It was a real blessing to see all the changes that had happened in just the short time I had been away. The hostel and school building is nearly finished and the new displays and lights make such a difference. The children are very proud of their new classrooms and of the exciting learning that is taking place in them. The reading corners are inundated and teachers have to ask children to put down books so they can actually teach a lesson!! The next step is to provide the wiring for the computer room so the children can start to learn IT skills.

The current volunteers, who are doing an amazing job, are busy preparing a production of “Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat” with the children. A stage is being built at one end of the hostel and plans are in place for costumes. They are also making use of the bibles that have now been bought for the children and are planning a youth group for the older children.

There is a real need for more volunteers later in the year. The more volunteers there are the more that can be done to support the children and develop the site

My driver had emerged from the mob in arrivals and we now sat awkwardly side by side in his car. Attempting to make conversation I asked him about his family, he had a wife and a number of children, he clearly had a reasonable job working for a travel company but seemed irksome. His sullenness was soon explained by the fact that I’d got my arrival date wrong, this was the second night he’d had to spend away from his family and stuck in the airport. The awkwardness increased as I stumbled an apology. Giving up hope of some friendly ‘banter’ I turned to soak up my surroundings, Delhi at sleep. Lying on benches, on the top of lorries, and curled up in hundreds of green and yellow golf-buggies ( I later learned were called ‘tuk-tuks’) were men, wearing light cotton shirts and trousers, fast asleep. We drove past buildings and squatter settlements, cows and packs of dogs, phone booths and Hindi shrines and eventually down a series of side streets we arrived at my hotel. With a yell and a crash on the gates the night porter was woken, he grumpily opened the gate and dragged my case to my room, when I explained I didn’t actually yet have any rupees for a tip, he muttered something incomprehensible and slouched out. Slamming and locking the door behind I collapsed onto the bed, wincing, when I realised the mattress was a couple of centimetres thick, I’d arrived.

Waking the next morning, foggy with jet-lag and lacking both money to buy, and the trust to eat, hotel food, I breakfasted on the supplies bought in Heathrow, Pringles and Malteasers. I had come to teach in a school in Northern India called Joybells. Friends of mine in England had put me in touch with a lady called Joy who had set up the school and taken in fifty-two children who were orphans or whose families couldn’t look after them. There was only one formal master to teach these children who aged between 2 and 11 and had vastly diverse abilities. For the rest of that morning I waited, somewhat nervously for Joy and Chris (a boy the same age as myself from Australia) to arrive. About 11:00 the phone rang and I was told they were in the lobby. I wandered round and was instantly embraced by Joy, her enthusiasm, warmth and openness at once putting me at my ease. The next few days were spent with Chris, whizzing around the sites of suffocating hot Delhi via tuk-tuk. After three days of being attacked my hoards of shopkeepers, tuk-tuk drivers, and wannabe tour guides, I was ready to escape. The drive with Joy up to Dera Dun, the town near the school, took six hours. It wasn’t the distance that caused the length but rather the huge variety of transport that muscled for position along the narrow road. Glancing to one side I’d marvel at the fact that an entire family could fit on to one motorbike (literally 5 to a bike), looking to the other I’d notice in the meantime we’d been swerving to avoid the cow (sacred in India) that was placidly sitting right in the middle of the road, indifferent to (or perhaps enjoying) the havoc it was causing. Whilst our driver dodged, Joy talked. She told me of the history of the school, how she’d had her heart broken for the poor children of India. She longed to give them an education so that they could have a chance of a future. Joy would never mention it unless you asked her, but she had previously, with no money whatsoever, set up a school in a different state of India. Her and her mother had started a chicken poultry as one of many ways they sought to raise funds to educate those who couldn’t afford fees. By the time Joy left the school it was achieving the best exam results in the whole of that state of India and was being run by a woman who Joy taken at the school when she was a little girl.

By the end of the drive Joys passion and love for her ‘babies’ was plain and I was both excited and nervous as we pulled into the drive of the school. Stepping out of the car I was at once surrounded by fifteen young children, they placed flowers around my neck and fought each other to grab one of my fingers. On the way up Joy had been quietly nursing her broken and bandaged hand yet, despite the pain it clearly caused her, she was more than happy to let the children hold tightly to her fingers. My mini-guides gave me a mini-tour of the school, I was proudly shown neat exercise books, well-made beds, from the brown, earth, playing field to the dinner hall and kitchen. The children themselves didn’t speak much English but enough for us to communicate with each other. After seeing the school I was shown to my room, dragging in my suitcase and shutting the door I collapsed onto the bed… and winced…

My time at the school was incredible. I was given the 8-11s to teach English, Maths and Social Science. We had three hours of lessons in the morning. I was completely taken aback by the children’s desire to learn. Having sent them off for a break I’d soon be inundated by calls of “Andy Sir! Lesson Sir!” I certainly found teaching English a challenge, my acting skills no doubt improved over the week but more difficult than verbs were words such as ‘then’, (if you don’t believe me when I say it’s a tough word to explain try it…). Another obstacle was the wide range of abilities within the 16 children and it was only after a week I was able to suss out who could do the maths and who was just good a copying. Little ‘discipline’ was ever needed, most of the firm words I used were, bizarrely enough, to do with the classroom rubber, about which there would be frequent and shrill cries of “Gimmie rubber!” To which ‘Andy Sir’ would inevitably respond “Please may I have the rubber…”

