After finding out yesterday that we don't have hot water piped to the huts, I found the standpipe this morning. OMG that water was hot (it wasn't always during the month though)! However I will never complain about cold or badly working showers at home again - at least we can just turn the tap on, in tiled bathrooms, and the water comes out. In the village and our camp, all water comes from the well, which has to be pumped up by (usually) the women or the children. We are very spolit in the west as to what they have here.
As part of the morning chorus this morning I heard peacocks crowing from the open fields along with sparrows, pigeons and birds that look like the noisy mynahs in Australia. We all went native and dressed in our new Indian clothes, even the boys, and we quite felt part of the landscape. These dresses were to become part of us by the end of the month and it really made a difference in the schools to be dressed appropriately.
This morning we had a tour around the work areas - schools, day care centre, and a home-based school for adolescent girls who work on creating saris. I think the tiredness of yesterday and the travelling caught up with me as I felt very tearful that I couldn't do this teaching, that I wouldn't be able to get on with the kids. However all of the group was feeling the same and we all commiserated with each other and cheered each other up over lunch.
In the afternoon we had a meeting with the camp manager who allocated us to schools and work areas - I was paired with Michael from Germany to teach in Bagadi Primary School, and with Graziella to teach the adolescent girls. Being paired with Michael was great - he is a maths teacher in Germany and so I can watch his style of teaching and learn a lot from him. Before dinner we had Hindi lessons, using transliterated words, and not the Hindi script, but the words were very useful in the classes later on.
Tuesday: had a tiny splatter of rain this morning and heard thunder in the distance, but the day ended up overcast and warm. Every day now, we have to plan lessons between 9.30-10.15 and Michael and I worked together to plan them to be complimentary - i.e. I could help with maths and he with English.
We were dropped off at Bagadi school first and here are some observations of the village as we were driven there: dusty, brown, rural huts, bricks sometimes, porches made of straw and branches, goats, dogs and cows roaming the streets, and in people's yards, water pumps at which children were jumping up and down on the pump handle to get enough pressure to get the water out, round flat pats of cow dung shaped and mixed with straw, laid on roofs to dry out and then are used for fuel and manure. A woman carrying a huge load of straw on her head walking down the middle of the road; men usually sitting on slatted beds, knees hunched up to their chests, white circular head-dresses; women working a huge circular open wheel to do the laundry in the field; laneways were bashed-down dust lanes, deep ruts and potholes; crops in the fields standing up in stooks or lined up at the edges of the roads for drying and then storage.
Class: Michael and I were led into a class of 7-12 year olds, approximately 12-15 each day. We had been told that today we would just be observing the teachers to see what we would be doing, but it immediately became apparent we would be doing the teaching TODAY and that literally were no teachers for these classes. Michael therefore started with number games, lining them all up against the walls and checking their counting and understanding of maths. I did a Look and Say on letters and images and I was really surprised by how much they did know and remember. I also asked them to spell parts of the body and although there was a lot of collusion on the part of all the kids, they clearly understood and remembered their spellings. It is just such a shame that their talents and aptitudes are hidden in rural schools, just because their parents can't afford (paying) schools in town or city for the talented kids.
Michael and I were pretty happy with what we achieved this morning, but the others felt really down-hearted and not happy with their placements. Again everyone gave moral and emotional support, which was valuable on all sides. We had chai tea at 4.00 and I had to have a nap before dinner as I was exhausted with today! Overnight I heard a lot of rustling and chewing in the straw - I think I have a mouse in the thatch!!
Wednesday: when the kids were naughty or non-attentive today I put on a "stern" face! but really they didn't need a lot of telling off. At break time, I taught the girls hop-scotch and as I said to C at home, it is a shame that adults have to grow up. When one has the opportunity to play with kids and play their games, and see things from their perspective, it reminds us adults what we have lost and what an opportunity to regain the fun and joy of life - which had been lacking in my life for so long.
As we left the school today the girls insisted on holding my hands - I had about 5 of them hanging off me as I walked down the rutted, muddy and wet-cow-patted lane; and the boys fought over the privilege of taking our equipment box back to the minibus. I promised them a rota of doing this through the weeks and they were happy with that. A lovely memory of leaving the school each day is the kids running alongside the minibus, waving at us with both hands high in the air and say Bye, ma'am, bye ma'am, bye gerugi (which is the Hindi word for (male) Teacher). Lovely!
Thursday: had to do the washing today. None of this shoving it into a washing machine. I had to lug the hot water from the standpipe, mix it with cold from the tap into the bathroom, and swirl around the Travel Wash gunge. I disappeared in a cloud of bubbles as I misjudged the amount of gunge I needed!! However the clothes were clean :). All had to be handwashed and then hung on the line strung between the huts - it looked like a chinese laundry when all 3 of us around our little quad had done all our washing! However with the sun being so hot, and getting hotter, I could do a wash after breakfast and it was all totally dry and stiff in the sun and wind by lunchtime.
I began the teaching day in a bad mood - something one of the staff had said had really wound me up, but do you know by the time I worked with the kids at school today my mood had lifted the clouds. Michael praised me for being innovative in teaching and we worked together on his maths problems, me illustrating what he was teaching by writing words and images on the board. Oh yes, we worked with dusty white and coloured chalks - non of this white board stuff. No computers either!
Afternoon I called home using the extremely cheap phone line. C answered and it was lovely to hear a familiar voice from home and to hear what was going on. I am so looking forward to seeing C again - even when one is travelling with people and working in a team, one can be lonely and miss the little things from home.
Friday: it was really cold overnight, would you believe, and I had to wrap my costume scarf around me and get into my sleeping bag. However the sun poured through the window - which is really a hole in the mud hut wall, supported with a wire cross and covered with mosquito netting. It warmed up fast today and in the afternoon I had to sit in the shade. Class was a disaster - my own fault as I didn't prepare well enough, but this was enough to make me feel very downhearted and again doubt my own abilities to see this volunteer project through, especially as everyone else had had good days and were crowing over their achievements. I took my MP3 out into the dust fields behind the camp and listened to music to myself. I had to get out of the camp just for a while, but people noticed and were very supportive later.
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