Rajam sings some Telugu songs…Chally chally and one from Shankar Dada MBBS – A telugu blockbuster movie
Shiva recites a Telugu tongue twister about prema which means love…
I have to bribe Balaji to sing a Telugu Christmas carol for me by promising to sing him one myself, but don’t worry i’ll spare you that part…
So the in charge of IT in the 2 schools where i teach has implemented a new policy this year of getting much younger children involved in using computers. Because of this i have taught much more photoshop this year and to younger kids. I concentrated on the drawing aspect of photoshop as they will be taught photography manipulation by the school. They have only been learning since i have been here and they made some genuinely beautiful drawings…
Above are 2 works by Christu Raju whom am convinced is some kind of genius…and yes that angel does look a bit like Michael Jackson…
Work by Hari…another genius…
As i may have mentioned before, photoshop is actually a valid and extremely vocational skill to be learned for young Indian students. As well as the fact that Andhra Pradesh (or namely Hyderabad) is a centre for information technology, there is also a flourishing industry for Photoshop artists who work in tandem with photographers to create fantasy albums for special events such as wedding ceremonies etc…
Chandra came in with a tiny newspaper cartoon clipping and came up with this…
…another beautiful drawing by Siva
Took an auto rickshaw taxi to Gannavaram…here are some of the people who shared it…
The ladies of Venus fancy goods store, Gannavaram washing pan leaves. They can be chewed and are a mild stimulant, but they also use them to wraps hand made sweets…
Up the road from Venus…I love this temple, it covers the Christian, Hindu and Muslim faiths…
The sign tells us it’s the Gannavaram temple, the address and it’s benefactors…
Posted in india, photographic
Tagged Andhra Pradesh, autorickshaw, christian, Gannavaram, hindu, multiconfessional, muslim, temple
A salute to the boys of 10th class the final year in the english medium system in India. They lead an intense life of study with occasional breaks for eating. A funnier, brighter, kinder bunch of boys you could not find. They will leave for college in a few months…i miss them already!
Below Ravi Sagar and Gowri tell me what a typical day is for them…
…oh yes and they can dance too! not one of my films below, skip about one minute in to get to the good stuff:
Posted in art, classes, film, india
Tagged 10th class, Andhra Pradesh, dance, english medium school, man in the mirror
My brilliant students from 10th Class excelled themselves in Illustrator this year. They were in my original photography classes in 2009 and now they are leaving school in a few months. Am so sorry i won’t be teaching them any more, they are bound for college and greater things i think…here is some of their work…
by Ranga
by Raja
by Ravi Sagar
I also taught 3 older girls Illustrator with the idea that they will pass on the skills to younger kids when i have gone. They also did some great work. I gave them some of my photos to manipulate:
Tessy’s version of EUR in Rome
Satya’s psychedelic vision of Daddy’s Home school
Ramya’s vision of a view from the Milan Salone
I don’t draw nearly enough these days, but here and especially in Butterfly Hill i generally manage to do something…here are some of my sketches from this year, Nov/Dec 2011…often done with a large audience of assorted orphanage kids who lean into you, grab your arms, grab your pens, grab your book…i got quite used to it after a while…
mango tree – drawn while sitting in the shade of the dispensary veranda in Butterfly Hill
banana tree – drawn during lunch time, covered in a shawl to stop the fierce sun from burning me
neem tree plus leaf drawn from the veranda of one of the houses on Butterfly Hill campus
palm trees – drawn in the evening at Butterfly Hill waiting for the milk van to give me a bumpy lift back to Daddy’s Home
papaya tree – drawn during lunch time in the cultivated fields round Butterfly Hill, i drew while the field workers took a lunch time snooze
Went to Vijayawada fish market early for once so the smell was not so acrid and now that i have mastered a few Telegu phrases at least i could speak a little with the workers there…
Who would have thought that the humble origami water bomb could be so useful..except we don’t use them for that. Instead when painted they make great, cheap Christmas decorations…We design our own origami paper and then get folding…
and in action on the tree…
So every house in the orphanage has a crib/nativity scene that they construct themselves and they take it all very seriously, in a previous post you can see the boys going into the forest for materials.
I am a little anxious as myself and one other guest are supposed to award a prize for the best one, but they are all so good we don’t want to choose…so everyone who took part gets a prize…phew…
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My 2 personal favourites however…this one by the small boys in the Lake House who made everything out of plasticine (including dinosaurs)
…and the 10th class boys who built a human scale grotto!
Each home has it’s ritual for Christmas day. Here the stockings are hung along with final decorations at the last minute on the 24th, on Christmas morning the girls get fresh flowers for their hair… In the morning there is also one gift each for the kids. It’s really very nice to be here at this time…no TV, NO advertising…NO pre and post Christmas sales…
Posted in india, photographic
Tagged Andhra Pradesh, christmas, flowers in hair, orphanage
No words needed!
Posted in india, photographic
Tagged Andhra Pradesh, christ figure, christmas figures, kitsch
One of santa’s helpers – actually it’s Naga Babu, one of my students, he wants to be a film maker and he is a great photographer will post some of his photos later…back to Santa…
Well, Santa Clause has been and went already…Here in the orphanage he comes on the 23rd of December (all the way from Italy). He has his photo taken with each child and gives each of them a Kitkat!
All the kids from both orphanages are here…so that’s well over 1000. Afterwards is my favourite part when Santa and his “sleigh” leave the campus and parade through the neighbouring village of Budawaram, with the whole orphanage following…surreal and marvellous!!!
santa in the orphanage
santa in Buddavaram
carol singing in telegu…
I go into the forest with the boys from Butterfly Hill 10th class to gather material for the nativity scenes that everyone has to make here. We are surrounded by teak trees with giant leaves.
