My first day in Shree Prabhat Secondary School was amazing. After Dita, I was only the third foreigner ever to go to Dhawa (!) and every one wanted to be in front of my camera lens.
After every set of pictures I would show the children the shots, and they had all sorts of reactions; from shame to mockery, amusement to general hysteria – but they all seemed very happy that this day had come. They certainly seemed to find their new volunteer teacher a very funny site!
The first thing I did was to find out their names, ages and see how good their English was. During first break I asked the head master if any of the children were perhaps more in need than the others. Had any lost one or both parents? Which were from the “untouchable” caste? (traditionally forbidden to do anything other than manual labour – though the headmaster wanted much more for them). What other factors might make their lives more difficult than thre rest? I took lots of photographs – which the kids continued to enjoy. For me though, I was trying to discover which kids were most in need of sponsorship from outside.
I’d not really ever considered how tough life might be in a remote community, and I was conscious of my own perspective. I was a foreigner, for me life was easy – if I didn’t like it i could just go home! When I got to bed that night I felt a calm before the storm. But I was happy to be there.
Day 2, I decided, would be audit day. I tried to leave my feelings aside and checklist the priorities I had been given by the LP team, alongside others I’d set myself. My main tasks were to review the conditions of the school, make a nutrition and a drinkable water assessment for the chikldren, and try to get to know the students and their needs. I wasn’t really there to teach, but I decided to try and teach some classes anway – in a fun way, playing games, chatting in English, and amusing them to keep them involved – as I carried out my assessments.
The school conditions were awful. The rooms have no natural or artificial light. There is no electricity. There is no running water. No kitchen, no school lunches for the kids (only for the staff – and then it’s the handy man who just boils some packed noodles in the headmasters office). No snacks of any kind, and certainly nothing that provided any proper nutrition (some kids also brought packed noodles and ate them uncooked.)
There is scant space for the students to work, and this was my first struggle, in order to get them to write some things down. There are no teaching materials, no textbooks, nothing to stimulate the kids. There is also no cleaner – and this is the irony – as the dust and rubbish lay layer by layer day by day – why bother when so many more important issues are lacking?
Day 2 was more special than day 1 – in one way – I hadn’t planned any classes! I didn’t know enough about the kids yet – how good their English was for a start? And i wasn’t expecting to teach that day. But then of course I ended up staring at a class full of expectant tenth graders, thinking – what the hell were these kids expecting?!
I started quickly thinking what to do, and then it came to me: I’ll grant them five wishes. So I wrote down on the board, “What are the five things you most wish for and the five things you don’t?” I guess what they understood was “five things you like and five things you don’t ”, (the next day I explained them the difference but the result was the still the same!)
The “things” they wanted were survival food items like fruit or vegetables, playing games like volleyball, football or swimming, and to know how to drive, read, write and teach. Then I ended doing this very same type of questionnaire in grade 9 and 8. The results were overwhelmingly more basic. I went home at lunch time knowing there would be no lunch, and because i seemd to be coming down with flu symptoms. Bed was my nearest destiny. As I walked away from the school, the isolation of this place struck my darkest thoughts. The only way to end this encapsulation is with the internet, a proper phone system, and perhaps even a road? But we have to tread carefully – so we don’t impose our own ways on this magical culture. One step at a time, i thought; the first thing that’s obvioulsy needed is proper nutrition and health, and a working school.
At home, I had a closer look to the student’s wishes and tried to organize them as in table 1:
Table 1 – Most wished (5 wishes per student)
| Wish |
Num. Occorence |
% |
| To be tall |
1 |
3% |
| To be white |
1 |
3% |
| To be a nurse |
1 |
3% |
| To be a doctor |
5 |
14% |
| To be a teacher |
16 |
46% |
| To be a driver |
12 |
34% |
| To be rich |
2 |
6% |
| To well know how to read and write |
19 |
54% |
| To write love letters |
9 |
26% |
| To play football |
17 |
49% |
| To play volleyball |
18 |
51% |
| To swim |
10 |
29% |
| To dance |
6 |
17% |
| To sing |
6 |
17% |
| To watch TV |
1 |
3% |
| To laugh |
1 |
3% |
| To always have tea |
6 |
17% |
| To always have oranges |
8 |
23% |
| To always have bananas |
13 |
37% |
| To always have potatoes |
5 |
14% |
| To always have apples |
9 |
26% |
| To have clean clothes |
13 |
37% |
| To have a cat |
6 |
17% |
| To have a dog |
5 |
14% |
| To have a cow |
3 |
9% |
| To ride an elephant |
2 |
6% |
| To have a beautiful garden |
8 |
23% |
| To have a big house |
1 |
3% |
| To have books |
4 |
11% |
| To have notebooks |
7 |
20% |
| To travel one time |
2 |
6% |
| To fly by airplane |
8 |
23% |
|
Total |
225 |
45 |
These results gave me much to think about, and I had a sudden and overwhelming desire to be extremely rich – so that I might just provide these guys the simple stuff they need to be prosperous and self reliant! Of course – just doling out gifts won’t necessarily help them in the long run. When one thinks about perspective, one must know where he is. So I went to study.
That’s when I discovered Dita’s little – Decisions for Survival – Farm Management Strategies in the Middle Hills of Nepal (Jagannath Adhikari, 2000). What a title! In chapter one, the author refers to the Nepalese as being in overwhelming proportions subsistence farmers (or peasants according to that definition (!) (Mosher in 1965 determined that subsistence farmers are those who sell for cash or barter less than 50 per cent of the production of their farm.) i thought how easily we used to pigeon hole people in the old days.
My first question was if they produced enough for subsistence and if they kept at least 50% of what they produced? Was what they considered the basics to survive actually above sub nutrition? How vulnerable would they be to strategy changes in food production? Would they need the approval of the higher castes to change? And how would that work?
These thoughts passed through my delirious mind as my night’s fever began to progress.. And Day 3 was still to come!
Happy thoughts!
Rique