expect to set up a charity, but it has been a hugely rewarding thing to do. Through it we have been able to help people in ways we had not imagined, both people in India and the UK in visible tangible ways and in unseen and personal ways. Our expectations of what a particular team would be like have often been wrong and we have seen people surprise us and themselves with the things they are capable of.

Through these unexpected things I have seen in myself and others things that have developed character, strength and many other qualities. Have you got space for the unexpected in your life? Can you risk it, not knowing what will happen? It might not end badly, it could be rather good. Why not get involved in our 2014 project and see where that will take you. Or you could just comment below on an unexpected event of your own

It’s my birthday

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Today, ladies and gentleman, is my birthday. I suppose I could therefore write a blog entry about myself, my birthday and all the things that I want. If I’m honest I don’t think that would be very difficult.  But let’s face it a list of the things I want would be boring for you and frankly disappointing for me when it turned out I’m not getting all those very expensive things.  So, rather more in keeping with the ethos of this blog I shall instead write about birthdays in general.

Firstly, please enjoy the following list of my favourite birthday facts (which I have just researched on the internet – source of all accurate knowledge):

  1. The tradition of candles on the birthday cake apparently stretches back to the ancient Greeks (what doesn’t?).  They would make round cakes and put candles on the top to represent the moon in an act of offering to Artemis – Goddess of the Moon, Hunting, Animals, the Forest and many more things (greedy).  Although what this has to do with birthdays I am not entirely sure…
  2. The Romans would celebrate birthdays with hedonistic parties, which led to the Christians rather frowning on the practise of celebrating the anniversary of one’s birth.  In fact the ancient theologian Origen declared that “Christians should not only refrain from celebrating their birthdays, but should look on them with disgust.” I shan’t be following his advice.
  3. In some countries with an Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic heritage, people celebrate a name day or Saints Day rather than the anniversary of their birth.  It seems likely that they did this because of the dirty pagan celebrations I mentioned above.
  4. In North Korea nobody is allowed to celebrate a birthday on July 8th or December 17th as these are the days that Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il died.  If you are lucky enough to born on one of these days you have to push your birthday 1 day later to July 9th or December 18th.
  5. I have just done a bit of research into who I share a birthday with…turns out that not very many famous people were born on 9th March – these were the best I could find: first man into Space – Yuri Gagarin and all round impossibly proportioned doll Barbie.  What a hall of fame!
  6. Check out this website for some FASCINATING facts about your birthday.
    http://www.dayofbirth.co.uk/
  7. International Children’s Day is on 20th November, but in India they celebrate 14th November as Children’s Day in honour of the birthday of Jawaharlal Nehru – first president of the Indian state.

So, there you go. 7 moderately interesting facts about birthdays.  My favourite is that I share a birthday with Barbie.  On a more serious note I would like to talk a bit about how birthdays are important when we visit India.  Every year when we visit the Boys Town the team are inundated with requests for their names, their families names and their birthdays.  They make a list of these birthdays and ask the team to sign their note pads.  The next time we visit they will greet team members by reciting their family members and their birthdays back to them.  I think there are two reasons for this.  First of all there is great value in them being able to practise their spoken English with native speakers.  By having the chance to speak English like this they increase their confidence using the language, which is so important in modern India.

Secondly it demonstrates the value they find in our visit.  It is quite touching to arrive at the Boys Town for only the second time and have a young boy recite personal information about you.  That they have spent time memorising something about you is quite humbling.

This was only emphasised for me last year when we received an email into the Chennai Challenge account addressed to one of our team members on her birthday.  It was from a boy named Vignesh, who had made the effort to remember her birthday (over 10 months since her visit) and request the use of his carer’s email account as he didn’t have access to one himself in order to let her know that he had remembered her:

Hope and wish you remember me. I am so glad to wish you a very happy BirthDay Maria. May our Lord Bless you Abundantly

I find this quite amazing, and it reminds me again of the great worth in our visits to Chennai.

So there we go – here is a picture of a birthday cake for your enjoyment.  If you fancy buying me a present how about going here and making a donation towards our work and our future. Many happy returns to you all – even though it’s not your birthday!

A Birthday Cake...because it is my birthday.

A Birthday Cake…because it is my birthday.

Future Forecasting

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A few weeks ago the Project Leaders of Chennai Challenge gathered at the YMCA Indian Student Hostel in London to talk over the future of the charity. In 2009 we created a “brand key” identifying who we are as a charity and helping us to have a recognisable character as well as clear objectives. Each of our individual situations have now changed and with the growth of Chennai Challenge we have to think about what we want to do moving forward. What can we achieve and what do we want to achieve.

It really got us thinking about the reasons we had for starting Chennai Challenge. I know that each of us fell in love with India and specifically with the capital of Tamil Nadu, Chennai. For each of us (Rob, Cathy, Emma and myself) our passion for the people we met there and the belief that God wanted us to do something there led to a change in each of our lives. Our experiences in Chennai and the journey of the charity being born has shaped nearly a decade of each of our lives (5 years in Emma’s case). But at this meeting we found there was something else behind Chennai Challenge. Something about the people we take on project.

