The venturers (participants) arrived on Saturday and I've been really busy ever since. I'm currently feeling a little bit overwhelmed and emotional over ridiculous things, and also quite homesick, well for the 10 minutes thinking time I have to myself before my head hits the pillow each night.
The venturers seem a really nice bunch and come from a real mixture of backgrounds (roughly 1/3rd host country i.e. India, 1/3rd "partnership" people that have been referred from organisations such as Fairbridge or the Princes Trust, 1/3rd people who have raised sponsorship money and who tend to be gap year students etc.)
Since Saturday, Zoe, Hamish and I have been leading Alpha 2, a fairly arbitrary mix of participants. This has mostly been for admin and training purposes, and since then we've led sessions on using the comms kit, map reading and camp craft. We also completed a two day training trek in these groups; I didn't get sick this time although some of my group were showing signs of dehydration by the end of the day. We also had barbed wire in one person's leg and vicious thorns in another's, not to mention scary bees today.
It feels like a huge responsibility being manager of ten young people under these circumstances. Some of them seem quite young and vulnerable, although for the most part they seem very supportive of other team members and I'm sure they're all going to do amazingly well.
Putting the venturers first is kind of nice in that it means I just CAN'T be selfish or self-indulgent. Of course when I get a moment to myself (like now when I'm hiding in the office), I feel particularly exhausted and emotional as we've been up since 5am trekking.
We have also found out our new groups this afternoon for phase one, so we've been doing icebreakers, name games and sessions on fears and concerns this afternoon.A Indian snake man / environmentalist then came this evening to do a talk about snakes; he had a beautiful bright green snake with him called Dave (I think) as well a scarylooking cobra that reared up at our country director, Gavin, and tried to kill him. I wanted to hold Dave (though definitely not the cobra) but the venturers got there first.
We're about to have a BBQ with the venturers, who NEVER EVER get tired and are currently playing football outside.
Message to everyone: I'm on email till tomorrow, but then letters / posting messages on the Raleigh India blog are the only ways to get messages to me until 3 November (when I return to fieldbase for 2 days).
Reading your emails / messages on facebook this evening (from Daddy, Kate, Naomi, Rhiannon and of course Adam) was just fantastic so please keep them coming! I probably won't be able to reply to you individually before 3rd November, but I really loved reading them all.
Anyway, had better go and be bright and bubbly and entertaining. Will try and post some snake photos later tonight or tomorrow, especially of Dave. Love to all xxxxxxxx
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