Thursday, July 15, 2010

Indian adventures Part I

The Virgin Atlantic flight from London to Delhi would have been great if the guy behind me didn't snore like a truck! Thankfully passport control, customs and luggage were all speedy and painless. Best part of the journeywas that the hotel I booked sent a car for me (read: old Subaru car with barely working AC). When I first walked outside several things were immediately apparent:
  • The heat is like nothing I have ever felt before. Tel Aviv is pretty hot and humid in the summer but Delhi takes it to a whole new level with temperatures reaching 105 and 70% humidity. It is also made worse by the amount of dust in the air- you feel like your lungs have a growing desert in there.
  • The smell- it is like old rotting something combined with a bit of sewage. Some places are better than others and I have learned to avoid the low land where all the unidentifiable liquids flow
  • The driving- there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of traffic laws. The roads are shared by trucks, cars, cows, auto rickshaws, pedestrians and everything else you can imagine. I have still not been able to cross the street myself so tend to walk in a local's shadow.
  • Relatedly, the noise level - I have always heard that Cairo has the worst noise pollution in the world but it seems like Delhi is right up there. Everyone honks (probably because there are no guidelines governing driving). In Israel people get riled up when there is honking but here it is just commonplace, no one gets too worked up about it.
I had my first official day today and I was really pleased with how it went. I was supposed to meet the education director from the NGO that manages the mobile classroom program today. However we left it really loose- it seems that Indians are pretty chill about meeting times (have heard that India time is similar to Africa time). I was nervous it would fall through and I don't have time to waste since I am only here two weeks. I followed the directions through the main bazaar, with the help of a nice boy, to what looked like a building from the 1950s that hasn't had a coat of paint or any work done to it since then. I was shocked at its facade; in the States even the most bare-bones NGOs can't afford to let their building reach that dilapidated state as it would be unlikely they would get much funding. A certain level of seriousness and purpose is displayed via the office. In SBT's case, I went down a stinky alley and walked up two flights to a room without much air circulation. It turns out that most of their funding comes from the government and there isn't much of it despite the great work they do. The office also served as a shelter for street children. These boys stay at the shelter for 6 months and then are either returned to their parents or get placed in a more permanent situation if the former isn't possible.

My meeting with the education director was so interesting- he was telling me all about the structure of the program, the need to motivate their parents to send them to school and the value of education, and the challenges associated with fundraising. I could have listened to him talk for hours. But he had arranged for one of the teachers to take me to see it for myself. Using broken English and a lot of hand gestures we managed to communicate. Turns out the teacher, Sudha, is only 25 years old and has been teaching for two years. The school bus turned into classroom stops at 4 sites each day for two hours. There the kids learn Hindi, English, social studies, science, math and some health. Most of these children have never been to school and often times their parents are apprehensive about sending these kids to the Chalta Firta school. Social workers conduct a survey at the beginning of the year to identify the children between the ages of 6-10 in that area and convince their parents to enroll them. The program currently serves about 125 students. At the end of the year the children take an exam to determine their mastery level and the social workers help enroll them in formal schools. Last year they streamlined 102 children into formal schools! The program has been very successful and the department of education wants to create 20 more school buses. One more will be operated by SBT and the rest by other organizations. There is another NGO, Butterflies, that runs the same program in South Delhi, which I hope to visit. Here are a few pictures:

















Today's visit to one of the sites was so inspiring, I had to hold back the tears when I first walked on the bus- to think that this small bus could mean a different life path for these 25 children. Most of them would never learn to read or write if it wasn't for the mobile classroom. I don't think an academic observer is supposed to get emotional upon observing her subjects but it was hard not to in this case as it could literally mean prolonging the cycle of poverty or creating better life opportunities.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Totally man - sounds just amazing! Nice account. You're totally convincing me these buses are an amazing idea as a transitional step.
talk to you soon xox felic