A chance to give something back give; They are middle-class and on the grey side of middle-aged, but they turned back time to experience a gap year in the slums of Sri Lanka and India. David Charters reports.

Byline: David Charters

DOWN here in the village, where the grass on the greens is lush to the foot, you don't hear the angry screeches and throbs of the two-stroke motors driving the three-wheeled taxis, day and night, on stomach-rolling rides along the broken and dusty roads, where the children play and the cows flick their tails, while the fruit and vegetable men seal deals and women in vivid saris press their clothes with coal-heated irons, all beneath a sky polluted by the imperatives of business.

But today the sky here threatens sleet and the postman steps gingerly around the lawns, before pushing letters and advertisements on to the mats.

John Hill, a jazz and rock pianist who plays in a Bob Dylan tribute band, is making the coffee at his house in Poets Corner, Port Sunlight, a row celebrating William Shakespeare in the village built by William Hesketh Lever, Lord Leverhulme, for the workers in his soap factory.

But you sense that John's thoughts are still far away in the slums of Sri Lanka and India.

For John, 63, and his wife Deborah Hill, 52, have just returned from their middle-aged gap year.

Of course, we are all familiar with the notion of young people taking-off with backpacks for a period of travel, discovery and self-examination between their A-levels and entering college or university. It could also be taken before your first job.

Those are the heady times when the juices are fizzing and you want to sample all the promises and experiences on offer in the world, while you are still free, before the pressures of work, money, marriage and children close in.

But why should such feelings be restricted to the young?

It seemed to John and Deborah that great opportunities were open to them as well. He had retired from Unilever in 2002, having spent most of his working life in the industrial research department, studying skin and later hair for the development of creams, lotions and other products.

Deborah's bosses at the Wirral-based careers agency, Connexions, were prepared to hold her job open for a year.

Many couples of their age have to devote much time to looking after the grandchildren, but Deborah and John didn't have children. So they could be young again.

They trained online with an international organisation called i-to-i, which marries voluntary workers to work abroad. Then their arms became pin cushions as they were immunised against the numerous diseases of the East.

"As tourists in third world countries, we had seen the sort of help that was needed, but you never connect with people, so we felt that we wanted to give something back and live and work with communities," says Deborah.

"We had been to Africa as well India and Sri Lanka before and witnessed so many injustices. You tend to make judgements about people, their living conditions and their lives, when you just view it, but when you live among people you come to understand the difficulties they face."

"They come from very complex societies and what you see as a tourist is very superficial," says John. "You scratch the surface but you don't get to the bottom of it."

Teaching English was an obvious choice for them and their on-line course lasted for 40 hours, though their tasks would embrace much more than that.

They decided to split the year into quarters, two of which would be spent touring New Zealand and Australia, with a short spell in the USA, with the rest of the time equally divided between Bangalore, the old military headquarters of the British Raj, and the slums of Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. They had to raise pounds 5,000 for the accommodation and other expenses linked to their charitable work, but the total cost of the break far exceeded that, though they are keeping the sum to themselves.

"We were there to teach children English, but we did community development work as well," says Deborah. Course teachers at the schools acted as intermediaries between the classes and the couple, who could not speak the local languages.

"There were no resources at all in the slum schools in India, no books, no chairs, no tables, so we had to teach on mats on the floor which we bought," she says. "The children there are taught by rote, but we tried to introduce more participative learning which was fun. We used to sit in our subterranean bedroom in the evening and do lesson plans. We did arts and crafts as well because they had no outlet for creative things."

Before long, they were redecorating the classroom and had 17-year-old boys on their hands and knees on the floor with glitter, tissue paper and glue.

Bangalore is in many ways beautiful, basking in its reputation as the garden city of India, but its pubs are now almost as famous, along with its energetic foray into silicon industries. Situated about 3,000 ft above sea level on the Mysore plateau, the city has an official population of more than six million, rising with alarming rapidity.