We have always believed that the development of the individuals on team is as strong a motive for doing what we do as the small impact we make on poverty relief. But it seems like this is becoming more important for us. I suppose it is unsurprising considering that 2 of us are teachers and 1 of us is a full time youth worker, but we are passionate about personal and social development, growing life skills and education through experience.

So here we are. At the beginning of 2013 and ready to say we’re making some big decisions and we want to do more. I can’t say too much, but we made a very interesting 5 year plan that we got really excited about.

But for now, the question on everybody’s lips: What is the #First50?

6 Projects and counting…

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Every year when we visit Chennai we challenge our team to think about what the new things that they have experienced. Whilst in India over August 2012 we even had a “first times” board on the wall in our meeting room. As people did something for the first time they wrote it up on the wall so that we had a list of first time experiences as long as your arm at the end of the project.

As a project leader I have now been to India with Chennai Challenge 6 times. In total I have visited Chennai 9 times. One would maybe think that my contribution to the first time board was therefore lacking. I can tell you this is far from true.

One of the amazing things about visiting India with Chennai Challenge has been the vast number of new experiences that I have had. Yes, we do a lot of the same things year on year. Every year since 2008 we have visited Yellagiri campsite and run an activity holiday. Every year we have gone to the Independence Day celebrations run by the YMCA around the city. Every year we eat at many of the same restaurants. And yet, every year I find myself amazed by the number of new things I have done and by how different each project is from the year before.

But what really makes each project special and different is the people we take on team. It is a wonderful privilege, and one of my favourite things about being project leader to be able to take people out to Chennai. People who have never been before. One of my most vivid memories of India was when I first walked up Purasavalkam High Road. This road is the route to many of the restaurants that we eat in and is the main road in the area that we stay in. I remember it’s dustiness. I remember the old man with leprosy sitting on the corner of the street. I remember the sounds of honking horns of autorickshaws and motorbikes. I remember the smells of petrol, rotten food and spices from freshly cooked food. I remember the sense of feeling comfortable in spite of how alien it all was.

I can never have that experience again. Not for the first time. But what I have had the honour of doing in the last 6 years is taking new people up that road for breakfast. Every year is a slightly different team, and therein lies the real first time for me each year. I so enjoy watching people react for the first time to the city I love. When we get to move on to visiting Oasis football projects; Blue Edge English Lessons; and of course the YMCA Boy’s Town it becomes even more special.

Each project we run is so enormously different because each team we take is made up of different constituents. Of course, this does mean that when we come home each year we know that that project will never happen again. That combination of personalities and relationships will never be repeated. It can be sad, but mostly I find it exciting. Our shared experience will remain in our memories, and next year perhaps we can share another experience. A new one, with new relationships and new memories.

This goes for the relationships out in India as well. The people who access Oasis’s services and who live at the Boy’s Town. The workers at both charities. Sometimes we get to see old friends, and sometimes they have moved on. The building of new relationships is at the centre of what we do and what we believe, and it is one of the things that makes Chennai Challenge so special.

So thank you to everyone who has ever come on a project with us. You are one of the major reasons that I love this charity. Anyone want to come again?

The little things

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I have to admit that I never really understood why people get so excited and giddy over babies. The mention, let alone the presence of a mini human being can turn grown adults in to doe eyed fools, who speak utter rubbish.

I may now be starting to understand why this happens, after the birth of my first born son. Unlike other babies, he is actually cute and super cool, so people thinking that he is awesome is perfectly understandable to me. As for me I have turned into a nonsensical fool, babbling sounds that mean nothing, pulling ridiculous faces, and doing actions that are utterly foolish, just for the amusement of this 16 week old. It looks like, for intents and purposes that my brain has turned to mush, which I can only guess happened to other people first.

This means that my happiness is highly linked to the happiness of this small person. Fortunately he is a very happy baby, and can generally be made happy with very simple things, a change of nappy, some food or a cuddle. One of the things that makes me very happy is blowing in his face. as you blow in his face, he normally smiles and giggles.

The simplicity of babies is brilliant, a small action can be seen to bring such pure happiness. Even though a baby can’t communicate clearly with you, you can see the positive impact your small actions have. One of the things I have seen with Chennai Challenge is how small actions can make a huge difference.

Taking away all of the money that Chennai Challenge has raised and spent on various projects over the past 6 years, and just looking at the time teams have spent in India a huge impact can be seen. Many of the young people we work with in Chennai can’t express in English the thanks that they want to, and yet looking at them, their smiles and the joy on their faces, shows how much they appreciate people going to spend time with them. Just like a simple act can make a baby happy, playing a game of thumb wars or pat-a-cake can have a huge impact on the life of people in India.

I think that this is one of the things that I like so much about Chennai Challenge and the work that it does, the simplicity of things. Just by going and spending time with people helps lift them from their situation, helps to show them love and bring, even if for a small time, some happiness. All of you who have been on a project, or supported us in anyway are part of that. Just like a baby, bringing happiness can be very simple.

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