For sure Gopi is a conceptual artist in the making, here we found him up ahead sitting under a tree. He had decided to to give it back the leaves that had fallen off…
pamputa – telegu for snake house, actually the construction is made by white ants, but snakes love to make their homes there…
…giant cobweb, or maybe its a bird web…who knows, kind of want to stick my finger into that webby vortex…but am not that stupid. There are a lot of animals in the forest, monkeys, snakes, amazing birds…not that we see any as we are far too noisy
Inventing new Saints…
Exhibition time…ahhh the challenges…a freshly painted room with no glass yet in the windows…so sticking to the wall is a challenge, and the fierce cross breeze meant no paper could be displayed on tables as planned as EVERYTHING flies away…aarghhhh
…but we manage, thanks to a bit of ingenuity on the boys part (we tip the tables keeping them low and out of the winds way and tape the drawings to them)
…and the whole school turns out, filing in class by classs…
Posers…that’s what my students are…they love love LOVE to be photographed and the older boys are the worst of all…!!So when we had our little exhibition for Butterfly Hill it was a big excuse for some serious posing with their works…
We had loads of fun doing these…I taped together loads of A4 sheets and got the kids to lay down on them. We drew their outlines and filled them in together. The whole point was to work collaboratively after the more retrospective self portrait projects. The kids had to collaborate on clothing and colours and the faces had to be actual portraits.
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More on that walk from the previous post…I took some of the tumbling boys i blogged about last year. I gave the boys a camera and they took some great shots.
I have to have eyes in the back of my head as they get up to all sorts of shenanigans…but i really love these boys and they never ask for anything, just a bit of your time and attention. Sai, one of the younger ones hugs me very, very tightly every 5 minutes or so…i am a little concerned as he is very attached to me and upset at the idea that i will be leaving after Christmas…so am i for that matter…
all the boys around here are obsessed with michael jackson…
That’s Eswar looking to camera, he is 16 and a half orphan as it’s know here in that his mum is alive but very poor and in ill health, she is a labourer on building sites but is in and out of hospital. Eswar grew up in the orphanage. He is one of the brightest boys i know, also very funny and very kind with the smaller children. I am happy that he considers me his friend.
Watch out at the end for some rather fantastic dance moves…
Foraging Indian style…well it started off as a walk. Sometimes i stay in Butterfly Hill, a second, more remote orphanage buried deep in the Andrha Pradesh countryside. Every day i stay there, i take 6 or 7 kids along with me for a long walk into the forest or the surrounding countryside. The kids know a lot about edible and useful plants that grow there…and i KNOW about the dangers of irresponsible foraging but the kids eat this stuff all the time, we are in some fairly remote countryside here and for once there is almost no pollution…here are some things they taught me…
Find a suitable branch of a neem tree, strip the bark back…gnaw the inside till it begins to fray and then use to clean teeth…It works really well…it tastes bitter, antiseptic and kind of refreshing…
The kids really love these berries, in Telegu they are called parikaylu and i can’t find anything about them online anywhere. They taste sweet and sour with a large seed in the middle and apparently they are packed with vitamin C.
Tamarind…the “fruits” hang from the tree looking a little like broad bean pods but you eat the whole thing…It tastes really good…crunchy, intense, sour, tangy, fresh…like tamarind!. You can’t eat too much though as it does crazy things to your mouth and it’s especially good if you dip it in a little salt…
This is called mogali rekulu around here, i thought it was aloe vera but apparently it’s not. They use the sap here to help heal cuts and grazes and also they strip the fibres to make threads…
We meet 2 women we know along the way and everyone wants a picture…
not at all edible but very beautiful and all over the place, a dathura or datura flower…
I visit the catholic church in Gannavaram. Have avoided it for the past 3 years…an hour and a half service in Telegu does not inspire…even with my thirst for seeking out new levels of catholic kitsch.
I was not let down. The church though poor is decorated Indian style in a myriad of colours, lights and flowers.
…and the women…decked out in their Sunday sari best (ladies on one side, gents on the other)…were so beautiful. There was even a live band…one and a half hours flew past…Apparently they pull out all the stops for midnight mass on 24 December…am seriously considering it…
communion at Infant Jesus Church, Gannavaram
Posted in india, photographic
Tagged Andhra Pradesh, catholic church, Gannavaram, infant jesus church, religion, sari
Please forgive the erratic nature of these posts…the internet this year is a “challenge” it comes and goes at will and is very VERY slow…Posting becomes almost impossible sometimes…however with patience it can be done…erratically…!!
Ok, already posted about the many uses of the neem tree here, but found some new ones…
Tiny branches (the neem is has antiseptic properties) are used to keep earring holes in ears and nose open when not wearing earrings…
Hibiscus – the leaves are gathered, pounded with a little water and rubbed into the scalp and hair. Its left for and hour or so and then rinsed out. It’s very good for dandruff and itchy scalp.
Here the pounded hibiscus leaves have been mixed with a little curd (thick yoghurt) to make a pack and this lady left hers on for around 6 hours.
Posted in documentary, india
Tagged beauty, good for dandruff, hibiscus leaves, hints, natural remedy, neem tree
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washing…
Women washing just after dawn (around 6.00am) in Buddavaram. Only women wash and smaller children (boys and girls) help them. In this same spot men wash their buffalo daily and rubbish is regularly tipped into the river regularly floating by.
A little way up you can often see river snakes swimming and also brilliant green and blue kingfishers. In October it is an excellent space for spotting butterflies.
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Posted in commentary, film, india
Tagged Andhra Pradesh, dawn, kingfsher, river, women washing