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We had a pretty good teachers meeting today. We’ve all come along way in these things from six months ago, even one month ago. Ideas came and we interacted rather than the rather stiff, bitty ‘discussions’ that used to be the norm, with the teachers averting thier eyes to our questions, minds empty, waiting for someone else to answer. Today everyone had something to say, and we started what I hope will be an ongoing discussion about the Indian constitution, what it means and what it means for them specifically, and we started to put together a Hunar Ghar constitution. It starts like so:

1. All staff, children and visitors are equal.
2. But some are more equal than others.
3. All children have the right to never have reason be scared in Hunar Ghar, and to freely follow their interests.
4. All people will come up with ideas and share these ideas with each other.
5. All staff will give support to other staff, and those staff needing help will freely ask it of others.

Not a bad start I reakon. Maybe its my absurdly positive frame of mind at the moment, but even an arguement with Bhuvanesh went well. I actually properly shouted at him, fast, angrily and in English. I didn’t do it out of anger though, it was a conscious choice but none-the-less it left me feeling shaken as I hate to ever raise my voice. I did it to try and draw a disitinction with him of when, very very occasionally, an issue is not open to discussion any longer. For 6 months I, and Deepak for longer, have been patient in asking the teachers to come on time and not take excess holidays. The teachers have a bit of a habit of turning up late and Bhuvanesh in particular has flaunted our request once or twice too much recently. To this end I cut Rs450 off his salary this month, about 20%. He argued, I shouted, he argued less and even though he humphed off pissed-off and refusing to take the rest of his wages, instead of storming off home has he might once of done we found him shortly later chatting with the girls in the kitchen. We had a little laugh, a little discussion where he raised his complaints of fairness against other staff that haven’t been turning up (the night guards, which we are never there to see and check up on), and he went off almost happily, replying to my cry that he had still not taken his wages that he would take them on Monday.

I think we must be in some kind of bubble, I’d better make sure we’re putting away for the case there is a crash! It’s a good job we’re only inflating ideas and involvement then!

A couple of interesting things to come out of chatting with Buriyaram today. One is that he is going to take charge of getting electricity to the school. If we apply directly to the government it will cost £1000 ish. But if 10 families in the vicinity get together and demand it off the Panchayat this drops to about £8 for each family, plus the cost of the wire from one of their houses to Hunar Ghar. I’d rather go with getting solar power if we are going to have light at all, but Buriya is keen on this idea and it would be foolish to stem that intent particularly as it relates to getting the local government to serve the people it is designed for. There is a ridiculous amount of money available through the Panchayat (over £100 million allotted for Udaipur district (about 200 miles by 200 miles) alone), you’ve just got to know it is there, know how to get it, and get those that are sapping it up in corruption to relent a little. Not an easy task, but this foray into it is just the start I’m looking for to get people together to demand what is constitutionally theirs.

Another idea he came up with is starting some cottage industry (him, and the kids with their bag making plans!). I don’t like that term, but you get the idea. Many girls make bread baskets out of palm leaves and sell them for about 25p in the market. I’d say the same would sell in the UK for around £10+, maybe as much as £20. They really are very beautiful baskets and selling just 3 a month at the lowest end of that estimate could more than double a house-hold’s income. So at Buriya’s request I’m going to bring a couple back to the UK with me and look into finding a market for them, which I’m very certain there is. Some of the profit will got to the women and some to Hunar Ghar. Is this the capital incentive needed to make a financially self-sustainable school? Wouldn’t that just be so great! It just so happens I know a guy who ships from Udaipur to the UK, so I’ll ask him for a good shipper’s details, rates and UK import taxes, and I know a very sound man in Udaipur who may be willing to handle the organisation of doing such shipping. Woven baskets are great to ship as they are light, won’t break, pack together well and are unlikely to deteriorate en-route unless they are persistently damp. We’ll see what come of that. Of course I really want to keep focusing focusing focusing on a great pedagogy, but all these initiatives and ideas are the natural outcome of a good learning environment, so we’ve got to support them or find someone who can!

It seems that a Muslim guy driving a taxi hit and killed a Hindu guy in an accident that was probably as much down to bad luck as lack of care when driving, or waking in the road. The dead person’s friends and community demanded money from the driver but he refused, and he also refused to sit before the Panchayat, the local government set-up that would act as mediator. depending on the representation though, he might have been justified in his protests to not settle there.

What’s the natural response to such a situation? For a Hindu to go to a shop where a sickly Muslim works, pull down the shutters, and stab him to death. Clearly the next logical step is street fighting, during which the obvious thing to do is for a Muslim to find a Hindu child, lift him above his head and hurl him to the ground with such force that he dies.

