Saturday School and a bit of Penukonda

Saturday we worked in the school again, as the children attend a half day of school on a Saturday morning. Not all of the teachers were in attendance, and so I took the children by myself for a few lessons of English and Science. Because of the extended time for the science lesson, we finished a topic with about 10 minutes to spare before the end of school. The children asked if they could play with my camera again after Alex had shown them how to use it, and so I agreed to give them 5 minutes with it if they helped tidy up the classroom first.

The kids enjoyed taking photos of each other and practicing selfies, then took a whole series of wobbly pictures of each other shaking hands with me (apparently shaking hands is an exotic thing to do here, and that’s why the children enjoy doing it so much!) and then a few portraits of another teacher who walked past… The 5 minutes went by very quickly, and it was time for the children to go home.

The staff meeting that we were going to attend in the afternoon had been cancelled, which meant that our English conversation workshops for the staff would not be happening either. This gave us some free time, and Ronny was quite excited as he had a plan that he wanted us to come along for.

We drove into Penukonda, and first Ronny took us to an important Muslim shrine of a Sufi saint who lived in the 12th century.

The entranceway

The shrine sits within a bit of a building complex that includes a bazaar and a few large areas where people were cooking and eating.

As a female, I wasn’t allowed inside the shrine itself, so while Ronny and Alex went inside I went back to the bazaar to buy some glass bangles, which most of the women in this area wear. I was surprise how cheap they were at 40 rupees (less than $1) for 12 bangles!

The shrine from outside

This man came up to me and asked me to take a photo of him and his cute little baby

After the shrine, Ronny drove to the base of one the hills surrounding Penukonda. The hills here are littered with temples from the era of Vijayanagara rule in the 14^th – 17^th Centuries. We followed a roughly stone paved path up the hillside, seeing several temple remains along the way, until we reached the temple complex at the top. The buildings everywhere were in ruins, and Ronny explained that they are deteriorating rapidly due to a combination of neglect, vandalism, attempted looting due to legends of buried gold, and natural erosion.