Sum' Camp

HOORAY!!! Summer Camp has finally started...to tell the truth is has been going for a week already. Time flies when you are having fun.  Funny, I have heard of horse flies, dragon flies, fruit flies, etc. but never time flies. That is India for you. Anyway, we have 18 boys, ranging from 13-18 years old, and they all bring there own personalities, tastes, humors, humors, and challenges with them. One thing, however, they all hold in common is; they love to have fun.

We are just trying to teach them that working is fun, for we sure do a lot of it. From 9 am to 1 pm we try to transform ourselves into earth moving machines (sometimes with the sounds and everything).  We have piles of ruble to be moved, stones to be purged from gardens, grou d to be leveled, and so on.

Just like every adventure with boys there is always a little trouble maker to keep things out of the slough of boredom. This is Adithya, but we call him Adi for short, and I wish his energy was a small as his nickname. He never stops getting into trouble unless there is a patient watchful someone to be his constant companion.

How could I forget the boys from the special care section of FFC that come everyday for an hour or so to work with us. They are funny to watch. One think he is the supervisor and orders the other around, while some just work, and this one, Ramdas, seems to think only about body building. He sometimes picks up a metal rod or something as a weight do exercises with it.

One of the best parts is that they cook their own breakfast and lunch. They love it, and so far they have done pretty well. Mani is their teacher and master chef. They even prefer what they manage to throw together, to the food provided by the main kitchen.

We, the staff, Katie, Mani, and I, the head hanchos, cannot share their food because of our diet, but of course that does not bother us at all. No, not even when their meal comes fragrantly fresh off the stove, with all the beauties and attractions of Indian dishes. I do not even like spicy food, but it still beckons to my senses. Yes, it is not a big problem at all. I just drown out my disappointment in mangoes. Another 70 lbs of mangoes was consumed just in this last week.  It makes a divine breakfast.

Whether we are working or playing water games I always look the same at the end of the day, soaking wet.  It is only the hottest time of the year and here we are working outside, when the sun is unrelentingly merciless, but that does not stop us. there is a reward of a five day trip to some resort somewhere for anyone that has been extra good, doing extra work, and being extra obedient.
Let it be remembered that for every story there is a moral, but for every moral the story becomes optional. Thus the moral of the story is plan ahead, get a head.  Having a head on your shoulders in most crucial to doing a summer camp. If you have a head remember that every person can be reached, and any child can be trained. That is one thing I am learning, and it even applies to myself.  Here I am trying to train them how to work while pretending like I know what I am doing, until I actually figure out what I am doing. Challenging, exhausting, frustrating, fatiguing, hilarious, inspiring, eye opening, rewarding and many other synonymous adjectives describe this Sum' Camp we have.
This is your Roasted Post Host, David, and if I survive do not be surprised, because you never know when I will post again.

A Stroll Through Goodness

Arriving at our destination, one sunny afternoon, we found what did not at first appear to be an herb farm. It was profuse with coconut trees and wild grass. We were there, invited by the owner, to glean valuable information on indian herbs, their names, and capabilities

After meeting up with the herbalist, Imba Kumar (imba means happy in Tamil) he showed us the large selection of plant growing there.  Many different shapes and varieties dappled his 12 acres of land. For instance, this cross leaf plant.

Upon seeing this one for some reason I immediately thought of Seth. Sorry, I cannot remember the names or uses of these plants, there were so many and I can only remember a couple of them.

This tour provided the very first breadfruit tree I have ever seen whether in pictures or life.  Unfortunately, it is not breadfruit season thus denying us the pleasure of sampling this fruit.

Also presented to our five senses was the fig tree.  This variety of fig dangled bunches of figs like lures of the trunk of the tree, and lucky for us one of the many fruits was ripe. However, like all lures it failed to meet my expectations.

One of the boys we took with us gave us a hand, literally speaking. He had cut his finger and breaking a leaf from a particular plant we applied the oozing milk onto his wound. He yowelled when we put it on, and I have heard nothing about it since.

Every second that we spent at Imba's place, Katie was his inescapable shadow pestering him for all the info he could (and could not) give. Willingly, he filled her ears to overflowing. Whereas the biggest obstruction was he knew only the Tamil names of most of his plants.

While Katie was getting her fill of herb talk, Mani got his fill too. Not only this berry bush but other fruits and berries won his devoted and diligent attention, that is of course until there were no berries left.  There were supposed to be berries in his hand but they mysteriously vanished and Mani was left speechless/mouth full.

