Eschool

Travel Journal dated November 3, 2006

For the past couple years, I've been intoxicated by my inescapable lust to wander the globe. One might even say I've become what I never thought I would be, a romantic dreamer. I found inspiration to travel in every lecture hall, in the pages of every book and magazine, and hidden in the contexts of every commercial, television show and movie. Ive become obsessed, and my life's focus has shifted entirely from a career in science and a higher education in academia, to any possible way hat I could work by still feel free and able to fund my lustful habit.

The allure of exploring has drawn my gaze from and diminished my value for passions that would otherwise be keeping me content at home, including climbing, cooking, sports, friends, family and love. While these old or new passions put up a noble fight, I am a slave to my lust and they are unable to keep me alive for long.

However, over the past month, I have found something that has begun to rival my eed to travel, and that has positioned itself as a possible career requiring higher education, that I think I would find rewarding.

While many of the students here, if not most, are still unsure of their projects while we work at an NGO, CHIRAG promoting sustainable practices and assistance to the rural Indians in the Himalaya, I've been spending 4 or 5 afternoons a week participating in mine, often not returning back at our resort-ish skite until well after dark, 6:30-7pm.

After class in the large chairless meeting room at CHIRAG, I have a quick lunch of rice, dhal, vegetables and chapati and I rush to a nearby primary school to teach English to 75 children in 5 grades (1st to 5th) separated into two sparse class rooms.

Usually my friend, Matt, comes with me, and upon our arrival we are greeted by small dirty smiling faces and the tiny children standing and shouting in unison "Good afternoooooon sir!"

For about an hour we attempt to keep their attenion, often losing out to any number of distractions resulting in eruptions of screams and giggles. We spend most days in the room or the 4th and 5th graders because as they are the oldest children, they know the most Hindi (the kids speak Kumaoni at home but are taught Hindi from 1st grade) and English.

Often we do spelling exercises usually involving drawing pictures of common objects and then having them spell out the new words in English. Sometimes we give them full sentences and cover gramatical issues such as this/that, here/there and in/on. Obviously as our Hindi improves, teaching becomes easier as we are able to express the rules in a language they understand. But still, these children are learning English as a third language, often being taught in their second.

Every class ends with a song. Most days, while preparing more exercises on the black board we are serenaded by lines from songs shouted from the bodies piled on the floor. The children knew many English songs already such as slightly different versions of the ABC's, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Ba Ba Black Sheep, Old Man Babu (old McDonald) ad other songs that I'd never heard before. One worth remembering goes:

Johnny, Johnny!
Yes Papa?

Eating sugar?
No Papa!

Telling lies?
No Papa!

Open your mouth!
Ha-Ha-Ha!

Early in my time there, I decided to teach them Row, row, row your boat. Writing the four lines on the board, I went through each line word by word with the children repeating me loudly. They are well practiced and very good at repeating the teacher. Then I would sing one line at a time and they'd attempt to repeat it, but often they couldn't accurately get all the sounds right. Particularly they had trouble with "life is but a dream."

One line they immediately mastered and which they would repeat during real exercises was "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily!" which they pronounce as "mewiry." Heart-breakingly cute.

After a few weeks, the children had the songs mastered and we could sing the entire song in rounds, without any warmup. On occasion I would even encounter children from other villages on the mountain roads, who knew my name and as we walked away would yell, "row row row your boat!" in a heavily accented, high voice.

I still hear my name sometimes when walkign the main road toward the school from CHIRAG. It feels so fulfilling to not only be allowed to show up to a public primary school and teach the children English or an hour, but to be so obviously appreciated by the students, their families, and the community as a whole. Not only to exist in their community, but to be treated like a respected member of it, who they are grateful is there.

When row row row your boat was mastered, we introduced another, more difficult, song, The Itsy Bitsy Spider. The children appreciate having hand movements while singing and they ook to this song right away. ALthough they never completely mastered it, they developed their own version which is shorter and cycles into itself so it can be sung over and over.

Many days are ended by an invitation to have tea with the one teacher, which is never rejected even if we are in the middle of an exercise or song because of the implication of politness and ettiquete. These days I really appreciate when our friend, Monisha, comes with us because her Hindi is very good and she can translate with the teacher, who doesn't speak English. When she is not there, Matt and I try to make do with our limited Hindi which sometimes is awkward and other times humorous as the phrases we know are strange or even ridiculous. Examples of both are, "This room is large and airy" and "I am a spoon."

By 3:30, we are usually back on the road to CHIRAG because we teach another class at the NGO at 4pm. This class is for adolescent girls and boys, in 8th and 9th grades who volunteer their time and walk half an hour or more after school to learn English. These students know more English and so it is very rewarding to see their improvement over time, even though class is hardly more than three hours a week.

Because of our efforts, along with other student-teachers who volunteer their time to teach more and less advanced students at CHIRAG, the NGO is organizing a permanent program for adolescents willing to take the extra time to learn and practice English. Its extremely rewarding to know that my actions planted a seed that has now been given the opportunity to gow into a potentially very successful program for the underpriviliged youth of this isolated rural area.

Yesterday, Thursday Nov 16, was our last day of teaching both at the school and at CHIRAG. Matt Monisha and I went to the school for the last time, and on the way, we bought out all the notebooks we could find in the small shops, over 70 in all, and presented them to the teacher to be distributed as she felt was right. Monisha translated our intentions to save them for teh very poor students who couldn't afford school supplies, and the teacher responded that all the kids are poor and that she was thankful for our gift. For our last day, the children lined up outside and sang their entire repetoire of songs in Hindi and English while we took pictures and videos and sang along with them.

Even as I write this now, my heart aches knowing that I won't have the honor of being allowed in their lives every day, while their songs warm my heart, make me feel alive, and make me forget my lust to quickly move on. That is significant.