I Always Was Outward Bound!
In 2011, when I was actually asked to take over ‘Outward Bound India - Himalaya’. My thought was - ‘haven’t I been doing just this all my life!’
I was a little girl at my school in the hills. Our principal was a wonderful English lady called Grace Mary Linnel. Tall, blonde, stately, inspiring both awe and love. Our house mistress was Mrs. Russell, no one ever knew what her given name was. These were formative characters who loved imparting experiences and helping their charges discover. One morning at assembly we were introduced to something called ‘The Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme’ (DEAS) To a 10 year old, all it meant was the chance to do something different. I signed up. We got to choose sports and hobbies and service - it did not sound very different from what we did at school anyhow.
We had to do PT every morning and games every afternoon. We had hobbies like dance, craft, music, theatre, art etc. We had service in school - dining room service, ground service, dorm service, and once a week we visited the Cheshire homes for differently-abled children, or the old peoples home or the orphanage. We worked at cleaning washing, teaching, reading any and everything that we could do at these places.
The only different part of the DEAS for me was the gardening and the outdoor trip. The gardening gave us each a tiny plot of land in which we could grow vegetables. As a little girl, it was the first time I got to work alongside that awesome - Grace Mary Linnel - she and Mrs. Russel were the ones who helped us create, grow and harvest our little patches. Mrs.Russell taught us to watch the birds and insects while we were out there tending our patches - we learnt of bees and earthworms - and discovered all the birds that lived in the myriad fruit trees in our school compound. We absorbed the esprit de corps of nature, with our hands in the mud!
I was a little girl at my school in the hills. Our principal was a wonderful English lady called Grace Mary Linnel. Tall, blonde, stately, inspiring both awe and love. Our house mistress was Mrs. Russell, no one ever knew what her given name was. These were formative characters who loved imparting experiences and helping their charges discover. One morning at assembly we were introduced to something called ‘The Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme’ (DEAS) To a 10 year old, all it meant was the chance to do something different. I signed up. We got to choose sports and hobbies and service - it did not sound very different from what we did at school anyhow.
We had to do PT every morning and games every afternoon. We had hobbies like dance, craft, music, theatre, art etc. We had service in school - dining room service, ground service, dorm service, and once a week we visited the Cheshire homes for differently-abled children, or the old peoples home or the orphanage. We worked at cleaning washing, teaching, reading any and everything that we could do at these places.
The only different part of the DEAS for me was the gardening and the outdoor trip. The gardening gave us each a tiny plot of land in which we could grow vegetables. As a little girl, it was the first time I got to work alongside that awesome - Grace Mary Linnel - she and Mrs. Russel were the ones who helped us create, grow and harvest our little patches. Mrs.Russell taught us to watch the birds and insects while we were out there tending our patches - we learnt of bees and earthworms - and discovered all the birds that lived in the myriad fruit trees in our school compound. We absorbed the esprit de corps of nature, with our hands in the mud!
