Feeling empowered

I met an incredible man yesterday. His name is Sunta Rai and he is the local co-ordinator for the UK based organisation, FutureSense. FutureSense is an ethical business with a strong social motive that is committed in promoting the development of local communities and individuals through ethically run volunteer placements (thank you, Google). So Sunta arrived at Sacred Heart because a FutureSense volunteer will be working with Jordan and I at Sacred Heart School from tomorrow for five weeks and he lay down the ground rules his organisation has with Binod (our host), who apparently is his uncle. Anyway, we chatted over a glass of very strong whiskey about his organisation, his visions and what he's done in his life. And he is amazing.

Back in the mid 90's his brother came across a village whilst backpacking Nepal. After a 4.5hour bus ride from Kathmandu, it takes another two hours by walking to get there. It is so rural that if you do not follow a map correctly by the degree whilst walking, you will miss it. After spending a few months there, he returned back to India and Sunta decided to travel there to replace him. Upon arrival he noticed that there was no school in the town. The village did not know the meaning of “school” so Sunta basically invented the concept of academic education for them. For years he watched the school grow. It started out with a few children in somebody's kitchen. Then a bamboo hut with dirt floors. Then a small shed. Eventually, the school had its own building made from wood. It's reputation grew and more and more children started to attend. It became a private school where students had to pay 200-300rupees a month ($4-$6) to attend. All was going well until the Maoist (a communist group) noticed that private schools were dominating public schools, something they did not like. They told all private schools to shut down or decrease their number of students to give public schools an advantage. Sunta did not agree with their terms so walked up to the group and asked them to clarify. He suggested that they should visit public schools and see what the problem was. Obviously if poor parents are willing to send their children to a private school over a public school (usually free or 50rupees a month, which is $1) then there must be a problem. Instead of shutting down private schools, they should solve the problem within public schools. Apparently the Maoist group had no answer but stuck with their initial terms: shut down your school or get rid of half of your students. Sunta refused. He returned back to the village and continued on with the educating of children. It seemed like things were back to the way it was before until one day, 50 Maoist soldiers with guns raided the village. They took all the students and Sunta out infront of the school. They circled them and pointed their guns to Sunta's head. Sunta pleaded with them, “Do anything to the school. I don't care. Just don't hurt the kids!” So he watched the soldiers smash the tables they built by hands. He watched them tear books apart. And he watched the school that he built be burnt to the ground. Afterwards, he was forced to flee Nepal or they would kill him. Just recently, the children that he once taught, now all grown up, have returned to that village, rebuilt the school and are the current teachers. Amazing.

Now he is planning to start a business that helps the economy of rural villages. Many village people grow their vegetables and sell their excess produce in the closest populated township. After a good day of selling, they would earn 200-300rupees ($4-$6). However travelling to and from that town every day will turn their profit into less than 50rupees a day. So Sunta aims to buy all their excess produce from their door for a days wage so they can keep all their profit and sell them to private schools who need 50kg of vegetables a week for their boarders. He's already talked to various private schools and even though they already have a dealer who brings them vegetables, they are happy to switch as they do not know where the dealer gets the vegetables from. If they buy from Sunta, however, they are guaranteed organic produce and they know they are helping their own people in rural villages.

As Sunta was talking about this, his face lit up with excitement. His arms were flying in all directions, demonstrating models or plans. His eyes grew big and he was constantly smiling and laughing. This man is so incredible because of his mentality and his humility. He is all for helping the people, in helping villages improve their economy so that one day the Indian economy will improve. I can say that Sunta is that man in the phrase, one man can change the world.

I'm not sure if I've made Sunta sound as good as he really is, and if you're thinking, “Umm...I really don't see what's great about this guy and I think you're overreacting.” Then I apologise. I guess having a physical interaction with him and listening the words come out of his mouth is a lot more powerful. 

Now, he was probably 20 years old when he started the school and 26 when he was held at gun point. I'm thinking, “I'm 20 next year. Am I able to make such a difference to this world?” Often I feel like I can't make a difference because I am not the smartest person in the world and I don't have an amazing talent in art or music. So I'm just living my life, just simply existing. But it is the ordinary people like me and like 99% of the world's population that have the potential to be incredible people like Sunta Rai. It isn't a talent that we have to possess, it's a mindset. 
Anyway, I'm going to conclude with this inspiring and uplifting quote said by an unknown man, that was shared with me by a friend.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?”

Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to manifest the glory of God. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. It is not in a specific place, it is everywhere.

And as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Discouraged and Disheartened

It is times like these that make me so very discouraged and disheartened.

With Class III, Jordan and I are starting the theme “Story Time” where we go through fairy tales together and eventually, the kids will write their own story. Currently we are going though “Little Red Riding Hood” and after attempting worksheets and comprehension sheets that completely failed, as they simply did not understand the story, we broke the story down. We would write down a sentence from the story on the board and they would have to draw what the sentence is talking about. Even this was difficult as they refused to draw something that we didn't draw on the board. They would cry out, “Miss, I don't know how to draw!” so we had to draw it on the board for them to copy. This is something that I found very strange as children have amazing imaginations and love drawing. So we went through the story, which we broke down into eight sentences, drawings and all. Then we wrote down a simple comprehension question on the board: What happens at the start of Little Red Riding Hood?

