Contrast

Today has been a strange one for me. As you will have read, the group recently went to a local NGO named Future Hope, which takes in street kids and gives them a place to stay and an education. Many of these kids spent around 12 years with FH, and then go on to get placements and scholarships at colleges around the country. Five of us, including myself, were assigned to a group of lads aged 14-18, and we spent the evening together at their boarding house just hanging out and getting to know them all.

That evening was, for me, quite probably one of the best of the trip so far, as it may have given me more direction in what I would like my life to look like. Over the past few months, things have popped up which have made me think about becoming a mentor/teacher of young teenage males, and this trip gave me a chance to listen to the hopes and dreams of people exactly like this. Young men our age need mentors and role models able to listen to, guide and teach us as we grown older, and seeing the way these guys looked up to one of the hostel masters in particular was quite special. Listening to the boys themselves also taught me a huge amount about their opinions and experiences of religion, the caste system and their time growing up in Kolkata.

The contrast mentioned above comes in the form of the extreme differences in emotion and mood you go through while in India. Recently, the group walked past a dead child lying alone in the street, and many of us are very sick from meals we ate the day before. These give us both the highs and lows promised by the trip, but also the ability to work through the lows using the highs we have felt. India has provided waves of new experiences that have all served to build our character and cause us to question fundamental aspects of the way things are back at home. 

Alex