Teaching Update, India

We've now taught 3 days of classes at the sector 7 school for slum children in Faridabad. There are two 3-hour class sessions each day, one for younger kids (3-7ish) and another for kids up to around age 14. The school consists of a single 10' x 20' room with a thin rug that covers the dusty concrete floor. 40-50 kids are in each session, so it is kind of a madhouse. The two teachers don't speak English and are paid $20 a month for their services. They effectively silence the kids by yelling and hitting them with sticks, but have a high tolerance for noise and bad behavior before the sticks come out.

Once the room settled on the first day, the teachers turned to us and said 'start', which was difficult since we didn't have anything prepared. We flipped through a few books the kids had in their bags and did some reading to them, and then some counting and ABCs.

The kids are cute and many are eager and quick learners. Others sit there and don't make a sound for the entire session. A significant number have substances dripping out of their noses. Most kids have mastered a few tasks that various volunteers have taught them and which appear to be repeated regularly. One of the kids usually leads the group in yelling "A for apple, B for boy, C for cat!" etc., and there are a few that do so in a militant tone and posture that is funny. They loudly and confidently recite the alphabet, count to 100, and sing basic English songs, but outside of these contexts the letters and numbers lack meaning for many of the kids.

We walk from the house to school and back, and receive long stares from at least half the people we see on each 10 minute trip. Apart from the other 2 volunteers working with us at the school (from California and Germany), we are told there aren't any foreigners in this area. As we enter the slum and approach the school, kids crowd around us and shake our hands and say hello. Our home stay family explained that having the volunteers makes the students much more interested in going to school, and it is also encouraging to see that we can offer some knowledge that the teachers can't, since they don't speak English.

It is hard to know how much value rudimentary English will be to some of these children, but the math skills are important and just being in a structured school for a few hours a day seems better then than the alternative of playing in the dirt. The students also receive a free meal, a yellow, gelatinous dish ladled out of a 5 gallon bucket. Most kids eat a lot of this so we are guessing it is one of their bigger meals of the day.

We figured out where some of the garbage ends up. When the piles on the side of the road get to be a certain size, they are burned. It is hot and dry enough so that most garbage burns well, but it smells terrible. There also certain parts of the street that are designated as bathroom areas for people and animals, and these look and smell as you'd expect.

We saw a few monkeys on Monday, and continue to see dogs, cats, goats, pigs (the piglets are dirty but cute), and cattle of all types. The guidebook said not to come to India if you were an animal lover, and it is true that their lives here are anything but lavish.

Our host family is vegan so our meals have all been chapati (like a whole wheat pita cooked directly on the stove flame) and then lentils or potatoes. It has all been good but markedly different from the oceanside restaurants of Thailand. We shower by dumping water over ourselves from a bucket, which works fine, and the house switches over to battery power a couple times each day to keep some key lights on when the local grid falters.

Tomorrow we take a break from school and head into Delhi form some sightseeing. Oh, we received a few questions about the catfish. We did not eat it; the lake was catch and release only.

Congrats to Annie's sister Carrie, who gave birth to her second son Luke last week. Here is a picture of our new nephew.