Punjabi Wolves Housing Project 2010 Diary

Tuesday 26th October

Welcome to Delhi !!!! After the long flight from London we arrived bleary eyed and tired at the new International airport in Delhi with probably the most offensive carpet ever laid in the world. It certainly woke you up.
Andy raced through customs and passport control to go and make some new friends amongst the policeman outside the terminal leaving his coolies Pete and Jas to bring out the bags.
We met Richard and Jatender with the bus to Punjab and loaded in the bags and got in for the 8 hour drive to JCT Mills and hopefully arrive in time to see the Manchester United V Wolves.
First stop on the famous GT road was for refreshments at the Punjab Dhaba. After a few cold beers we sat down to watch Pete and Jatender get rubbed down to relieve stress by two of the strongest 85 year old men we have ever seen. After some serious rub downs we returned to the bus to continue the journey. After several stops for  the toilet and sprite to water down the royal stag we finally reached Punjab where a highly emotional Pete wanted to get close to his home land and once again stopped to water the plants.
The 8 hour journey which was now heading towards 12 hours proceeded slowly and we decided to stay the night at Jatenders house rather than carry onto the guest house. We got back in time to watch us concede another last minute goal and get kicked out of the cup. We then retired to bed because tomorrow we also have to “put a shift in”

Wednesday 27th October

After one hour of trying to wake Andy up and a marvellous breakfast (thank you Jatenders Nani) we went onto the JCT Mills guest house to drop our bags off change into our Punjabi Wolves t-shirts and go onto the village waiting for us at the guest house was the rest of the team from Punjabi Wolves Kam, Hardev and putting in guest appearances from New Zealand and London Pete and Flemming. Once again strict Punjabi time keeping was kept to and after waiting for Pete to have a mid day shower (boy that lad can sweat) we arrived at the village of Ahrana Kalan. We were met by all the villagers and a welcoming committee consisting of local dignitaries including Avtar Henry the ex Health Minister of Punjab. It was very humbling to see all the local villagers being so appreciative of the work we were proposing.
We listened to several speeches, took part in many press interviews and then laid the first foundations and could really begin to see the size of the task ahead of us. The main part of the day was spent visiting families in the village to note the work that was required on their homes. All of us were considerably moved by this experience and the living conditions of many families were truly awful. Families of six or more living in one room, families that were so regularly flooded their homes were crumbling and families living with disabled parents or children will all be helped by us over the next few days and weeks. We assessed the needs of each family carefully and laid down detail plans of the work to be carried out. It was even harder to turn down requests from families not selected and only motivated us further to raise more money when we get back. We also visited the other villages with families we will be helping called Arhana Kurd. Tomorrow the really hard building work starts so we retired to bed early so we would be ready to “put our shift in”