Blog

Ash has trouble first getting to a computer, and secondly logging into our blog, so I’ll paraphrase some of his emails so you know what’s going on:

Our accounts will be well in order by this time tomorrow and I’m taking all the accounts off to Swaroopganj where they’ll be under the charge of our coordinator to be- making our own registers, vouchers etc….

The whole project in Bakhel has a name- Jagriti- meaning Awakening. In Jagriti there is a school, named Bal Vidhya Mandir, as well as 2 women’s self help groups, a youth group, extra-curricular tution, a village development comittee etc…

Buriya has stopped working again- he’s barely worked 10 days in the last month- I spent last night in the village and witnessed an all night puja for his god- him and 3 others were ‘fitting’ and possessed by their god, while others sat back and watched- it was the exorcist but worse; haunting.

So there you go, some progress some not-so-progress with the ever unfathomable Buriya.

With the introduction of Jagriti we are starting to take the focus away from the school. Schools have a very specific perceived role and expectations in India, which would make it harder for us to implement other projects; if people think Bal Vidhya Mandir shouldn’t be teaching children about growing vegetables, Jagriti can do it instead. By shifting the focus from the school to school just being one of the things that we do, we can start to more expressly live our hope of functioning as a holistically useful organisation, and demonstrate our perspective that plain old academic studying isn’t what is really doing to help these societies.

In other good news, I’m going to India! Ash is doing an amazing job, but another pair of hands couldn’t hurt.

Namaste from India!

It has been a long time since my last blog entry, and I fear that in the time that’s gone by my integration into Indian life has resulted in my forgetting how to write in English. No matter, I shall do my best.

The last couple of months (as with every other month before) have been an up and down affair, with events that have delighted me as well as those that have left me in the depths of despair.

On the school front, things are going fantastically well, with the villagers beginning to understand the long term benefits of the school as well as coming to trust us and our judgment. Where two months ago every new innovation was met with resistance and grumblings of extra work with no extra pay, now the staff enthusiastically take on new activities, often without prompting. We’ve started giving milk- an unknown luxury- to the children, with the cooks enthusiastically cycling off to the nearest town to collect. On the last school holiday my heart jumped with glee when I arrived at the village to find the teachers and children singing, dancing and playing our school Dholak (local drum) simply because they wanted to with the cooks serving up a small snack for whoever had turned up even though it was their day off.

Things, however, have hardly progressed on the administrative front, with no-one to keep an eye on things once we’re gone as well as our accounts being desperately out of date. I must admit that the difficulties I face with RBKS- our Indian partner organisation- often result in me neglecting this side of my responsibilities, but it seems that our long search for a coordinator we can trust may be coming to an end. I just need to convince RBKS that they should relieve him of his other duties so he can focus on our school. If we manage to bag him we should hopefully have a great system for monitoring, account keeping and continuing to improve the school established by the middle of February.

Other than this, it’s great to be reconnected with the wider world. I can sincerely say that not a day goes by when I don’t think about how incredible it is that people thousands of miles away have stopped to spare a thought for a few kids in a small school in tribal India and a few of these people have spared more than a thought in order make that school possible.