Wednesday August 30, 2000
Dear friends,
This is the first time I've ever written one email and then sent it to half
of my address book. I sincerely apologize for the lack of
"personalization" but I thought you may be interested in what's going on.
Most of you have supported this trip in one way or another so I'm happy to be
able to give you an update.
The best news is that Udayan has an internet connection now! I got it
set up last Friday and my laptop works beautifully. The connection is not
even that slow, something that really surprised me. Even better news is
that we're getting our own computer for the office on Monday. There are
some computers that have been donated that are coming from Japan but I spoke
with Father Stevens and we don't even know exactly when they're going to make it
over. Considering the fact that I'm the one who'll be training the staff
and I'm only here for 7 more months (how the time flew by like that, I have no
idea), I thought that speed was of the essence. He agreed and decided to
buy a computer. So it is in the process of being assembled and it'll be
here on Monday. I am so absolutely excited about this! They are no
longer going to have to write out the 300 person roll call every month by hand!
This is really going to revolutionize things for them here. The best part
is that the staff is really receptive to the idea and (just about) as
enthusiastic about it as I am. I showed them some sites on the internet
the other day, including UVic's site, and explained how I could check my marks
from UVic while sitting in the office in Udayan. Watching their eyes bulge
out in amazement was so cool! I'm feeling pretty amazed by everything too.
The internet sure can make the world smaller. The computers that come from
Japan will be put in a computer room (still in the planning stages) and will be
for the children's use.
Aahh, the children. Let's get into the fun stuff now. I've got 16
violin students, 5 classes of English (one of these is staff English), a 40
person choir and 4 recorder students (don't think that means I have any clue how
to play the recorder or anything). I teach the girls violin every morning
at 7:00, boys at 8:30, then a different group of boys at 1:30. The choir I
have twice a week and each English class meets twice a week as well. Yes,
it seems that wherever I go I keep myself busy. I do, however, have enough
time to read books, study Hindi, and write. So I'm happy.
Teaching English is definitely a challenge, as I knew it would be. So
many of the teaching materials are designed with western consumerism in mind.
For example pictures of food: most pictures of food that I have involve
packaging. Some of them are even supposed to be recognized by their
packaging alone. But packaging is practically non-existent here, not to
mention the fact that most of the kids have never seen and probably never will
see most of the types of food that these books and things take for granted.
That's not really a big deal though, just interesting. More frustrating is
that they have these textbooks which are totally inappropriate for their levels.
They read the stuff without having a clue what's going on and of course, neither
do their teachers. None of these village teachers know English. I've
also noticed that so many exercises and things that are suggested in some of my
books already require language! What if they don't have any yet?
They literally cannot put words into a sentence unless it's a stock phrase that
they've memorized. They've got a bit of vocabulary but zero syntax.
I'm a bit stumped as to how to proceed. (Any suggestions?) I'll be getting
on the internet and looking for ideas and there are a lot of great sites out
there so hopefully that'll help. But I'm becoming more and more convinced
that I should eventually write a book about teaching English in non-western,
non-consumerist cultures because there's nothing out there for me! As far
as I can see at least. I'm sure that I'm learning more than any of my
students at this point, although that always seems to be the case. I was
really struck by how dependent culture is on things when I got a Hindi book for
KG kids. It had each symbol and a picture of a word that started with that
letter and then room to practise writing the symbol below. Just like in
English: A for apple, B for boy, C for cat, etc. I didn't even understand
half of the words that the pictures were trying to elicit because they were so
culturally dependent. Very interesting.
Hindi is great fun! I've learned the syllabary so I can actually read
in Hindi now. Now I just have to figure out what the heck it is I'm
saying. One of the elementary Hindi-medium teachers gives me a half hour
lesson twice a week. Between her and the books that I have, I'm slowly
figuring things out. It's a bit like learning in a foreign environment
though because everything around me is Bengali. All of my communication is
in Bengali right now too (however little it may be) because it came back so
quickly from last time. But nearly everyone speaks Hindi too so as soon as
I start addressing people in Hindi, they will do the same to me. In
Calcutta, there are a lot more Hindi signs and stuff because it is a big city
compared with this wee little rural community here.
On that note, I would like to make a brief mention about transportation here.
