where i live

would y'all like to know a little bit about where i live and who else i hang out with besides the girls at the protective home? ok! well, i'd be happy to tell you all about it. a man named cini happens to be a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend from my days volunteering at freedom firm. and cini, who knows just about everyone in town, connected me with a place called the maharashtra fellowship for the deaf -- otherwise known as the mfd. and the mfd is just down the road from the protective home. still with me?

and the mfd had a couple of rooms in the upstairs of a big house that they weren't using. and that is where i now live. it really is a blessing, because it is safe, has wifi, and also because it is so close to rescue foundation that i can walk there. i usually catch an auto rickshaw, but it is just a 5 - 10 rupee fair (10 - 20 cents). whee!!

here's a photo of the big house where i live.

my rooms are on the second floor behind that staircase that you see on the left side of the building. if you squint, you can see the door to my outer room is slightly ajar. i also have access to the roof, which is a pretty cool place to do exercises in the morning if i can get up before the sun gets too hot.

and here is the room where i spend most of my time when i am home.

most of the linens from an american family who have been in pune for five years and are now headed back to the states. thank you, dear janet!!

mfd is a boarding school for over 100 boys and girls who are deaf, and one of the cool things about living at mfd is that i never ever ever have to cook. at around 8 pm i just listen for the banging of metal bowls and ladles plates and cups -- i thought mfd would be a really quiet place to live, but it isn't!! --  and then i look out the window and down below to make sure they haven't started without me, and then i scurry downstairs and outside to the girls' dining area. and then one of the girls signs to me, asking if i want to have food, and i sign back and say yes, and when the buckets of food are toted over from the huge outdoor kitchen, one or two girls from each table pop up and get the rice and curry, and when it is all doled out, i get a plateful.

here is the dining area where we eat. it looks a little gloomy at night, but it is always fascinating.

i love it here and am learning some sign language, too. it's also very handy that i learned the american sign language alphabet years ago.

here's two of the 10th standard girls who are always so nice.

and here is a short video of sarubai, who is asking me if i want breakfast. this is the last breakfast of the school year for 9th standard and below.

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and that is my post for today. i hope you are having a fabulous week!!

and the winner is...

shops in pune have been closed for a week due to a bandh, or strike, by merchants against a new tax. this made it difficult to purchase prizes for the friday contests in the survivor girl ukulele band project. but thursday afternoon i found a little shop that sells bangles, bindis -- those little decorative dots that indian women put between their eyebrows, and mehndi -- known back home as henna. a faded, dusty, and exotic looking old bedcover shielded the little stall from the afternoon sun, and inside the closet-sized shop the walls were lined with colorful bangles. hanging from the pole in the middle were dusty strips of cellophane sleeves that held packets of bindi that caught my eye.

"kitna hai?" i asked, pointing to the bindi.

"five rupees," said the shopkeeper, who then got up from the floor. "ten rupees, also," she said, as she opened a plastic box that held the more upscale bindis. these had rhinestones and gold embellishments. ten rupees is about twenty cents in us dollars, so i splurged on a number of the dazzling packets of ten rupee bindis. meanwhile the shopkeeper opened a box filled with miniature bottles of fingernail polish. "ten rupees," she said. "yes, please!" i thought to myself as i selected a number of the tiny bottles. "and mehndi?" "quick acting or normal?" she said. "normal. i'll take five, krupya!" (please)

the next day i displayed the bindi and mehndi on the floor for my beginner ukulele class's tuning contest.

the girls' enthusiasm rose a few notches. "whoever tunes their ukulele the best will get to choose their prize between the bindis and the mehndi," i said.  "and next week's contest will include fingernail polish!" as this was being translated, the girls grabbed their ukuleles and their pitch-pipes and scampered off to find a quiet space in which to concentrate. i've never seen them so interested in tuning.

unfortunately, for all that solitude, concentration, and effort the beginner class tuning contest was a bit of a fail, in that no one came even close to getting their ukulele in tune. on the otherhand, they were all very attentive during the post-contest tuning workshop where we went around to every ukulele and tuned it as a team. and later in the day i noticed one of the girls practicing her tuning. next week there will be a winner in that class!

meanwhile, in my more advanced beginner class, two of the girls did extremely well with their c scales, so two prizes were awarded in that class.

and later in my kitchen-girl class, the girl who recently burned her face very badly in a pressure cooker accident was able to tune two of the four strings on her ukulele and earned herself a prize. she was wearing blue, but she was tickled pink.

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and here's me with three of my first batch advanced beginners. these girls rock!!

everybody loves a little uke

there have been a number of raids and rescues recently in the local brothels, and now the population of the home is 102 girls. and there is no keeping the ukulele lessons on the terrace a secret.

here's where i teach. it's called the terrace, and it's the covered roof of the home. every day the girls' clothes are hung to dry on the north wall of bars that surround the terrace. it makes for a pretty place with decent acoustics in which to teach.

every day a few girls sneak up to the terrace and sit with the class and try strumming one of the ukuleles. even the police officers who are on duty like to get into the action.

the fellow below was also very interested in the uke that i often carry around in my backpack. we met on a number of occasions at this little chai shop down the street from the guest house where i stayed when i first arrived in pune. the first day we met he asked, "you are from nigeria?" i didn't quite know how to answer that.

the next time we met he asked to try out my ukulele.

[wpvideo MUIuD97L]

after i took this video on my iphone 3gs he said, "tell me again, how much does that phone cost?" i told him that phones like this are a couple of hundred dollars and then about $100 a month on a two year contract. the small crowd that had gathered calculated the cost of an iphone in rupees, and their eyes widened. he liked my uke, but really really really liked my iphone. i get that lot.

and here is a video of roma*, who is from bangladesh and is super quiet. she may not have the best technique, but she is always there and loves to play.

[wpvideo KnH5gCV0]