Day 9 – Tuesday, March 11
As there is no slum here, there is no community center. Just the school with four teachers, around 100 kids, and one volunteer, Nora, a nineteen year old girl from Germany. I am very impressed with this young lady. She took on this post about 2 months ago. The teachers know very little English here. Nora knew no Hindi, let alone any Gujarti. She just went out there on her own and started working with the kids. Little by by little, they are learning, but it will take some time. There is no way Nora can be able to teach these kids alone and give them the proper individual attention they really need. They have no supplies, few books, fewer resources. Everything Nora has needed comes out of her pocket. Like I said, I am extremely impressed with what she has accomplished. There is no doubt that she loves those kids, and they certainly love her.
Tuesday I begin my journey to where I
will be spending the majority of my time for the next six and a half
months. Somewhere in Ahmedabad, about forty five minutes away by
ricksha or city bus is the Naroda Ashramshala, a state funded school
for children from outlying areas of the city. Most of the fathers
are involved with crime and alcoholism. The children live and learn
at the Ashramshala for 10 months of the year and return home for 2
months after exams in mid-April. These boys and girls are from
around age 5 to around 12, broken down into 7 standards based on
learning comprehension.
As there is no slum here, there is no community center. Just the school with four teachers, around 100 kids, and one volunteer, Nora, a nineteen year old girl from Germany. I am very impressed with this young lady. She took on this post about 2 months ago. The teachers know very little English here. Nora knew no Hindi, let alone any Gujarti. She just went out there on her own and started working with the kids. Little by by little, they are learning, but it will take some time. There is no way Nora can be able to teach these kids alone and give them the proper individual attention they really need. They have no supplies, few books, fewer resources. Everything Nora has needed comes out of her pocket. Like I said, I am extremely impressed with what she has accomplished. There is no doubt that she loves those kids, and they certainly love her.
A little shyness on the kids' part was
expected. So I take out my always trusty friend maker, my camera.
Camera equals spontaneous friendship. At that point, I'm not making
any effort to get great photos – just to make friends. “Photo,
photo”. Such camera hogs, pushing and pulling on each other to get
their pictures taken. Always coming up with poses. As much as I
dislike poses, I'm just clicking away until the question I've been
waiting for, “What's your name?” By the end of the day, I was
being called “unkle”. I was officially now accepted. As Nora
said later, that's a good thing. They call her “Didi” which
loosely translated means “auntie”.
Today was the Level 7 kids, the oldest
of the bunch. I purposely didn't bring a lot of stuff for kids from
home. From the research I had done, I figured I would mostly likely
be able get a lot of things over here – which is turning out to be
true, and at a much better cost than back in the US. I did take one
world map that had come with one of the National Geographic books
back home. They were seriously interested in where places were. I
will be looking for more while I am over here. Perhaps a globe.
Overall, I am very happy with the way
things are going here so far. If things continue like this, the
middle of September will come way too quickly.
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