Alex Butts

So this week the work load has been picking up a bit, which is nice. Emily, Brother Joseph, some of the older boys and I have started a reading club. Unlike most clubs, however, membership in this one is compulsory. In class they break the kids up into groups A-D, A being the strongest and D being the weakest. I’m sure it does wonders for their self esteem, as well as the teacher telling me, as I’m sitting next to the kid she’s talking about, that a certain student is very weak. We work with C and D group Monday through Wednesday, and A and B on Thursday and Friday.

The Reading Club is an interesting challenge for the kids who struggle. It doesn’t seem like they teach the kids to read phonetically here. I’m pretty sure that they just flat out memorize words. I realized that when I’d be helping the kids read and they’d get to a word that they didn’t know, so they’d just throw out a guess. For example, if the word were “pear” they’d guess something like “dog.” This is a big deal because except for the classes on Hindi and Marathi, all of the classes are taught in English.

The other big challenge with the Reading Club is that the kids who need help the most want it the least. It’s tough to get on kids who don’t want help when I have 5 or 6 kids who genuinely want me to help them read.

I feel like I’m in a bit of an awkward situation regarding behavior in the class room. The Brother treats Emily and I like staff members—to the point that I think he holds us above teachers in many regards. By that, I mean that I have access to confidential information about the students that the teachers don’t have, and shouldn’t. He doesn’t want them to have this information, which is mostly about their lives pre-St. Catherine’s School because he’s afraid that the teachers would use it against them. There’s also quite a bit of violence in the class room from the teachers. A bit of background: in “normal” Indian schools, it’s not uncommon for teachers to come to school with a stick, which they use to hit the students. However, this is not a normal school. A good portion of the kids here have been physically abused, and hitting them just flat out doesn’t hurt them. The other thing is that there’s enough violence in this school as is, Brother wants the teachers to set an example. Knowing that, I’m a bit uncomfortable with the amount of hitting that some of the teachers here do.

Communication between my bosses and me is at a premium, and it’s something that I’m trying to work on. For example, school was cancelled on Friday to protest violence in another state. The violence came to a head, eerily, when a Catholic orphanage was burned down by Hindu extremists, killing a nun. All of the Catholic schools here shut down. However, I wasn’t informed of this until 11:30 AM on Friday, after our staff meeting. It’s pretty amusing in a sense (the communication, not the violence), and they’ve been understanding if they tell me about something at the last minute and I already have plans.

The violence in Orissa brings up another issue. I witnessed an outpouring of nationalism on Independence Day here, and have found the Indian people to be much more nationalistic than Americans. Case in point: the Olympics. India won its first ever gold medal in these Olympics, and the man who won it is being hailed as a national hero. On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve had people come up and shake my hand congratulating me on Michael Phelps. I had nothing to do with Phelps winning and, at most, his success marginally affects me in any way shape or form.

I mention the nationalism, because there seems to be a fair amount of tension amongst Indians of different states. For example, I live in Bombay (still the preferred name for many people here), which is in the state of Maharastra. The regional language in Maharastra is Marathi. The local congress (I believe, don’t quote me on who actually did it) just passed legislation that the signs on shops are to have no language bolder than Marathi. This means that English and Hindi, the two most widely accepted languages in India, have to be smaller than Marathi. This move just seems extremely divisive to me. Especially when you understand that Bombay is a city of immigrants. People move here from all over the country; I’d say that at least half of the people that I work with were not born in Maharastra. There are even politicians who are pushing for all non native Maharastrans to be kicked out of the state.

This doesn’t seem like a unique phenomenon either. I’ve been told that if you speak Hindi to people in some of the southern states, they’ll understand exactly what you’re saying but ignore you. They’ll only respond if you speak in English or the local language.

