Service Report #4 : India
While I was on the Semester at Sea Rotarian home stay, we visited the Gurukulam School, established to educate children who were affected by the 2004 tsunami. The school was entirely run on private donations. Upon our arrival, two young girls placed gold paint on our foreheads and handed out sugar to suck on. The two story school building was pristine with a large field and a couple of rusty pieces of jungle gym equipment. The school taught up to level seven with the intention of achieving certification to teach eighth grade by the following year.
A new system in India is being implemented to test the qualification of the teachers in several subject matters. Children’s education is the most significant medium to give them the opportunity to success as adults, therefore testing teachers guarantees that students are educated when in the classroom. However, it may discourage other individuals from joining the teaching profession. In addition, the testing does not have internal validity because the tests are not created for the specific subject of the teacher. For example, a math teacher will be tested on English subject as well as math and vice versa.
After our lunch, I spent the majority of the day in the youngest classroom partly because I was being held captive my several little hands in mine and the constant “Ma’am look, look!”. In class we have discussed the reciprocity involved in what makes service, service. I had brought crayons and coloring books for the children to use as my gift to them. After each student had finished coloring their picture, they would hand them back to me enthusiastically. After they would constantly pick their drawing out of the pile and show me that it was theirs. This was truly special and profound moment for in the past when I had given toys or candy to children they were all too happy to run away with their prize without allowing a chance for me to play with them.
As these students looked up at me with these huge, excited smiles to give me their picture I realized the joy brought about through the act of giving. There is so much joy and happiness that one experiences as they give up something of themselves to others. I gave these small things with no intention to receive anything back and I was pleasantly surprised to see the children’s desire to reciprocate. I will take every one of those pictures back with me to college to remember the lesson I learned that day: the value of pure giving.
I had an exhausting day attempting to give each of the kids all my attention. They each were easily amused by my reactions, acutely aware of their peers’ emotions and invariably able to jump up after falling. After that day I truly appreciated and admired the seemingly simple yet beautifully complex mind of a child. One boy, who had shaped his silly putty like a snake, would hold it up to me and shout, “Snake!”. After I mimicked being scared, he would give me a high five and hand shake. He must have repeated this cycle with me twenty times but the excitement and expectation on his face was too much to deny giving him that simple reaction of looking scared.
On the play set, the boys showed off to me how they could jump off the monkey bars and one boy completely face planted, hopped up and went right back on. I was completely shocked. I babysat kids in the US who sob for hours after minor scrapes. Therefore as soon as I saw it happening, I knelt expecting him to start bawling. If only adults could pick themselves and move on that quickly after metaphorically falling on their face.
During recess, I played keep away with the soccer ball and held a class wide running race. The children had very little mastery over English so when they started chanting “running race”, I was actually afraid they were chanting something negative about me. Many other Semester at Sea (SAS) students had children in Africa chanting “white person” the entire time they were with them.
When we were in Brazil, I predicted that I would have trouble interacting with the children when there was a language barrier. But when I was allowed the time and patience in the Gurukulam school, I proved myself wrong. The language barrier was a minimal problem when I was with these kids for so much is communicated through body language and facial expressions. By talking in English to them even if they did not completely understand what I was saying, they could understand my tone of voice. It was difficult when one girl started crying and I had no idea what had happened. I had to find one of the older kids, who spoke English well, to tell me what she was saying. As long as the context gives meaning to the speech then the issues of a language barrier become minimal.
I have noticed an overarching theme at each of these school visits I have done which reflects a theme that Mr. Justus brought up when he spoke to our class. The children get so enthusiastic to have foreign visitors that they are distracted from their classes and school work. If Indian students came into our elementary schools, would they get a similar reaction? Would an entire day of school be halted to allow for the children to play with the foreigners? I highly doubt either of these situations would be the case. It is simple to see that these visits are doing more harm than good as they introduce power dynamics and take children away from their studies.
All of the students were more polite and less rambunctious then other schools we have attended in Africa for example. In addition many of these schools had very strict uniform restrictions; for example all the girls have their hair in braided pigtails that are looped up so that the end in pinned to their head. Every nation we have travelled to have a public school system with uniforms. However, only being there for a limited amount of time it as well as the complicated names it makes it extremely difficult to distinguish which child is which. As soon as I start getting the hang of it, it is time to leave.