Come 4:00pm, when the heat had lessened I would teach sport while Chris taught music. We’d take the ‘big ones’ and ‘little ones’ in shifts. I loved these afternoons, as the monsoon season arrived the brown playing field and the thick forest along the side exploded into a rich, vibrant green. Looking up I could see the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, the tops often poking out of the clouds that had sank into the valley. Despite the many games I tried to teach the children their favourite turned out to be “Tag Sir, play Tag!” I soon discovered that, when playing Tag, f the boys were allowed to be ‘on’ then they would soon start hitting each other and if the girls were ‘on’ no one would ever be caught! As a result most afternoons at Joybells saw me pelting around the playing field after numerous giggling, and surprisingly elusive, children. It definitely kept me fit. They may have been small but there were plenty of them and they could disperse… more over by the time I’d caught the last one the first ones were denying they’d ever been caught! Come 8:00 we’d walk the children back up to the school and hand them over to the staff for dinner and bed. By this point it wasn’t the kids but me who was knackered…

The evenings at Joybells were spent with Joy. Myself and Chris would sit on the porch outside her room, eat and chat. Joy, who all the children adored and called ‘Ma’, is a truly amazing woman. The way she relentlessly loved and fought to get the best for the children was a challenge and an inspiration. She’s faced many trials including a car accident from which she emerged having had a complete memory loss. She regained her memory only after a period of years and still suffers from serious migraines (which, of course, she refuses to go to hospital to get proper treatment because she doesn’t want to be away from the children for too long). It was rammed home to me just what she’d already achieved when she tenderly got out her photo album and showed me the pictures of the children when they’d first arrived a year before. They were filthy and had a hunted, worn, look about them. The quieter, shyer ones, she explained, were that way because many of them had suffered atrocities from abuse. One only had to visit the neighbouring town and look at the conditions the children lived in there to realise how much Joybells gave to its children. Entering the local town I’d be beset by cripples, women and children carrying babies, asking for money so they could feed themselves or their children. The experience would be enough to shake most people to the core. Retreating back to the school, that Joy aims to expand to 450 children, the contrast would be striking.

My days at Joybells blended into weeks, the corn shot up around me, the forest crept closer and closer, I saw monkeys raiding mango trees and children raiding cherry trees. As the days went by and I got to know the children as individuals I grew fonder and fonder of them. You quite simply could never meet more loving, accepting, genuine, children who took such delight in life. We’d go on walks in the forest, where mushrooms would be a constant source of fascination, the ‘big ones’ would take off their t-shits to cover the ‘little ones’ and protect them from insect bites, and I would be somewhat bemused by the endless stream of flowers that the children picked and brought, beaming, to present me with. It was too soon the date to head homeward arrived. The kids had gotten wind that I was leaving, it was quite simply heart-breaking having to explain why I had to go, even harder to explain why it would be a long time before I could come back. A young boy of 8 put his hands, in the shape of binoculars, up to his eyes and told me that if I looked through them then I’d be able to see Joybells…

The morning I left Joybells the children walked me to the gate at which they’d shyly greeted me a month before. We were all quiet. Trying to say goodbye to Joy the words stuck in my throat and I viciously fought back tears as I forced a smile, hugging and waving farewell to the children. I climbed into the tuk-tuk and with a final, painful, wave, was driven away.

Sitting in the air conditioned airport at Delhi, I was able to reflect. Before India I’d heard about poverty. Unfortunately, when I’d heard over 113 million children in the world lack access to basic primary education, all I’d heard was a number. Meeting fifty-two of those children, who, because of the actions of one woman, had had their lives turned around, and spending only a month teaching them, playing with them, holding them, chasing them, laughing with them, comforting them, being exhausted by them, being used as a climbing-frame by them, loving them and being totally accepted and unconditionally loved by them, I had learnt more about what it was to serve the poor than 20 years of listening to talks about how important it was or watching adverts about the suffering in the world. I was reminded of the Chinese proverb, “I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand.” As I sat, reflecting, I realised there was simply no way that when I got home I’d be able to put my experience into words, “I guess”, I thought to myself, “I’ll just have to tell them it’s only when you do it, that you get it.” I knew I could never claim to understand what it was to live in poverty, but what had sunk deeply into me was a desire to do something about the brokenness of the world. Fifty-two children of 113million are but a drop in the ocean, but as Mother Teresa once pointed out, the ocean is made up of drops… After the boarding the plane I shoved my bag into the overhead locker and collapsed into the seat… I didn’t wince… I’d left India. India however, was never going to leave me. If at this point, the reader thinks I’m being a touch melodramatic, may I end with the challenge. Do it. Then you’ll get it.