Another problem that I’ve seen hits me every day with the kids that I help. A lot of them aren’t from Maharastra either. The issue is that people literally uproot to come to this city to beg. Begging is big business here, and often people can make more money begging in Bombay than doing whatever they did for work at home.  Bombay is home to Asia’s biggest slum, which I ride by when I take the train into the city. It has over a million people packed into just a little over a square mile. There are estimates that claim that over 50% of Bombay’s population lives in slums and shanty houses. That’s over 8 million people. I spent the night in the city and walked to the train station at about 8 this morning, as the city was waking up. I’ve seen all the beggars before, but I was struck by how many people live their lives on the street. In a short walk I must’ve seen at least 50 people—children included—either asleep or waking up on the street. I feel like we get sheltered from this since we live in an upscale neighborhood. Our neighbors include actors, ex-pats and families that have either had a house here for decades or are wealthy.

It’s interesting to see first hand some of the numerous social problems that plague India, especially since I deal with them every day. The kids I work with are children of prostitutes, rag pickers, street kids, kids who have either lost, or are losing, parents to diseases like AIDS and TB and kids who lost an eye because of an untreated cataract.

I know this is getting long, but I read an interesting piece in Time Out: Mumbai. It was a short editorial about how the AIDS rate in India is skyrocketing, yet there is sort a refusal to acknowledge that the disease is a problem and, as a result, nothing is really being done. It’s sort of a dirty little secret. A major problem, with regards to AIDS, is that homosexuality is criminal here. Literally, it’s a criminal offense. It’s hard to have a dialogue about HIV and AIDS when one of the highest risk groups is a bunch of outlaws. The quote that really struck me from the article was this: “we live in a country where millions have died of AIDS, but nobody has died of AIDS.”

                Again, I’m trying to update more, but it’s been tough. It’s not that I don’t have the time; it’s more that things just come up and it’s easy enough to put off. I’ve been handwriting the posts first for the most part, but I think I may scrap that to save time and have more frequent updates. Anyways, as promised I’m going to write a bit about what I’m doing here.

                As of right now, we’ve been working as it comes. I’ve been struggling a bit to carve out a role for myself here. Emily has taken to sitting in on classes for the morning, but I’ve found that this doesn’t really work as well for me. Basically, my presence is a distraction for the kids, and I have to sit in the last row for the kids to see the board. Also the desks are horrifically small for somebody of my size (check out Emily’s blog where there’s a picture of the two of us and a 16 year old Indian. They’re not big people), so I’ve taken to doing some administrative tasks like compiling information on the kids in the morning. Lunch is around 1:15 and then I typically go to a class afterwards because I can bear sitting in a small desk for about an hour.  Even then, I’m not much help by being there and act more as moral support

                After school is sort of where we can come into our own. Last week we did amateur eye exams with a chart placed 20 feet away. These are very simple vision tests. This was an adventure, especially considering so many of the kids are illiterate. This was compounded the fact that, while the boys are relatively easy to control, with the girls it’s complete anarchy (more on that later). If we did everything right, there’s a chance that there are some kids who are legitimately blind in one eye here.  Part of me feels like some of it was just them being un-cooperative as well. If there are a few blind kids, it makes me wonder how they’ve gotten through school without anybody noticing and saying something.

                Another thing  that we have been doing is checking on the report  cards of a group of kids who are either orphans or have parents that don’t show up to parents days. I was amazed how much taking 15 minutes of my time to go over their grades boosted their self esteem. I felt bad, because I had literally 20 other kids ask me to check their grades, but it just wasn’t possible to do that for everybody. The next step in the program is to run sort of a remedial class with a few of the 3^rd graders who are failing. The Brother basically told me that they are the toughest kids in the school, so it will be a challenge, but they’ll benefit from the attention.

                Back to the girls. I’ve struggled with them for two reasons. The first is that, like I said, if you give them an inch they’ll take a mile. They’ll basically abuse any privilege you give them or any favor you’re willing to do. An example of this is when I had a bottle of water, one of the little girls asked me if she could take a drink. I said yes, and she did. Then 20 other girls came rushing over, mobbing me for my bottle. I didn’t have a problem with giving a drink to one person, but when the 20 girls mob me for a drink when the water filter, which provides safe drinking water, wasn’t even 100 yards away, it’s a completely different story. When Emily and I were doing eye testing, the boys could be kept relatively under control. We could get them to sit down and stay somewhat quiet. The girls, on the other hand, would crowd around us, talk loudly and help each other cheat on the eye exam.  

