Songsmith ROB HALLIGAN journeys from his Midlands comfort zone to learn a little of life, and mission, in Bangladesh

John heard there was a cyber café open where we could check our emails and update our blogs. We walked back into the market and into a shop selling - well, I haven't a clue what it was selling. It had a counter and that was it. We were led around the back and up a ladder into a room that had two old pc's. One of the chaps unplugged the phone and plugged in the computer by stretching a wire across the room. Eventually the connection was made and I wrote a blog but email was slow and impossible. John decided to stick to texting.

We got back to the project and the child protections training is still in full swing. The children's day finished at 12:30pm and many of the ones who don't live at the orphanage had gone home. I showed some family photos from my phone to some of the live-in lads. Then we started talking about music and soon someone was banging a bucket and we were having dance lessons. One of the boys liked Michael Jackson and did an impression wearing my hat. Then we started singing and I taught them "My God Is So Big", complete with actions. My first Bangla gig!

The journey back to the hotel was much the same. More tuk-tuks, more beggars, more suicidal bus drivers. Curry for tea and a chat about the day. 8am start the next day. We were due to start some painting in the newly built rooms. It was so hot though!

Wednesday 16th September
John White was mad. "Let's get away for 8:00am so we can get a good day's work in," he said. "Breakfast at seven!" he said. I was still in GMT so that was 1:00am! Ah well. I set my alarm and woke involuntarily at six. Fell back to sleep and woke up with the alarm at five to seven. Mad dash to get washed and dressed and down for a breakfast of omelette and samosas. I was starting to pine for cornflakes.

It was another uneventful but exiting journey by bus, tuk-tuk and boat to Horintana. Horintana was very different from yesterday when it was market day and the narrow streets were packed. Today was a lot quieter and a lot of the stands and shops were closed up. With the market stalls gone you could see the type of buildings and the layout a lot clearer. There was a very grand looking building surrounded by the wooden huts and shanties. I asked Mukta what it was. "It is a gold shop," he said, "a jewellers." How bizarre.

Lessons were in full swing when we arrived at the school. Marg and I were due to teach some songs to each of the four classes. I was relieved to find the bubble wrap I'd used inside the guitar case had done its job and the guitar had arrived unscathed. We picked four songs, all with actions that involved flailing your arms about or crouching down and bouncing back up, giving us about 20 minutes in each class. With the help of one of the teachers we taught the children the actions and tried to explain what "cast your burdens" meant and find out how you say it in Bengali. In the end we stuck with English and left the moves to the children.

It was incredible to see how exited and grateful these children are. They loved the songs and joined in with the actions. There were a few things lost in translation but the teachers and helpers at the school were so keen for these children to learn, however bad the songs were!

It turned out that the rooms we wanted to paint hadn't been prepared. A local worker was called in to carry out some preparation while I joined some of the adults for an impromptu and lively sing around. There is something very special about this small community. This society is one of the poorest in the world. They live on about 20 pence a day. Access to television, the internet and even radio is limited and for the Hindus of Horintana in a largely Muslim country life is often oppressed and never easy. And yet in this simple community there is a very real richness of common life. It is yet another thing that I found incredibly humbling.

We sang and clapped and hit tambourines and bells for awhile before heading off to see the paddy fields that Global Care had bought. Stu and Jerad were really keen to see these as their church had donated the money to Global Care for the fields. This journey was to be taken by pedal powered rickshaw. It had started raining which was quite a relief from the heat of the day. We arrived after about 15 minutes in an area with paddys stretching off to the distance. "Our plot is marked out by these orange flags," explained John Bose. It was a big area, stretching away around 300 metres and 100 metres across. A second field on the other side of the path of around 100 metres square was also included. It looked very impressive. George is a friend of John Bose and is in charge of the team that is looking after the fields. "The Rice is planted and harvested by hand but we have a tractor to bring it to the store," he told us. We could see some of George's team sloshing about up to their knees in muddy water.

John and Rob pushing a rickshaw up a hill

I had the privilege of sharing the rickshaw back to the school with John White. There were no roads there, just brick paths that seem to go on and on past shack after shack and the path is very bumpy and windy as it finds its way along river banks and between pools and paddy fields.

Back at the school another music session had started up. "Come, come, brother," said one of the teachers, taking me by the arm into the school's chapel. A small "band" was banging out a tune on drum, tambourine, hand bells and harmonium and people were dancing around in a wild dance. Stu and I were soon in the circle dancing away and shouting "Hey!" at the appropriate times. After a while we were asked to sing something so I got to play the harmonium. It's the same keys as a piano but one hand is used to pump air into the pipes and the other to play the tune. It's a bit of a multi-task nightmare but I had a little help from someone offering to look after the bellows. The songs went on for a good half an hour before we had to let Keith and Paul back in to carry on with the child protection training.

The room was still being prepared and we were told that we couldn't start painting today. So I was taken by some of the children on a tour, this time to see the kitchen. The school has 182 children with 20 living at the orphanage. For the size of the project I was stunned at how simple and small the kitchen was. Food is cooked in two fire pits in the ground no more that 50cm each across. Fire wood is stocked up in the corner and vegetables are kept in an adjacent room. There's no chimney so smoke escapes through the cracks in the roof or out through the doors. To see the quality of the food we were eating this simple set-up was quite amazing. And before you ask, none of us got ill.

We had yet another spontaneous music session, this time with the children dancing outside and trying to teach us some Bengali. Then, once the training had finished, we boarded yet more rickshaws and headed off to the Bose family home. It was by Bangladeshi standards a fairly modest house. When we arrived, John demonstrated how to get the milk from one of the huge green coconuts that grow there. Stu tried it straight from the shell and John opened up four more, enough to fill a large jug with coconut milk. Then the shells were split and the nut itself was accessible. Young coconut like this is very sweet and the nut is soft and almost jelly-like.

It was getting dark so after checking out the paddy house, a hut used for drying out rice and nothing to do with Irish men, we set off on foot back to the ferry station. We were treated again to an amazing sunset before catching the boat, tuk-tuk and bus back to the hotel. Marg entertained us by leaping up when the lady next to her on the bus let a crab escape from her bag.