Hopes and Fears: Women’s Shelters and Bazaar Bomb Threats

This weekend we  returned to our project’s initial focus on women’s rights, visiting two incredible programs that work to empower marginalized women. On Saturday, we drove about an hour and a half to the M.V. Foundation, an organization that educates former girl child laborers until they are capable of entering a formal school setting (typically a process that lasts six months to one and a half years). When I say child labor, I don’t necessarily mean that these girls were working in sweatshops–the beauty of  MVF is that it has changed the official definition of child laborer to mean any child that is not in school. I’ve mentioned before that the Constitution protects a child’s right to free and compulsory education. MVF believes that it’s just this simple: it does not matter whether a child is “needed” to work at home, a parent should always protect a child’s right to education. Now, the example of Leelavati I gave previously should show that it’s a lot more complicated than this–but I was so grateful to find an organization that is willing to stand up for this right, no matter what. The girls at this school study from about 5:30 am (yoga) until dinner at 7:30 pm, with a couple of hours free for lunch and recreation time. One teacher is assigned to a group of around 15 to 20 students for their entire stay, and this teacher lives with the students full time, acts as their counselor, and receives their feedback. (I can’t even imagine the kind of commitment that takes.) Once a child is ready to enter a residential school, volunteers continue to track the child, ensuring that she is excelling until graduation from the 10th class. MVF also works within the communities where they send their students, building PTA organizations that will create a community investment in each local school. Oh, and it’s all free. Yeah. We were amazed too. 

(On our way to MVF, we stopped at a temple for lunch. And the calf outside decided to taste leather for the first time. Awks.)

On Sunday, we again drove about an hour and a half into the countryside to Ankuram Women and Child Development Center, a shelter for girls who have been victims of violence and exploitation. We were instructed to not ask any personal questions about the girls’ lives, and so the visit felt like it could have been a visit to any girls’ hostel–all of the girls (63 total, who looked between about 6 and 17), were clean, well-dressed, happy, healthy, independent. They explained to us how they are elected to 5 committees (health, recreation, invitation, education, and food), which oversee the day-to-day activities at the home, from caring for a sick child to planning the day’s menu to sitting on the Child Protection Committee. Some girls are in just starting school; one is studying for her B.A. in fine arts. The girls are organized into “families” of 3 sisters of varying ages–the “sisters” study together, care for each other, look out for one another. The community here is one of complete integration and total support. What’s surprising is that there’s no one who lives full time with the girls. How is it that girls who have experienced such unthinkable traumas can be so self-sufficient? Ankuram does incredible work, giving these girls an open space where they are empowered and given the ability to be kids again. As we played “beating ball” (German dodgeball), avoiding the two cows in the courtyard, it all felt so normal, so peaceful. Watching the students sing, or try to teach us to Bollywood dance (tip for DukeEngage Academy? Teach us how to dance so we don’t look like fools in every school we visit), made me feel so comforted to know that these girls have not been defined merely by their past experiences. And now, they are learning how to fight for their own rights.

The organic garden the students planted.

On Sunday night, we went shopping at the Begum Bazaar, which is especially crowded in the evenings. We had been shopping for a couple of hours, haggling over bangles and books and saris, when our driver called and told us he’d just spoken to the police: they believed their was a bomb planted in the area. I had wondered why speakers everywhere were constantly telling us to be on the lookout for unwatched luggage or empty vehicles, but I assumed that was the norm, like at the airport or a train station. A bus honked and I nearly jumped out of my skin as we wound our way back through the crowded streets to the car, and I couldn’t help wondering: will that sugar cane juice stand explode when I walk past? What about that sack of garbage in that alleyway? It was then I realized just how dangerous a city like Hyderabad could be: soldiers with rifles were searching everywhere, but how was it possible to find anything in such a packed, yet sprawling area? We had to wait for minutes that seemed like hours at the car, because it had been booted (no parking zone). (Side note: this experience has caused me to be very anti-booting. Just give us a ticket and let us leave.) We’re safe, and no bomb ever exploded. But still. The world is a scary, scary place.

Riddle me this.

When we found Leelavati wandering around her migrant community, we asked her mother why she did not attend the government school down the road from her home. Her mother explained that she is partially blind, and her husband is dead–she has no source of income to care for herself and Leelavati. Leelavati must therefore beg during the day, to feed her small family.

In India, the constitution guarantees free and compulsory education for all children. A child not only has the right to go to school: she must go to school. But what if that child must feed her family because her mother is physically impaired? Should we force that child to go to school, and go hungry as she waits to get an education that could (years down the road) get her a well-paying job (maybe)?

Leelavati sneaks out of her home every 3 days to go to school. She does not want to stay home–she does not want to beg. Leelavati is lucky that she can do so, and lucky that our professor has an optometrist friend who might be able to heal her mother. But what about those who literally cannot go to school? If education is the great equalizer, how do we ensure that every child can go to school, their basic needs already met?

Struggling to Not Be “That American”: Teaching in the “Slums”

We now work in 3 schools per day, engaging with children aged baby to 15. And I love it. I didn’t realize how much I missed working with kids again, watching them learn and grow with every lesson. Our mornings begin at the Aksheravani School (named in part after Bhavani, who helped start the program a couple years ago). The school is a one-roomed, cement building with a tin sheet roof that has a tendency to leak–a lot. Aksheravani was set up for migrant communities who cannot send their children to traditional schools due to their migrant lifestyle (for example, families of construction laborers who move from project to project). We then move to a private school in which all students have a monthly family income of less than 5,000 rupees per month. Their tuition, books, lunches, and uniforms are all completely free due to generous donations–some even live at the school. I help teach a group of five 10th-grade students basic computer skills–oftentimes it’s just a guessing game whether or not I can actually remember how a PC works. Later, we spend 2 hours back at the Vivekananda School, where we are finally settling into a solid routine. We now work with both the 8th and 9th grade students there, and, after working with 28 students packed into a single classroom, I have a new appreciation for what my mother manages to do with thirty 1st-graders back home. I had my first teacher breakthrough with a “problem student” yesterday, when (after a few withering glances and some pointed questions when he was talking to his friends) the class bully stayed silent for a full hour and a half and said, “Thank you, ma’am” when I was finished teaching the lesson. He might have been sarcastic, but at least he stopped making fun of the other students in class, right?

