Kiwi community in the heart of Kolkata
Getting to Kolkata turned out to be not so bad, meet a cool Canadian guy who was in the bunk above me so we had a good night chatting away to all the other passengers and sharing food. Ended up arriving 3 hours late around 10am then it was off to find the Spreydon team. There’s a couple from my church in NZ who moved to India and have started this business called Freeset where they get women who are working on the streets as prostitutes and give them a job in their place where they make bags. Sounds a bit strange but they make these cool bags that lots of businesses at home get made for different things and you can also order online. They’ve got about 80 women who all have pretty crazy stories and it’s a great place, everyone is so friendly and you can sense there’s a lot of hope there. Its pretty much right in the middle of the biggest sex areas in India, something like 6000 girls line the streets shoulder to shoulder every night. So that’s my plug for freeset go check them out www.freeset.com .
So anyway there were all these people from home visiting and helping out at freeset so I spent 3 days just hanging out and eating a lot. The team from home had spent the last 2 weeks making an outdoor area and was finishing up when I arrived so I didn’t actually do anything really other than sit in the finishing room and snip threads for a couple of hours. But did have an awesome time it was great to be around so many people from home, there must have been about 30 NZders there which is more than I’ve been around for a long time!
Was great as well being in an area where people weren’t trying to sell me stuff constantly, Varanasi stressed me out a few times and definitely have the usual love-hate relationship with this country! And also was actually nice to talk to females as everywhere you go you just get constantly talked to by guys everywhere, so it was a nice change. Stayed for free in a nice hotel with some of the Spreydon team, we went out for lots of meals together. Saw the new James Bond movie in this awesome cinema where everyone clapped and cheered (in true Spreydon style no-one clapped more loudly than us) and there was even as intermission and then it broke down half way through for a few minutes! Great times!
Spent a really nice day at this flash country club lying by the pool and eating lots, very different from the last couple of weeks! So it was great to see everyone, lots of fun and nice to hang out with some kiwis! Great to see what the group had done, they were doing a lot of hot, dirty work outside but now they’re going to build a playground for the kids which will be great. Said goodbyes as they all headed off to Delhi for some sightseeing before they went home and I started the looooong journey to Nepal.
Tags: blogsherpa, India, Kolkata, Travel
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