                The other thing that is tough is how touchy feely the all are. All of the kids here are needy for all sorts of affection, but the girls are very, very touchy. To the point that I’m very uncomfortable. Basically, if this were an American school, the level of physical contact that the girls try to have would not only be inappropriate, but would get me fired. The addition of a mini plague of chicken pox going around doesn’t make me any more comfortable.

                Brother

                I feel compelled to write a bit about my supervisor, Brother Joseph. He seems like a great man and has been extremely hospitable to both me and Emily. What’s interesting about him is how his approach to the work he does is sort of shocking, considering he’s a Brother in the Catholic Church. I’ll probably write about him at length later, but during a meeting he mentioned to us that he wants to start a sex-ed program about healthy practices, HIV/AIDS and safer sex. This was kind of a surprise since the Catholic Church isn’t notoriously fond of contraception. But his attitude is that the kids are from the streets, so they’ve seen it all before. Many have been physically abused, sexually abused and the children of prostitutes, so there’s no point in hiding anything from them.  He just asked us to be as honest with them as possible, since they’re going to have questions when the program starts. He told us that there were problems last year when he tried to run this program. When the kids had questions for some of the staff members, they were told that it was sinful and they shouldn’t talk about it. That year’s program was, of course, ruined.

                Indo-American Relations

                It’s been an interesting week for Indo-American relations. This time, we’ll start with the bad. I went into the city on Saturday, and walked around for a bit. As I was walking in a relatively un-crowded area (relative for India), I see that I’m walking head on with a guy about 20 feet away from me. As he’s coming towards me, I decide to defer and move over so we can pass each other, but he moves in the same direction and is still coming head on at me. As we pass each he takes his lap top bag and swings it so that he hits me in the leg. I was just absolutely taken aback by this, as it was deliberate. It didn’t hurt, but I was just shocked. Once I processed everything, I tried to say something to him, but he had absolutely zero interest in sticking around to jaw with me.

                Now, for  the good. Friday was Independence Day in India, so some of the guys that I hang out with at a local Bar/Restaurant decided to have a party. It was pretty cool, albeit reminiscent of freshman year in Davidson. About 10 of us went to this guy Kaji’s house, and hung out in a room about the size of a Davidson common room. There was bad music, food, and lots of hanging out. The only difference from freshman year was that I was, at 22, by far the youngest person there.

                On Friday, they had mentioned that they hang out at the bar early on Sundays, so I decided to stop in and have a soda—I had to work later in the day. There were two new guys hanging out with them, and one of them had brought lunch. Not only was he kind enough to give me some of the crab curry that his father had made, he gave me some of the best pieces. And he had just met me. It’s weird about how I’m more conscious about hospitality now that I’m so far away from everything familiar.

This a quick one, but I just had to write it. It’s 6 AM here and I’ve been up since 2:30. Why, you ask? The gods of irony and digestive health are vengeful, and don’t like to be taunted.

I just wrote a draft of my next post, that I was going to conclude by talking about how I have a false sense of invincibility. I figured that, on the eve of completing my first month, if I had been eating on the street and hadn’t gotten sick by now, I would probably never get sick. Well, the gods said to themselves “not so fast my friend.” I woke up at 2 with shivers and an upset stomach, as well as dry mouth. I tried to drink some water, roll over and go back to sleep, but my stomach had other plans. Instead, I got the familiar feeling that something was going to shoot up my esophagus, so I made the mad dash to the bathroom. However, I didn’t quite make it. After finishing, I tried to drink some water and go back to sleep. But water won’t even settle!

Moral of the story is–always be careful and don’t get too cocky.