From beachy Varkala we travelled a few hours south on the train to Trivandrum, the capital city of Kerala, to complete our second workaway. We spent nine days at Don Bosco which is a registered NGO working towards eradicating poverty and child discrimination. We stayed in the shelter home with the 12 boys currently living there and ate all meals (currys) with them in the hall. We spent a few hours each day playing games and running workshops with kids and another few hours working on a project we were assigned. The kids had some pretty shocking backgrounds but didn’t seem to be carrying it around with them and all seemed to be capable of having fun. One 15 year old boy was a child soldier for a rebel tribe in north India before being found by Don Bosco (they’re not sure if he escaped or was abandoned because he can only speak the tribe language). He seemed to give me alot more respect after we drew a (left) arm wrestle (he was far too strong on the right).
The project we worked on was a digital map of the Trivandrum Train Station to be used by the train station staff and passengers. We’re still not sure why Don Bosco we’re tasked with this job but they seemed happy with what we did. We even had a meeting in a fancy office with the train station director who oversaw operations at over 150 stations across Southern India. He called our map ‘Great’ and didn’t comment on our choice of footware (thongs) and dirty t-shirts which was a relief.
We were also invited to the first birthday party of the daughter of a staff member. It was far more extravagant than we had anticipated and included catering, a stage, sound system, live music and fireworks. Our gift of tim tams and chocolate digestive biscuits was received greatfully.
Other highlights of Trivandrum included various temple and market visits. Lots of travel in the next few days on our way to Sri Lanka.
Haz & Rac Travels 