For the most part, I’ve loved getting to work with these kids. Teaching has become my passion over the past two years, and I’m glad that I can spend my summer learning new techniques for ESL learning in a completely new environment. But the Aksheravani School, at least at the present, makes me feel like a typical American volunteer, coming into a poor “slum” community and playing with little kids with lice in their hair and dirt on their feet for a couple hours a day. But, even worse than that domineering power structure, I feel like we are actually harming many of these students’ educational experiences. For example, many of the students we talked to today have gone to school as recently as 6 days ago, but their parents no longer want them to walk to the government school because they have this “alternative” right in their community. Other girls (as young as 10) were pulled out of school because the 2-minute walk is “dangerous,” or because they need to be there to collect water from the water tanker when it comes, or because they need to wash the dishes while their mother works. But we are in no way an alternative to a real school–we are not trained teachers, we do not speak Telugu, we are leaving in 5 weeks, we only come to Aksheravani for two hours a day. We should be a last resort, there for preschool and kindergarten students who need to be taught the basics. For now, all we’re doing is singing songs and learning the alphabet with students who should be starting to write essays.

There are just so many systemic hurdles to jump through in order to get these students back into a real school. How do you make a community learn to value education, to the point that they will sacrifice so their daughters can go to school? Or is it really not possible for these children to leave home–do their parents have to work such long hours that the child needs to give up school in order to take care of the house? I firmly believe that education should be valued, that it should be respected and upheld as an essential, absolutely essential, right. I just don’t know how to make that happen if someone is thirsty and needs to be there to get the water when it comes.

ABCs and Hello Goodbyes: First Week Teaching English

On Monday, we started teaching an after-school English class to 11 students in the 9^th standard (equivalent to American 9^th grade subjects, except typically about a year younger in age). Keep in mind that my DukeEngage group is made up of 8 students, few of whom have actual teaching experience. Needless to say, collaboration on lesson plans and pedagogical practices has been challenging and frustrating and has led to more than a few rolled eyes and cold shoulders. And the first couple of days were, unsurprisingly, chaotic and unorganized and a tad bit boring for all involved.

A bit of background about the school itself:

Vivekananda School is in the Tolichowki neighborhood of Hyderabad, which is a confusing mess of all socioeconomic strata. The school itself is still being constructed, so just walking into the school involves treks through mud puddles, rivulets of dirty water, wet cement, and crumbling bricks. It also involves the stench of raw sewage and trash, because the community has started to use the area right next to the school as a sort of dump. In order to walk up the stairs, I have to turn my feet sideways for fear of my foot slipping off the step; and it’s challenging trying to walk two by two. The classrooms themselves are tiny in comparison to what’s considered adequate in the US. It’s difficult to explain without pictures, but I would say the room for the 9^th standard students is maybe 10×10—actually, probably closer to 8×10 ft². Students sit three or four to a bench, and there is virtually no room for a teacher to walk about the classroom—really, teaching seems to consist of writing on the blackboard and hitting students with rulers. The school is private, meaning students must pay 750 rupees per month to attend (which is a fairly expensive school, especially given the students’ lower-middle class backgrounds). The school is “English medium,” meaning all classes are supposed to be taught in English, but the teachers themselves have trouble speaking in full sentences in English. The students told us that their teachers explain their English textbooks in Telugu—without this, they would not understand their classes at all.

There are between 340 and 350 students enrolled at this school. There are 13 teachers for all of them—only 3 of which have their BA degrees.

What is that 750 rupees per month per student actually going towards? There’s no playground, no auditorium, no fence, no colorful paint or artwork on the walls. We’ve been struggling in how to judge this school, because we don’t want to assume that this kind of school is “wrong” just because it doesn’t live up to American standards. But even so—it’s difficult to picture this place as a place where students can be creative and learn in a welcoming environment.

All these negative aspects said, working with the 9^th standard class has been a joy. With 11 of them and 8 of us, we have almost 1-on-1 time to teach them at whatever level they need. This week, they’ve learned how to say “See you tomorrow” and the difference between “these and those” and “a and an.” They sang us their national anthem, and we sang them ours as a way to celebrate the 4^th of July. They performed skits about what do to at a market, and told us all about their families. Today, we taught them to sing “ABC” by the Jackson Five, and they even performed for us at the end. These students are learning so fast, and, because of the low teacher to student ratio, their personalities are becoming so clear and so precious to us.

The problem is that, according to their textbooks, these students should be fluent in English by now. They should be using words like “ominous” and understand how to read lengthy short stories. But they can barely even tell us what they want to be when they grow up. We’re only here for 6 weeks—after that, it’s back to Telugu teachers trying their best, but failing, to teach an all-English curriculum. We’re looking for a way to make this project more sustainable over the long term, but it’s difficult to find some sort of community partner interested in English tutoring to a private school. Because, in India, English isn’t just a foreign language—it’s considered the key into a higher-paying job, the skill that sets you apart from the masses. These parents are using whatever extra money they have from painting and day laborer work and auto-rickshaw driving to send their kids to what they believe is a high-quality private school—but I don’t think they’re getting what they’re paying for.

Independence, Indian style.