It is not for the faint-hearted! I feel certain that the population of
Calcutta has tripled since I was here last and the trains and buses reflect that
vividly. Perhaps it's because the novelty of being pushed and shoved and
elbowed around (not to mention the men that get a good feel in now and then) has
worn off. In fact it wore off the very first time I made the fatal error
of coming from Calcutta to Barrackpore (my stop) after office hours. The
only time I have ever seen people act like animals in this fashion is in 1998
when I was here before. It's so degrading I think. When I'm with
friends on the train, they are literally embarrassed about how people behave and
I don't blame them. So I'm trying to keep my visits to Calcutta to a
minimum because I just don't enjoy it. It's nice to see my friends and I
often have to go in for violin repairs and other errands, but I'll keep it to
once a week or twice maximum. I have an opportunity to join a sports club where
I would have access to a real chlorinated pool so in that case I guess my visits
would be twice a week.
Anyway, more about Udayan. These kids are just great. One day
about a week after I got here, I had a bit of a down time. For whatever
reason, I was not feeling good about things. I left my room and started
walking to the office. Nearby, there were three little boys that were
playing and when they saw me, they dropped their sticks, ran full-tilt towards
me with these huge smiles on their faces, and grabbed my hands to escort me
wherever I needed to go. I immediately felt so much better and remembered
that this is the reason I'm here. I've been getting regular little
drawings and notes with "I love you my Jill Auntie" written on them and every
day there are certain little kids that come up to me and tell me they love me.
It feels so normal now but the other day I had a friend visiting from Calcutta
and as we were walking around and the kids were coming up to me and telling me
they loved me and holding my hand and asking for kisses, I could see that he was
moved by it all. I'm so incredibly lucky to be here.
I live in Nivedita Bhavan (the girls wing) with the 50 girls that live at
Udayan. These girls are all below the age of 10 is my guess. Most of
them don't know their ages so you just have to guess. It is quite removed
from the boys part (with 250 kids) and within the building, my room is apart a
bit from the girls so I get some privacy (when there's not a bunch of little
girls sitting on my floor reading books or watching the screen on my laptop with
dropped jaws). My room is great. I have a bed with a mosquitoes net,
my own bathroom, a desk, a cupboard, and two overhead fans that run as long as
the electricity does. There are three windows that look out over rice
fields that go on all the way to the horizon. This contributes to the fact
that I share my room with about 300 species of the bug family. I'm
starting to get used to them though and I think there'll be enough room for us
all. Today I'm going to rig a little container that will be supported in a
tray of water so that I can keep fruit in my room. As it is right now, the
ants find everything, wherever I put it. Even when I got smart and hung a little
bag of fruit from my clothesline, the ants found their way down the line
into the bag. I've got a healthy respect for the little critters now.
Apparently there will be less ants once the monsoon is over. That sounds
pretty bad, eh? Like it rains 95% of the time or something. It
doesn't at all though. It comes in thunder showers. It'll rain
really hard for anywhere between 5-15 minutes. Everyone just takes a break
by a chai stall or under an awning of some sort and waits it out. I
haven't even bought an umbrella yet. I keep meaning to. The soccer
field here gets flooded as does the garden, but within a day it's back to
normal. (Just in time for the next big dump).
Soccer is good fun. I play with the boys now and then. The only chance
I have to don a pair of shorts! It was neat the other day when I put on
shorts to go play, went downstairs and all the girls wondered what I was up to.
I brought them along and we went to the soccer field and wow-what a cheering
section I had!! It's neat for them to see that sort of thing I think.
I've tried putting the girls and boys together for the choir but when I see how
intensely uncomfortable and self-conscious the girls are, I realize that this is
something that I'm not going to be able to change. I teach the girls the
same songs and things at a separate time on our own and when we perform, we'll
do it all together. In general the boys and girls like to be together I
think. Both of them miss their brothers and sisters at home and seeing the
older boys take care of the younger girls is really nice. I brought 23
children (my violin and recorder students plus a couple others) to a Calcutta
Foundation Orchestra recital last Friday. It was the same orchestra that I
taught in for three months when I was here last. We got on the Udayan bus
and drove the 1.5 hours into the city to the venue. We all filed in and
sat in the first three rows. They were so good and well-behaved and
charming (as one little girl beside me bent her arm and mimicked them playing
the violin going "tuck a tuck a tee tee") and I was so proud! They really
enjoyed being together, boys and girls, and they all seemed very at ease.
