Team Reports |
All Kids Are the SameAnaka Will-Dryden — Murray & Margaret's great granddaughter, age 10 The job I did was finger marking. Finger marking is when you use a felt marker to put a smiley face on the child’s left index finger after the child had received his or her bedkit. This was done to identify the child that had already received the bedkit. That way, if the child wandered back in again, we’d know that they already have a bedkit. Finger marking was my favourite job because I got say goodbye to the kids. Also, at the very end they knew that they had gotten a bedkit and they were very happy and excited to get outside and show their parents all of their new items. We stayed at the YMCA. We woke up early and hopped into our vans for a three-hour ride into rural India. On our drive we saw all sorts of things: camels, pigs, and lots of cows. We also saw people who were always working. We saw women at the side of the road hammering rocks to make asphalt for the roads. We also saw people working in the fields, working in the towns, working everywhere! We drove through a valley that had all sorts of curves, turns, and hills – better than any amusement ride I’ve been on!
When we got to a distribution site, exhausted, we’d get energy from all of the energy around us. People clapping, bands playing cymbals and bells, and children singing and dancing. At our last distribution, we were placed on carts with greenery tied to them and oxen pulling the carts. The oxen had pink powder all over their main body and flowers tied to their horns. My ox must have been quite hungry because it was trying to eat the greenery tied to my mom’s cart. We rode on this cart to the distribution with turbans on our heads and red bindis with rice on our foreheads. It was very fun! I’ll never forget the amazing feeling of being in India and seeing so many smiling faces! I learned is that every kid is the same, no matter if you are in Canada or in India or probably anywhere in the world. When the kids were lining up to get their photos taken, we would play with them. We played catch, we performed puppet shows, we blew bubbles and tried to pop them – fun! I noticed that many of the girls had beautiful henna on their hands, and sparkly bangles and bindis. This was a big occasion for them and they were dressed up for it. It reminded me of how I got dressed up for my speed skating banquet. Even though we didn’t speak the same language, we were able to speak with feelings such as smiles, laughter, and hand gestures. I wanted to make sure that by the end of the distribution, they were feeling special, like this was their day. The smiles on their faces showed me that they understood! |
