Day 30 – Shot put

Back at the veg. garden this morning we worked long and hard. We took a break to play a version of shot put with bricks and a stick. What sounds like a basic game turned into quite an exciting competition – with our group, ‘The Stoners’, reigning supreme. A group from a Taiwanese organisation had meanwhile been working in another area of the garden, and we were invited over to listen to them explain what they’d done.

It turns out this group have been supporting the project, and come regularly to help and contribute. They had created a ‘model’ area in an amazingly short space of time in which crops can be grown more efficiently and with more ‘love’ as the lady nicely put it. They showed us a few techniques including sustainable irrigation for water-deprived countries, I was greatly impressed. To top it all off, they then provided us with a fantastic lunch, Chinese food – rice and soya and coffee from a pan (because it’s from a pan, I actually drank it).

On the way home we saw the strangest thing. A young boy, no older than 10, was coming down the road on a petrol-powered mini-motorbike. He had this incredible look of stern concentration on his face in a surreal moment which looked as if everything had just been downscaled. Like I said before, it’s always the small things…

When discussing the discipline of children in schools and drawing comparisons between here and the UK, a fellow volunteer felt it was too late to change: “It’s gone too far. Socially, we are wrong.” We then encountered some children who felt one of the girls looked familiar “I love you, you look just like Madonna.” I’m sure he meant it as a compliment at least…

In the evening I went for my guitar lesson, missing Italy get knocked out of the World Cup. It was a good lesson, but it reminded me of how much dedication is actually required to master an art. None of us were able to play ‘Mull of Kintyre’, the song we were supposed to have learnt, and I started to feel slightly disheartened at my inability to progress. These things take time, I must be patient.