Christian adventurers tell of Indian expedition (From Gazette Series)

Christian adventurers tell of Indian expedition

A GROUP of Christians from Wotton-under-Edge and surrounding areas who set out last month on an expedition to the diocese of Dornakal in South India, have been describing their epxperienmces.

Expedition leaders Graham and Pam Smith said in an email home: "There is a certain amount of disappointment in our group, as the hostel at the Deaf School, which we were hoping to work on, is far from finished - it is still being built."

So the team has been decorating the school itself.

The buildings are very basic - many of the people's houses are just two rooms, and undecorated.

Monkeys climb around the deaf school buildings and over rooftops.

Wotton's vicar, the Rev Dr John May, wrote: "The children here are so very friendly, alert, hard-working, bright and colourful. I've been taught various greetings by the deaf boys, and to watch them 'talking' to each other is like poetry in motion."

He added: "When a girl 'danced' slowly down the cloister passageway I slowly realised the 'dance' was simply her conversation with a friend who was slowly approaching her from the other end!"

Before the group started the practical work, the Bishop of Dornakal sent them in twos and threes to far-flung parishes in remote areas.

Mr May stayed in Kothagudem, and preached two half-hour sermons, each to 4,000 people.

He was taken to visit a coalmine similar to an English mine from the early 1900s, though one was opened only in 1975.

Back in Dornakal, a railway junction, Mr May wrote: "Everything seems more strong, more smelly, more vivid than anything English!

"All the time the trains make their long, noisy and haunting hootings, presumably to wake the people sleeping rough on the line.

"The night is punctuated with these sounds, plus the nightwatchman beating his stick on the ground and blowing his whistle."

Loudspeakers begin the day at 5am, with two hymns, a Bible reading and a prayer.

The Wotton visitors are returning next week after three nights in Chennai, formerly Madras.

They had made their flight out despite their coach having a tyre burst on the M4.