I was extremely happy to see that. There are so many cultural things that
I'll never fully grasp.
I have been staying very healthy. Having said that, I woke up with a
tickle in my throat this morning but I think it's just pollution-oriented and
nothing worse. I haven't had any problems with the food or water at all.
I'm drinking the water from Udayan now (I had mineral water for the first week
to let my body acclimatize. We thought I'd do that for 3 months, but I
only lasted a week, I hate having things done special for me) and I'm having no
problems. The food is good too. The only meal my body is not appreciating
is the rice and potatoes for breakfast. Twice a day is okay but three
times is too much. That's where my little dish of fruit will come in.
We have fish twice a week, an egg twice a week, and chicken twice a month.
It's a new experience to wake up and think "Yaayyy! Today is an egg day!"
With every meal is rice, potatoes, and lentils (dal). My right hand is
getting stained from all the turmeric in the food. (My left hand is kept
for other tasks).
There are certain things that make life interesting here. One of the
staff told me once that Indian writers describe the moon exceptionally
beautifully because of all the load-shedding. Oh how true.
Load-shedding is when there is no electricity for a period of time while the
central hydro plant sheds its load or something. Every night and generally
once or twice during the day there is load-shedding. It inevitably would
occur in the middle of my English class or choir. These used to be done at
night. We have since changed them to the day time to avoid this problem.
The choir I keep at night because we don't really need light anyway. I
don't understand why India doesn't adopt the day-light savings plan so that it
doesn't get dark at 6:30 every night. Then load-shedding would be less of
a problem. Anyway, it's really not that much of a problem anyway I guess.
The kids certainly don't think so. We just light candles and get on with
whatever we were doing. There can be a whole dining hall full of boys (the
girls eat in Nivedita Bhavan) and when the power goes out and it's pitch black
not even a murmur goes through them. They just keep on eating and chatting
as though nothing had happened. It's neat. The hardest thing is that
when there's load-shedding, the fans stop as well. Yikes. The
computer will have a special UPS thing that will give it 15 minutes once
load-shedding starts before it shuts off and you lose everything. That
should be enough time to save all the work. It also has a stabilizer that will
save the computer from all the current fluctuations.
More good news: the other day, the first box that I sent off in May arrived!
Filled to the brim with books. There was no problem at Customs or
anything. I'm expecting the rest within the next couple months. In
the end, there were 12-14 boxes that were sent (I can't quite remember exactly
how many now) filled with books and clothes primarily. It'll be great to
receive them all. Actually I forgot to say that I had no problems getting
the 14 violins and huge duffel bag of resources into the country. I
brought a couple newspaper articles (and a big smile and large, pleading eyes)
along with me to the airport in Vancouver and Singapore Airlines let me on
with them free of charge. At the Calcutta airport, I got all my stuff off
the thing-that-goes-round-and-round, loaded it up onto two trolleys and
nonchalantly (well, as nonchalantly as you can be tripping behind two trolleys,
with bags falling off and sweat pouring down your face) strolled through the
green line. That's the "I have nothing to declare line". Someone
asked me what was in the two big packages wrapped up in bubble wrap and I said
"Oh you mean these old things? Just a few old violins." No problems.
A month of prior stressing for nothing!
My colleagues here are great. I am especially close with two of them:
Mary (who is married to Joseph by the way) is the girls' house mother and Manik
is the general supervisor that stays on the premises. There are lots of
petty politics and stuff but it's easy for me to distance myself from all that
and stay friends with everyone. One or two of the staff have come up to me
asking me about sponsorship for their own children (for future education),
particularly girl children. I feel for their cause, but there's only so
much you can do. Sometimes it's hard to draw the line.
By the way, I've signed a contract to write an article for Strings magazine
(thank you Kim Tipper!) that will be published in the April 2001 issue.
I've also been in contact with four different ESL journals (thank you Laura
Collins!), all of which are interested in receiving an article from me and they
are mostly due in December for publication in early 2001 as well. This, on
top of designing a web site (which you'll all get the address to when it's
finished), and a database for the 300 kids will keep me busy on my little
machine here!
Anyway, if any of you feel so inclined, please write back and ask me any
questions that you have or comments or ideas or anything. I'd love to hear
from you. Thank you all again for helping me get here, with love,
Jill
PS: To contact the school write:
Udayan
PO Box 10264
Calcutta 700 019
India
www.udayan.org
