Sanlaap

Sweeping in this week, the Indian festival of ‘Holi’,and a rare breath of fresh air gracing the heat of Calcutta and indeed the PWB team in the form of some very brave and enthusiastic young women at Sanlaap and I speak for everyone when I say we are certainly feeling the love!

Sanlaap is a home based just outside the centre of Calcutta for young women and children who have been rescued from various situations involving trafficking, including prostitution. Due to the various court proceedings some of the women find themselves in and the trauma caused, they can find themselves confined to the Sanlaap compound for up to several years until they are ready and able to leave. Unfortunately during this time many of the young women’s families will not be in contact if they know the full circumstances surrounding them being at Sanlaap. Due to the stigma that still surrounds families in society, some girls cannot return to their families, so Sanlaap helps them build a new life for themselves.

On arrival at the centre the PWB team, ready to perform the now world famous ‘Honk Honk’ show, were met with some very curious faces, that curiosity soon turned into a chorus of ‘shabadabadaba, doobeedoobeedoobee, Honk Honk ding-a-ling’ and the rest of the show was met with equally loud woo-ing, laughing and clapping! I don’t know what preconceptions I had before visiting the centre but they were all blown out of the water from the very first minute.  Their eagerness to engage in our performance and in our afternoon workshop was refreshing and created a very different energy to what we had been used to from the outreach work before, mostly due to teaching just girls as opposed to having mixed groups, which meant the girls being much more open than we had previously experienced.

Already you could see the bond they had made with each other as one was encouraging the other to try all the different skills available without the thought of embarrassment of falling off the unicycle (usually I have to look silly and ‘pretend’ to fall off for the kids to try it) but these girls were loving the trying, the failing and eventually the succeeding!

After the first day of teaching it was hard for me to imagine what histories these young women had or what kind of trauma they still went through, simply because of  their playfulness and desire to learn and I am happy not to know as long as I saw those smiling faces again in the next two days of our short visit.

By the end of day two it was game sharing day, we taught them the game of ‘ninja’ one of Leo’s finest games (I will tell her to write the rules for anyone interested at home) and they taught us the traditional Indian sport of ‘Kabaddi Kabaddi’ normal rules apply (google it) or though with the added Sanlaap girls rule of no nail scratching and let me tell you now, don’t be fooled by their sweet little faces because they wont hold back, even if you are a beginner! I wasn’t scared though…honest!

One of the skills they seemed to thrive on was acrobalance.  It was hard for us to hold them back, especially once they found out they could make a sequence to show on our last day.  Some of the moves they made up were hair raising to say the least and even surprised our very own bendy Jess! After a few adjustments and a “safety dance” or two our heart rates were restored and the final performance was quite simply magical. And it was watching them show off their new skills learnt from PWB that leaves me with nothing but maximum respect for them.

We will never know the reason why some of the young women have landed at Sanlaap but that is not what PWB are here to find out about, on any of our projects. It’s about how we can help in the here and now, not to worry about the past (as too many of us do) but to live in the present, looking forward to what the future brings. What is important is that we take them at face value and do what we (PWB) can to help them realise their own potential and hope that they manage to achieve their ambitions in life.