Today we made our first trip to Ramavaram since the survey in April. Even though we didn’t have strong plans in place, we thought it would be good to just go and try to show our presence in the community. The only real idea we had in mind was to play games with the children. We did not have a lot of manpower today, but overall I think we managed quite nicely. We made a last minute decision to make food for just the children and feed them well, until every child felt satisfied.
Even without much planning, we managed to put together a team to cook tamarind rice (puliyogare, pulihara), we prepared an abridged survey, and planned a few basic games for the children. When we arrived this morning at the slum, we allotted tasks to everyone that came. 
Four of us took charge of painting numbers on the residences so that we have addresses. Last time, we used chalk so the numbers have been erased by now. From now on we’ll have a permanent way of knowing the home addresses. Two pairs were dispatched on survey duty, so that our census is complete. Remarkably, we managed this with only one true Tamil speaker. The other pair managed with basic knowledge of Tamil, which got us through the abridged survey.
The other six of us took charge of the children and played a few games with them, trying to learn their names in the process. There were about 50 children playing games with us at any given time, with a few coming and going. It was difficult for us to find a place to play, but we finally managed to find a place. We had to cross streams of drainage water to get there, but as the children were so excited to play with us, we made sure that we played where they wanted us to. We started with a game of catch that would help us learn their names. Afterward, we had a few of the children stand in front at a time and either recite a poem, sing a song, or dance for the group. The children were eager to show off their talents. I hope to see this “talent show” grow into a larger production for the general public, to improve the children’s presentation skills as well as to publicize our project.
After we felt that the children (and us) had had enough games for one day, we came back up to the road and lined the children up to serve them lunch. All the children sat on either side of the road and we laid down banana leaves and served the rice. It was truly a satisfying feeling to serve this children as much rice as they wanted. I think we made a good amount of rice. It was a bit difficult to ward off the adults who were trying to take food off of the children’s plates, but overall we managed.
Today’s trip was really nice, I think. We’re getting more used to the community and they’re getting more used to us. We’re hoping that by the next time we go we’ll have a better curriculum set up so that our activities are more productive. One of our biggest obstacles is that most of us do not speak enough Tamil, but we are quickly learning enough to get by. Hopefully we will make some real progress in the next few visits.