This question created an uproar. They had absolutely no idea and Jordan and I refused to tell them the answer. Three kids refused to write and gave up their exercise books, which Jordan and I bought ourselves (we bought each child in Class II, Class III and Class IV an exercise book as our classes are not considered a separate subject and they never had spare paper on them), with full knowledge that once they hand in their books they will never get it back. After witnessing this, many of the other kids tried to hand in their books. They chucked the new books on the floor or around the room but I didn't collect them. At this point, I was so discouraged, disappointed, angry, sad and any other negative emotion. How did such chaos arise from a simple comprehension question? I don't know how I can make Little Red Riding Hood easier. The children here are not encouraged to think for themselves. But I am not going to give them to answers for them to memorise. I want them to understand and think for themselves!

Two girls from Class IV (Yankey and Sneha) and one girl from Class V (Pranisha) are participating in the Interschool Competition that is being held tomorrow. Two weeks ago, the organisation that holds this competition e-mailed all the participating schools the questions and answers that is going to be in the test. This whole week, those three girls did not attend class but sat in the staffroom with no breaks (excluding toilet and lunch breaks), memorising the questions and answers. They get slapped on the hand or pinched on the arm or hit on the head and shouted at for getting a question wrong or answering too slowly. On Wednesday, the supervising teacher said, “You need to be sacrificing your sleep to study.” And today Pranisha was scolded for sleeping at 8pm. “You should be sleeping at 10 and waking up at 4!” These are ten year old children for goodness sake! They should be running around in the quad, playing handclaps with their friends and running away from boys with cooties. I understand and agree that memorising is a required part of learning but this competition does not expand the child's education. It has at least three parts to it and one section, which goes for seven pages, is a quiz of useless facts (a question is: What country is known as "The Land of Earthquakes"? Apparently it's Japan). The teachers are putting the school's reputation over the physical and mental health of these children.

This mentality of memorising rather than understanding and going with your own opinion is something heavily engrained into the way things are here that children at the age of seven can't even draw without copying the teacher. This must be detrimental for the children's future! I blame the Indian education system. Not cool. Not cool at all.

One month in...

Needless to say, after a month living in Pokhriabong, I have gotten quite close with my host family and the boarders that I am staying with. I share the same roof as eleven other people: Binod (host), Jyoti (hostess), Binod's mother, Jyoti's mother, Panaam (Binod's sister), Madori (a teacher), Jordan (my partner) and the four boarding girls (Aakancha, Latika, Sara and Anjana). This is done by having no kitchen, living room or laundry inside the house but having every single room, or space, turned into a bedroom. The six boarding boys (Karma, Nueyal, Aajay, Wongiel, Uojo and Unabov) and Reewaj (hosts' son) live in a small room outside of the house.

Since I prefer to be outside after school, as the house is currently being renovated so it's extremely noisy, and the boys are always outside playing soccer, naturally I spend a little more time with the boys. However, I spend more intimate times with the girls. More dancing, singing, showing each other pictures and more sharing in general. I really look forward to those couple of hours I have chilling and playing with all of them after school and all day on the weekends.

One evening last week, the house experienced a black out. So all the boarding kids and Jordan and I went out to the school quad and went a little nuts. We pretended to be ninjas and characters from Tekken. We were ballroom dancing, attempting the moon walk, breakdancing and shuffling. We played the untangling game where you have to untangle your arms and played a hopping battle where you have to make the other person fall whilst hopping. We did cartwheels and somersaults. We were twirling and spinning around until we were so dizzy we had to grab onto the floor for balance. Jordan and I forced them to call us “Jordi” and “Shaz” instead of “Miss” (something that they're still working on!). And when we were all exhausted we lay on the dirt and watched the stars (which are absolutely amazing by the way!). By this time we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes so we went inside and played the guitar, singing and dancing by the candlelight. I think those few hours were the definitely one of the greatest highlights of India so far. It seems so simple – playing with kids, but that day definitely made the kids more comfortable with us. We are the youngest volunteers here in Sacred Heart and it's important for them to know that we're not here just as teachers but as friends.

At the same time, being the youngest volunteers makes it quite difficult to get close with the teachers. Yes they are friendly but it's more out of politeness rather than wanting to be friends. The youngest teacher is 25 and the oldest in his mid 40's. There are some teachers with whom I have not even had a single conversation with. I am not to sure if they take what Jordan and I teach seriously as they don't seem to take interest what we teach. Although I am somewhat relieved that what we teach is not part of the student's final mark, I would like to know that the teachers here do take us seriously. We have not been invited to staff meetings and even though it would probably be boring and irrelevant, it will still be nice to know that we are considered as “staff” not “volunteers”.