"Because of the IT industry everyone flocks to Bangalore and it cannot sustain the population," John says. "It is hugely polluted with lots of people begging.

Alcohol is a big problem and many of the mothers are drudges who have to work on the street.

We were in lodgings. We had running water, but had to wash our clothes in a bucket.

"There was also a growing middle-class and rich people prospering from the new industries. The meals were rice and curry and then rice and curry again. We learnt to eat with our fingers and we went to stalls on the road." When they arrived in Sri Lanka, in June of last year, the country was recovering from the tsunami. The devastation had been confined to coastal regions, but the economic impact could be seen everywhere.

Poverty was endemic in their part of Colombo."The houses were just like garden sheds with bits of corrugated iron," says Deborah. "A lot of them leaked and they were in little rows with sewers running outside. There was a standpipe at the end of the road for people to wash themselves and their clothes and get their water for cooking. They had almost no possessions, just rice."

The diet, health and life expectancy were very low by our standards, but it was still a vibrant country with the calf muscles of poor men swelling in front of pedal or pull rickshaws while the motorised tricycles maintained a frantic pace.

"We had a lot of hair-raising journeys," she says, "but they were the cheapest and easiest way to get around.

"We went knowing that voluntary work is always two-way and in a sense we felt that we had gained more than we gave. Sometimes it is very hard when so much needs to be done and what you can do is really very small.

"In addition to teaching English we were helping in sports clubs, building houses, developing nutritional programmes, working with the elders."

"We were labourers," says John, the son of an accountant, and you can detect the pride in his voice.

"We are shifting rubble and mixing cement and we did a bit of bricklaying.

Both countries are still very bureaucratic and that is a legacy of the British Empire, but you can eventually get things done, but it takes an awfully long time. The train service is still immensely effective in India."

In their year, the Hills saw much sorrow and happiness, the contrasts between the rich and poor being as keenly cut as life and death. Then they finished their gap year with a few days in Denver, Colorado. A grandfather clock ticks away time in the lounge, where they are sitting on a brown leather sofa, pressing into a cream carpet as is the piano in the corner.

"We found it very difficult to come to terms with the contrasts," says Deborah. "We had been working with people with such needs. We always had a perspective about what is important, but it gets buried in everyday life. We were suddenly transported to places where the excesses seemed too much to bear.

Spending huge sums of money on things that don't really matter.

"When people first heard about our plans for a gap year, they said, 'oh, aren't you brave', but that is not how we saw it. It was just something that we really wanted to do and we got to the stage in our lives when we could do it. We don't regret it. We found it really worthwhile.

People of student age and people of our sort of age can do it, but people in the middle have got too many responsibilities."

John looks from his window to the green. Lord Leverhulme, the soap millionaire, had a replica of Shakespeare's cottage built here. It was demolished in 1938. The postman continues his beat. This seems a very English scene for a couple who have been so far away from home, but they will always have their memories.

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Sound of music

JOHN and Deborah Hill have set up a website about their experiences (www.geocities.com/hillsconnect).

But now he is back, John can indulge in his other love, jazz. He plays the piano with two bands, Phoenix and the Big Easy, as well as the Dylan tribute band, With Bob on Our Side. "I had never been away from a piano in my life for more than two weeks. I wondered if I would forget how to play, but I didn't," he says.

He found pianos in hotels, schools and even a museum.

"One night we went for a meal with some people," recalls Deborah."There was someone on a guitar and someone playing the drum on a bucket. I was helping in the kitchen and I could hear John singing. I have never heard him sing in 20 years of marriage, except at church, but that was his only outlet because he didn't have his piano."

CAPTION(S):

Deborah and John reflect on their experiences back home Picture: TRACEY O'NEILL' Deborah with children in Sri Lanka' Deborah in a pre-school hut in Colombo' John and Deborah at a school in Sri Lanka' Deborah at a Sri Lankan tea plantation