Once the younger students we visited the classrooms of the 7th grade and they told us they wanted to be politicians, engineers, and doctors. We got the girls to show us a dance they knew. The guys helped them to sing the song since we didn’t have music. We had the Brazilian student with us so she and I showed the kids salsa! They also asked us to sing our national anthem and to say our pledge and then they said theirs after. It was perfect reciprocal exchange of culture. Both of the groups present had this burning desire to learn about the culture and way of life of the other group.
On the bus back to the city, they blasted Indian music for most our leaders and guides were in their twenties and we had a dance party. It was rough when the bus stopped short and everyone bumped into the person in front.
Upon returning to our homestay, our parents, Meena and Gireeshan brought us to a hotel to attend their local rotary meeting. It was perfect because the guest speaker discussed disabilities in Indian society. The other girl with me is studying speech disorders so she and I had tons of questions for them. The meeting focused on speech and seeing impairments.
Apparently, there is not nationwide system of sign language. The rotary club where Gireeshan works has a sister group in Malaysia where they are funding a supply of fresh water to a school there. He has spent a lot of time travelling back and forth there.
The rotary also works with a local school and hopes to send some of the students there on scholarship to Malaysia. Another aspect of the rotary club is fellowship and our parents had hosted a rotary party on the past New Years holiday. All the members of the club were very friendly and excited to talk to us about studying on the ship and such.
Here are some of the notes from the lecture
• Main goal is Inclusion in society
• Distributing information – starting to change people’s attitudes
• Break the prejudices through media (publish a magazine), employment and training programs, and host public events
• Trying to create a society for everyone
o New law creating two more coaches (buses) for the disability but why don’t you make all of them accessible
o Same there are two coach cars for trains for the disabled when they all should be
• Need to be a part of society where everyone is welcomed no matter how we look
• They have a film festival where one category is to make a 60 sec video conveying a message of inclusion
• Trying to change people’s perception
• Talked about access to entertainment
• Those who are deaf or hard of hearing should have the option of subtitles
• Many movies have captions now anyways to increase the population watching because of the language situation in India where many people don’t understand Hindi or the local language
• For those are blind they are starting to have audio description that will provide background about what is happening on the screen
• They do not have the funding to do infrared with headphones in the theatre but instead there is a way to get an FM station that one can reach through their phone
• Hope to make this routine throughout the country
• Schools can no longer turn disabled children away
• Attitude where people assume those with disabilities aren’t educated
• They are having trouble collecting statistics because people were not counting those who were disabled in the census
• A new law is coming out that they are hoping to change this
• Those who are deaf are discouraged from signing therefore it is very difficult to communicate
• Many people lack the patience to try
After the rotary meeting, we went to a Chinese restaurant with Meena’s niece, husband and daughter. I really liked her niece because she had a lot of spunk and attitude. The daughter, Tara (which means Star) was seven and at first very shy with us. She played with me for a bit while we were at the house which was fun. It was adorable while we were at dinner because she fell asleep and had to be carried down.
While we were at the restaurant, Liz and I were looking at the menu and started discussing what we wanted to order. However our family eats their meals at the restaurant family style so they ordered several dishes of dinner for all of us to share (think Carmine’s in NYC). That difference in expectations of protocol at a restaurant reflects the different values of collective and individualistic cultures. Liz and I were simply worrying about what we had wanted to eat while the ultimate decision was a shared one with the family. I really enjoyed the Indian version of Chinese food and it was a good prep for China!
At dinner we talked about the TV show Big Bang Theory and how sophisticated the script is. Basically Meena’s niece mentioned how difficult it must be to know that much about math and science to use it for puns and jokes. It is strange to me that I was eating dinner in India and I was having the same conversation I had in the states multiple times. Talking about my parent’s favorite show also made me feel like I was at home talking to them about the latest episode.
Mohitha had turned 18 last year and has just started learning how to drive which must be a formidable task in India because of the hectic traffic. The majority of the cars are manual transmission so she is still trying to get a hang of that as well. She drove us to the restaurant and back and it was interesting to see her parents guiding her like my parents would me. In addition, they were her extra eyes because the traffic is just so unpredictable, whether people swerve in front of you or not. She stalled a couple times but other than that, she was very cautious and performed better than I ever could do in that traffic.
We were waiting at a red light at one point and there was no incoming traffic from the other side so almost every car behind of us started honking. It was the strangest thing to see four lanes of traffic to completely run a red light because there was nobody else on the other side. I mean it makes sense logically, the traffic lights are meant to regulate traffic but if there is nobody to wait for then they become negligible.
That night we went on line to Facebook and Mohitha showed me her pictures and her brothers as well. Bonding with other teens is similar whether at home or across the world: lets stalk each other’s Facebook.
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