Kumbhargarh

Castiglione! Chorfi! These words bring back a lot of memories from our trip to the tribal village of Kumbhargarh with the Roman students. The purpose of this trip was to understand the social and cultural life of the inhabitants of rural areas and to offer our service to them by aiding them in building houses for the natives. Along with five other students, I left school in the morning by 6:30. We reached the Durshet Forest Lodge by 10:30 where we met the Romans who had reached the previous night. We went to the top of the hill, where the village was located by noon.

 

We divided ourselves into 4 groups where each group was allotted some work, i.e. making bricks, laying the foundation, transporting gravel and constructing walls. We worked for an hour and then stopped for lunch. Lunch was usually spent talking about football and why football club ‘AS ROMA’ is better than ‘SS LAZIO’ and vice versa. After lunch, we resumed work. On day one, we finished building 2 walls, making 75 bricks and laying the foundation.

 

Then, we walked to a nearby primary school where the children performed a few poems for us in both English and Marathi and we interacted with them. We then returned back to the lodge after a day of exhaustive work. The next day we went to the village again and worked in the same groups as they day before for another three hours. After lunch, we left for an amusement park called ‘Imagica’ where we had a blissful experience. On the last day, we went for our last service to the village. A few of us went around the village for a survey while the others continued work. During this survey, we interviewed many natives of varying ages where we came to that they were very grateful to us for all the help and believed that in the coming years a lot more could change in their village owing to the large-scale support that our school gave them. We bid the villagers goodbye and then commenced our journey back. We reached school and everyone’s face had varying expressions: some were ecstatic to be back while some were fearful as DAIMUN was to begin in a few hours.

 

- Rhythm Seth
9A