In about half an hour I’ll hit the road, pack on my back and a spring in my step. my first journey takes me to Delhi over night where I’ll change onto another train to arrive in Amritsar, near the Pakistan border, tomorrow evening. I’m couchsurfing there, I have instructions to wait by a model of the Golden Temple outside the train station and a rickshaw driver called Sonu will come and find me and take me directly to where I’ll be staying. Couchsurfing: it’s great! Then on Tuesday I’ll be in Pakistan and perhaps by the end of next week in the spot where the Himalayas collide with the plains and mountains of central Asia.

Last night was my last night in the village. There was a Bowsi (god) program so many people were gathered at Bhuriya’s house, where I was staying, for a bit of ritual spirit posession and chorma – a sweet may of a mix of chapati, clarified butter and molases. It was a great last night, playing with all the children, sleeping out on the rocks, singing and telling stories to each other (I lost count of the time I had to retell the one about the wolf and the pigs making houses – puff Puff PUFF!). The rain has also been fantastic the last two days, with massive downpours and lots of drissle, so all the sad dry crops are looking great and we had greate fun yesterday afternoon down at the river with the children which is flowing better than I’ve seen it in the entire monsoon.

My blog posts will deminish now, unless I have some Hunar Ghar inspiration along the road to Japan, but Deepak will be picking up the batton, so you can enjoy those instead.

Only 5 months and counting before I’m back again…

I sometimes think of my role as something akin to being a wick; often I don’t really have to do anything but exist in order to facilitate the transfer of skills and knowledge to and from Hunar Ghar. The eye-test people coming is one example, merely because I am at Hunar Ghar and me, as opposed to being one of my teachers alone at the hospital, things happened where otherwise they would not have. Why is this? The end benefit is the same thing for the same children with no benefit to me, but the it’s likelihood of happening is drastically enhanced by my being a party to it.

My being white in a place where there are few to no white Caucasians made me get the attention of someone in the the same category, Stephen the doctor. The my and Ash speaking English allowed for easy communication and thus immediately we had a few points of common interest, a familiarity with one another’s way of being, and so the relationship could build. Next Ash and I can speak very clearly about Hunar Ghar which means people have clean access to the kind of information they need to understand it a little and think it is good, the fact that it is Ash and I run it and we are clear speaking English me perhaps adds confidence to the listener.

Everything necessary for the event to happen existed without me and Ash, the people with the need and the people with the solution and kindness to do it, but t would probably never have happened without us. It shows perhaps how certain people with certain abilities and background command special privileges over others. The access to these privileges isn’t governed by the kindness or willingness of the provider or the need of the recipient, not the providers conditions limiting it nor the recipients ability to meet those conditions, only largely unrelated third-party conditions.

Ash and I started Educate for Life with this in mind. Charity is nothing if it is just all about giving money, which is what a lot of it has come to be with guilt laden Oxfam adverts of the nineties developing into ‘fun’ ways to give money – such as buying a goat for a village – and the prominence of direct-debit-aquiring focussed fundraising, epitomised by the ‘chuggers’, charity-muggers, that swarm Totenham Court Road and high streets around the country.

The fact is that actually a lot of the skills to make things happen already exist in people with willingness to use those skills in return for non-financial value, and there are people and places that require them, but those two worlds never collide. Educate for Life acts as a portal in some respects, a door-way in the world of Bakhel and a door-way in the world of the eye doctors, or MGIS and many others, through which each can step into the other’s existence. Each world is has been carrying on parallel for a long time but the exchange is never made, we make that exchange possible.

I’ve just noticed that the Charity Commission website entry on Educate for Life now as some whizzy graphs and things to display our incomes and expenditures etc. We’re a bit small, so don’t have as many graphs as Oxfam, for example.

May we just point out that that super late submition of accounts for 2007 is actually a mistake by the Commission, Ash is trying to get it sorted…

A couple of months ago Ash and I met a nice Australian doctor called Stephen at a Brahma Kumari hospital in Abu Road, about 70km from Hunar Ghar. As well as treating us to such things as pizza with real, genuine, cheesey cheese, he was also so good as to organise eye-tests for all children at Hunar Ghar, which happened today.

Santosh and his team of two came this morning and swiftly checked all the kids that were there today, which was around 75 I suppose. I arrived with them in their jeep from the hospital and Hunar Ghar was under-way by the time we arrived. Deepak and I had both been way for a few days, so I wasn’t terribly surprised – smirking, in fact – to arrive to the sound of children chanting alphabets and times-tables. The good old teachers, they’ll always find a way to try and formalise Hunar Ghar, given half a chance! No worries though, it probably keeps us a bit more balanced and certainly helps keep the parents happy; who cares if our children are learning or not or to what quality they are learning, so long as it appears that they are learning! Actually, this isn’t their thought process at all; they have been conditioned to think that a certain type of learning is good and that anything else is bad, so such investigative thought would never occur. Again, we can say that children in government schools aren’t encouraged to think or query at all only to memorise, such skills are actually suppressed by stopping the children interacting and exploring learning themselves, so it is little wonder people aren’t in the habit.

None of the children or staff need glasses which is good, but I think three needed a few eye drops. I’m not entirely sure of the sensibility of explaining to our young children how to treat themselves, but that seemed to be their process!

A rough translation of my Independence Day speech given to the children and community of Bakhel,  for posterity:

Today is Independence Day, but what does it mean?

Gandhi just came and said ram-ram to us [one of our children dressed up as Gandhi]. He also said that independence means swaraj - self rule.

Swaraj is what we believe in at Hunar Ghar. Self-rule, independence.

Our children can have independent minds. Government schools were designed by the British to control the minds and actions of Indians. Gandhi fought against the influence of the British to make India independent, we are also working to make your children free and independent.

Many people act because of fear; if there is a policeman at the red-lights of a cross-roads they will stop but if there is no policeman they will not stop. If there is no policeman many people will do bad things. This person is dependent on the policeman, dependent of fear to be ‘good’. He is not free, he is a slave to authority.

People are learning to act like this in government schools, where children are beaten by authority and beaten to conform. At Hunar Ghar your children are free and happy.

They are also learning many things very quickly. By being free and happy people can learn more and be in control of their development.

Today Hunar Ghar is young, we are all children learning, we are a small seed growing, but a small seed grows into a great banyan tree. Growing takes time. Grass grows very quickly but it is very week and will be knocked down in a light wind, but a banyan tree grows very strong.

We will grow with sunlight and water. The support of the community in Bakhel is our sunlight and water, without it we cannot grow, so we ask you to interact with Hunar Ghar more and come to meets that are important for your children’s learning and your village development.

Jay Hind.

Rousing…!