19th January, 2009

This is Jelle's fourth visit to SISP. He comes to help at the school during the week and teach the children to surf at the weekends. He is a good, young, role model for the children and all the physical activity gets the children fit and healthy, and keeps them out of mischief. Here is his latest report...

Vizhinjam, January 19th

After an exhaustive outward trip I finally made it back 'home'. Dragging tens of kilos of equipment through airports and using all the charms you have in you to make sure everything arrives safely in Thiruvananthapuram Airport soaks up energy.

The customs in Bombay also gave me a hard time this year to enter the country. The officer on duty wanted me to pay a huge sum of taxes in order to take all of the material i had with me into India. But India is a land with a lot of solutions and the inventive always gets rewarded. So after handing over Rs.500 of 'basheesh' the officer smiled at me and let me through.

Since my arrival I enjoyed every moment of the day. The amounts of smiles and warmth one receives here on one single day would make even the most passionless person feel warm inside. And the moment I walked into the new SISP building I immediately knew that every minute some of friends, relatives and I spend on trying to raise funds for the project and bring people in contact with SISP were well spent.

As I do every year, I take the kids surfing at the weekend so they don't hang out on the street all day. Some of them are becoming good surfers and what's even more important, good students. They all are proud as hell with their new surfboards, boardshorts and lycra's. When they strike a pose for a picture they look like some kind of gang you wouldn't like to mess with! Hehe...very cute.

During the week I'll take the small children to the beach for swimming and sports on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
But what's new is that now I also have a function as a 'sous-chef'. Kebeer,our former dance teacher and cook-assistant, treads in the footsteps of many of his fellow 'Malayalis' (as the inhabitants of Kerala are named) and left to the Arab Emirates with a fragile dream of money and a better living. So Werner, one of the founders of SISP, is now functioning as the cook-assistant.

But when i arrived Werner was just about to leave on a 3-week trip through South-India with some Belgian ladies. That's how I temporarily ended up in an Indian kitchen, a funny experience I must admit.

And in my free-time... I try to spend as much time in the water as possible and enjoy the love and warmth of my friends on land.

Here are some pictures of my first day of surfing with the kids last Saturday. At the end of the day, they found my suncream and all ended up looking like geisha's, hehe

I would like to thank everybody who donated a surfboard: 'bart, delphine, delobel twins, geert, lynn, alain, patatje, frank, dries, that guy from kortrijk, axe, jillemans, caene, marcantuoni brothers, julie,...), everybody who showed interest in the project and gave support.

Also thanx to Thomas Cook for making it happen that I got all the equipment here and O'Neill for all the stuff.

Love
Jelle

Thanks to the Belgian surfcommunity! More than 20 boards waiting for our Indian children to put their feet on!