Then you never will guess what occupied my time and thoughts during this extended period of instructive education necessary to the temporal constitution of bodily health. Yes, I was hunting...for delectable tidbits especially in the shape of coconuts. At first I strained my tension span, trying to keep up with Katie and Imba, attempting a forced interest in their conversation. He did not have to tell us, me and Mani, twice though, when he told us to help ourselves to the mangoes or anything else we could find...then all impediments, mental and physical, melted away like ice in a furnace as we plowed into everything edible we could find. The biggest mistake I made was I had eaten lunch right before we came.
After stuffing ourselves and pockets and with our taxi bulging with plant cuttings, seeds, and fruit (we had to lash some on the top there was so much) we returned to reality.  
The moral is that people are like radios, they either receive or transmit.  If you are with a receiver, give, but if you are with a giver, receive. Luckily, I sent that day with givers. Okay, that smacks too much of Mr. Skimpole. Lets just say that blessed is he that giveth for he receiveth, and blessed his he that receiveth for he enjoyeth!
Post Host = David = ? = Receiver = Enjoyer. If you give the me anything, give me time (or thyme) because you never know when I will post again.

Split Wide Open

Party!!! Who does not love a party.  Well, I used to love them too, until I went on this diet, and now I have sunk into steely indifference to parties, unless, of course they have a big bowl of fruit available...that changes everything. Well, the opening for the new building was, in terms of longevity and monotony, very well done. All of the FFC children were there in body, who knows were they really were, and we only had a handful of visitors and donors attended.

Here is our administrator and the guests of honor seated on the stand. Not deviating from tradition, only praise and good things were said, which of course we hope all comes true. The man with bag was the professional photographer, which is fine, but   he somehow often ended up between my camera and the desired object to capture on my memory card. 

You can imagine how Katie must have felt.  Luckily for me she was up on the stand most of the time, and that made everyone know where she was.  With that said, Katie said what was supposed to be said, after everything else had been said, and said that Sandra said the building would be used to train special needs children...so they said. After too much had been said, they said it was time for the food and celebration. They should not have said that.  

Since my energy could not be utilized in the pleasure of gastro-intestinal loading, it was vented in different forms.  In good fun me and the boys non-chronologically reenacted sporadic scenes of the  proceeding proceedings.  We started off enthroning ourselves as guests of honor.

You cannot have a opening or "function" as they call it without flowers. The poor flowers became very much a part of our antics. By the end you could see shreds of flowers scattered from one end of the building to the other. (Some made good balls for throwing)

What could be said that has not been said. I do not know but we tried to make it said. Too bad some could not pick up on it.

With a welcoming like this who can resist. All of us hoodlums welcome you to the FFC, the House of Hope. I cannot remember what I was trying to prove in this snapshot.

I am surprised we kept finding more flowers. They smelled good but I never got the chance to see if they tasted good, too. 

Now if you were going to worry, now would be a good time.  Imagine a pack of wild indians who have found a flame of fire. It is good the buildings are all constructed of nonflammable material like cement, thus making our fire hazard only hazardous to ourselves. We all made it through the night unscathed.

And now we have come to the moral of the story, which is; Do not take too many pictures in short space pf time of a single isolated event because it takes forever and a half to download, sort through, pick, delete, save, edit, and then choose the best ones, and if that is not enough you still have too many to write a sweet short story. See what I mean, this is even making my moral long, too.  If that is too easy, you might learn from this story that if you keep someones attention, you keep them out of trouble.  It does not take too much, at least for me, to keep me out of trouble, just a plateful of something I can actually eat secures my focused and undivided attention. 

Post Host David is going at it again, and hurry back from your own parties because you never know when I will post again.

Residency or Regretcy

Having subjected ourselves to untold hours of tortuous labor beneath the unforgiving sun and strangled by the suffocating dust, Sandra, the FFC director, benevolently decided to reward the boys who were consistently and loyally filed into our ranks in this perpetual conflict. Food is a wonderful reward for everyone, and she let us decided when and where. We deliberated carefully on our limited choices. The Residency is a posh western hotel complete with several dining options. We have to be careful where we go, not everywhere, I should say almost nowhere, has a raw food menu, but of course the reward was for the boys.  Who knows they might have wanted raw food. So off we go to the Residency.

After the most relaxing taxi drive I have had in India, and I am not joking, we made it there. We traveled in a big SUV type vehicle with AC and soft music playing.  It was something else, as was the anticipation.

It was as I feared. The only raw food available was the fruit and vegetable bar. They do not even know what a salad bar is.  Determined to make the most of our all you can eat for 13 dollar, we almost literally piled into the fruits and vegetables. The mango tray, especially, was filled at least three times. Somehow, as soon as the tray was filled it would be empty in two minutes. Strange phenomena.