It feels horrible writing Hindu this and Muslim that, but that is why the victims are selected and the perpetrators justify themselves. One cannot imagine the blind indoctrinated anger and hatred, the eyes filled with such rage that all they can see in is a burning white and a desire for blood above all else required to kill vulnerable members of society, but that is the simple matter of it.

After the desert that was my blog posting frequency earlier in the year, now I just can’t stop. I’m too happy, energised and seeing too many good things everywhere not to. I thought about trying to spread them out a bit, but I want to tell everyone straight away about the great things going on!

So today we went looking for a new teacher – me, Deepak and Buriyaram. I’d been neglecting Buriya a bit last month, he was really busy trying to squeeze water out of the unsympathetic rocks in his almost empty well and I was not helping him properly with his problems so fair enough, he lost a bit of interest in Hunar Ghar. But it’s all back on track now. Buriya is basically the guy that is going to make Hunar Ghar keep going long into the future, so today I continued the game plan of engaging him more and more in the decision making and planning of Hunar Ghar and all related activities.

Back to the teacher hunt. We’ve basically decided to not consider any male in our village to try and diversify things a bit, so we went to Anjani, the next village along. There we met with a really nice guy called Bhutaram, a little bit shy but a kind face and earnest. He’s been working in a government school, but that ends next week. He is a rarity among government teachers; he came up with some great answers to our questions that suggested he actually likes children. Actually I think the reason he is loosing his job next week is because he isn’t a government teacher, RBKS had positioned him in the government school, but now the government is putting in one of its own. Off his own back he talked about playing with children being a good thing, and about the different things he can make with them. Equally independent of all subliminal prompting were his suggestions of making things from forest materials and sharing ideas of medical plants in the forest with the children. Even the answers he gave which weren’t necessarily ‘right’, the very fact that he could come up with reasonable suggestions to little test scenarios we set shows that he is will and able to come up with ideas. The past few weeks the right things keep popping up whenever I want them. I even found an extra peanut when I thought I’d finished them all on the bus back from Udaipur!

Bhutaram is going to come along on Tuesday for a few days to see what we do and we can each gauge if we’d like to work with the other. We continued the teacher hunt in Anjani, this time concentrating on finding a woman teacher. This is tricky in the social context of the expectations of women in the society, the traditional biased ratio of schooling going to males, the status factor of being a teacher which is more a man’s thing and trying to penetrate that invisible wall exists in that our first point of contact with new families is always with a panel of men sitting around nodding with the women looking on from the eaves. To try and combat this we’ve sent out child scouts to find interested women as they can easily talk to them, and we are going to look back inside out own village for a woman as we know everyone there and so it’s quite alright to just go and chat with the women. We’ve two in mind that we’re going to chat to tomorrow, no doubt I’ll keep you posted!

I think someone must have put something in the water. I was really happy to be able to go to Hunar Ghar today after [checks diary] over two weeks away?! Eek gads, how the time passes! It was Holi festival, so a holiday for a week or so, then I had to go to Udaipur on the day the school opened again after the hols, then a couple of days there and Jhadol brings me to today. Scary how time passes like that. Good job I’m making excellent use of it at the moment. It is always a welcome relief to get back to Hunar Ghar after being away, like the joy of getting home back to your familiar happy home surroundings after being away on holiday (which is what it partly was actually considering I toured a bit of India with my family when they were here in Holi time).

The kids are going crazy right now for making bags out of old cement sacks, then decorating them by sew/sticking designs in different coloured wool. Every room you go into there are kids beavering away, they ignore the lunch bell, keep going during break times and take home wool and needles so they can carry on at home. They’ve also decided that they’re going to make a bunch of bags and sell them in the next town, Mandwa. Continuing in the entrepreneurial spirit, some kids are getting me and Deepak to help out in a plan they have for a fair which is coming to a near-by village in about a month; they are going to make sweets at Hunar Ghar to sell there and take apart our swing, cart it over there, and charge other children for a ride!

It’s just so great to see the energy, ideas, enjoyment and initiative that is just pouring out of the children at the moment. Some of the older kids are also now going into class with the younger kids to help them out and they are becoming much better at explaining what they are doing and teaching other people. The confidence is up, again, while it seems that the sometimes cockiness prior associated is on the decrease.

Perhaps it all shows how just a little love and freedom to follow ones heart, passions and ideas is all a child needs to start becoming a really great person. The rut children get in from fear of a beating for 12 years or more of school is a rut a lot of adults find incredibly hard to get out of. As Lassi, one of our girls, said, she’d sooner die than go to the local government school! The ‘madam there would beat [her] for having long hair.’ It is totally ridiculous and really so easy to give children what they want and help them learn along the way.