Kolkata, India - Part 2

Here's some more...

We did some work with 'FreeSet'. Free Set are an incredible company. They were set up by a couple from NZ 10 years ago and they are based in one of the red light districts of Kolkata. They employ women involved in the sex trade as a way out of that life and currently have 150 women on staff. However it is estimated that there are 10,000 women working in the red light district, there aim is to help as many of them as possible. Freeset make bags and t-shirts which are sold all over the world (they made all the Soul Survivor bags and t-shirts for this year) so you may have come across their products before.
We spent a morning at Freeset having a look around and helped in different areas of the production process. I found it truly inspiring to see what an amazing job they are doing in making a difference in these ladies lives.
FreeSet are also fair trade recognised so if you see any of their products then i definitely recommend them. Here's their website for some more info http://www.freesetglobal.com/

The last project i'll ramble about is Big Life Ministries. They are an evangelistic ministry that go out into Kolkata's surrounding villages, providing medical support, they visit houses and share the gospel and their testimonies. From their ministry they currently have 2000 (i think) house churches/fellowships being run.
We had the privelige of going out with them twice to two seperate villages. This was pretty awesome as we saw house churches planted and locals show real interest in finding out more about Jesus. We even got a chance to play some football with some of the locals which was one of the highlights of the trip!

A couple of other things i must mention were that on one of our days off we went to see a Bollywood movie called 'Love Aaj Jal'. It was a proper chick flick as you'd expect and was in hindi with no english subtitles. This was hilarious cos they would chuck in random english phrases like 'oh my god' or 'dont be silly' every now and then. It was also fun to watch as we'd end up watching a lot of the extras in the background which was highly amusing. Good times!

Also, whilst we were there a popular political figure died. A day of mourning was anounced in Kolkata and all the schools were shut etc. They were having a procession of his body around the city before his funeral and it came right past our front door. The road outside the guest house is a busy one but there were no cars, buses or rickshaws to be seen. Just hundreds and thousands of people. It was pretty exciting! we ended up waiting for about 2 hours before his body passed by. They leave the face uncovered unlike in England so was pretty weird seeing a dead mans face fly past just a few meters away from you. The whole thing was just like something you'd see on the news so it was pretty cool that we were actually there and got to see it live.

One final thing...the roads and driving is insane in Kolkata and India in general, so exciting! There is no etiquette at all, just hink your horn and win it! People cutting each other up all the time, and thats just the way it is, crazy stuff and yet we didnt see one accident! Interesting.
It got me thinking about how a couple of weeks earlier a few of my friends from the states were in England and couldn't believe how "narrow" our country lanes were. Now as an English man i find this pretty mellow, but acknowledged that it would take me a little while to get used to driving in India...and then i thought...How the heck would those silly yanks(hehehe) manage driving out their if their whinging about our country lanes. So, if any of you americnas reading this have been to India, let me know what you thought about the driving out there...Cheers!

Thanks for reading....

Rob