Look at what we had to compete with.  At first they were shy and uncertain what to eat and seeing their "guides" hitting the fruit bar like crazy they followed suit. Explaining to them that they could eat any thing they eventually ventured into the enticing aisles of savory aromas and beckoning tidbits that appealed to all our senses.

As we munched and chrunched, they were chomping, gulping, devouring, and bringing plate after plate from the dozens of dishes and diversities there available. We had to forcefully turn away our eyes and convince ourselves that their steaming, mouth watering, fragrant, gourmet food was really not what we wanted.

Then they really took revenge on us and started dishing out the ice cream. Now, I am sure it was not that good. It could not have been as wonderful, cool, refreshing, and sweet and it pretended to be. Could it?

When you have spent long hours in the squelching sun, and then torture yourself in the A/C atmosphere of temptations palace, you can lose control over certain body parts.

When the boys were not looking insanity gripped us and we almost gave in. Almost, that is until we recollected are senses and saw that the waiters had refilled the mango tray, thus saving us from a disastrous mistake.
Successful?  That largely depends on what you mean by success.  If it is success is measured in terms of how much you eat then we were champions.  In spite of having eaten at home only a few short hours before, we managed to pack it in until it hurt. The effects of this night's excursion, for me, carried over into the next day.
The moral of the story should be, when stuffing yourself sick, do not laugh, it borders unbearable. If you already know that then try not having anything in excessive amounts, even if it good, like a good laugh, better, like fresh raw vegetables, and best , like the Residency full of mangoes. I half hope we never have to do this again, but if we do, I just might repeat it all over again.
The Post Host, as you know, is me...David, and although I do much better at hosting dinner parties just keep snacks handy because you never know when I will post again.

Full Steam Backwards?

How I ever got involved in the apparently innocent and simple process of  installing a steamer at the kitchen. A steamer it an awkward gigantic impervious hunk of steel that creates loads of steam and pressure which infuses into three special pots for cooking food, killing three birds with one stone.  At first glance, not having a personal relationship with it yet, I was impressed, but now I mush say my esteem for it and its steam for me have plummeted.  You can only fix it so many times before your feelings change.  For three weeks we have been trying to make this showy sieve stop leaking. Here is a taste of what we go through.

Find the leaks, take them apart, stay calm.  And another thing is, just do not expect it to go back on the same way it was before, that does not always happen for some reason.

Teflon tape was the most effective method I found. Just make sure you have plenty of it on there.  These pipes do not always fit in the fittings.  It is like all the fittings are just barely big enough that the pipe is not snug when screwed in and just small enough that the pipe will not slip out, which means you need an almost inexhaustible supply of Teflon. Just for an example, I wrapped a 32 foot roll of Teflon on just one joint and it still leaks.

Frustration is very much a part of our work, but luckily the steamer was never damaged more than the damage it kept doing to itself.  Sadly, the same cannot be said of the belligerent so called plumber. I have come out with a couple new battle wounds.

This circumlocutory den of never ending leaks and problems has almost become my home. Entire days have been thrown away to the caprices of the spoiled steamer's tantrums of insubordination.

Half the fun it is the waiting. I have become a professional waiter. For the steamer to warm up and create enough steam to test the leaks, we usually wait anywhere from a half hour to 45 minutes.  It would have been nice if there had been a breeze to shoot at least, but breezes are also denied us here.

Then the same story replays over again like a bad nightmare returns in the night. Another leak!!  If it is not the one that we just tried to fix then it is a different leak. Where they come from, nobody knows. I think we have conscripted the service of every tool we own to the solution of these problems but to no avail.

It is bad when you have to replace old parts, imagine replacing new parts.  I have done both, more times than one, through the course of this ordeal. Our biggest, but not only, problems with this is not that it takes time to buy the parts, but somehow the new pieces are never the same size as the old ones.  That is what I call getting the short end of the deal.

By March 30, 2013, on which fateful day we took these pictures, I had reached my wit's end and had to sound retreat.  After regrouping and organizing with a little bit of thought we might be able to create a effective strategy to out do this illusive trouble maker.
The morals of this story are too many to list, too many to remember, and too much for one person to take.  Neither has the overall moral been learned, as the overall end has not been attained. Unless we admit defeat...NEVER! Giving up actually sounds tempting.
Never fear for this is David your Post Host, and who knows if I will survive this next bout with the incorrigible contraption, but you never know when, or if, I will post again. AND THIS IS NO APRILS FOOLS JOKE, but the cold, hard, heartless, unforgiving truth.