kids and field visits and diwali and style!

The last three days have been packed and fascinating and overwhelming. I spent Monday and much of Tuesday at Tulsi Kunj where the kids program is, sitting in on the various classes and tuturoials, getting to know the kids,helping out where I could and learning some new Hindi words on the fly. All of the kids greet me with an enthusiastic "Didi namaste!" ("Hello, big sister!"), which I love. The littlest ones are absolutely adorable 4 and 5-year-olds non-schoolgoers who all match in their pale orange and chocolate brown Tulsi Kunj uniforms (produced by the organization's income generation project that teaches impoverished women to sew). These kids are working to learn the Hindi and English alphabets, and the basics of counting, before being admitted to a formal school. On Tuesday morning, the teacher asked me to work one on one with a tiny little girl, younger than the others and somewhat behind them. I went through some letters and numbers with her, getting her to copy them and repeat their names, which she did in a soft little voice, with a big grin when i praised her work. Throughout the whole hour she kept her eyes fixed on me almost continuously in a wide-eyed soul-searching gaze to the point that i could barely get her to glance at the alphabet book we were "reading" together, but she definitely stared her way into my heart.

Some of the older school-going kids, who come for tutoring in the afternoon, are learning English. I spent some time helping a couple aged around 10 or 11 with reading from their primers, but the lessons must be frustrating for them, as English seems to be taught fairly unsystematically, using old books that are obviously intended for kids who speak English as a first language, and are filled with bits about rosy cheeks and weathercocks and other irrelevant vocabulary. Many of the kids can sound out more than they can understand, which certainly sucks any joy out of reading. Some of the kids who attend "English Medium" schools also struggle with math problems written in English terms that have never been explained -- although they grasp the math itself, they have never been told what "the product of 3 and 8" means.

The kids involved in our program come from pretty poor families. Over the last few days I've had the chance to accompany a colleague on a couple of home visits, and to listen to stories about some of the difficult home environments, histories and financial situations of the kids I'm getting to know, and some of them are truly heartrending. But the other evening, as I sat with Andria and Prashant drinking chai on the ghat, and some of the kids from our program greeted us, chattered to us and skipped up and down the stone steps around us, I was reminded of how fully these children still know how to be kids, full of life and eagerness and humour. Working with them promises to be an absolute delight.

Wednesday was a crazy and exhausting day. Andria and i boarded our organization's little auto-rickshaw to accompany the driver on a visit to some fo the communities on the other side of the river. WLC has a series of program sites there, to assist women and their children. Each site is focussed around a Mahila Mandel (Women's association). Women who participate in these groups are also welcomed into a Social Enterprise Program (SEP) which currently consists of instruction on dressmaking. They are also invited to adult literacy classes, where they learn reading, writing and simple math (which is especially important if they are to run profitable small businesses), as many have never been to school. Balwadi (nursery school/kindergarten) programs are also provided for their young children, providing a daily hour of respite for mothers, and preparing the kids to attend school.

The WLC driver was due to visit all the Balwadis across the river yesterday, to distribute bananas (as they have a once-weekly fruit distribution day). It was fun to spend a little time seeing how the classes are taught, meeting the kids (many frantic cries of "Didi namaste!" followed us all day) and helping to pass out the two bananas apiece in to their eager little hands. At the first site we visited, we picked up the area's literacy supervisor who co-ordinates her supervisory visits with the banana rounds, and with her we also had the opportunity to visit a couple of adult literacy classes (ALCs).

The women in the ALCs range from their mid teens to the quite elderly. Beginning students are first taught to write their names, and then begin to work through fourlevels of readers, each containing stories meant to be of particular interest to women. I was shown one about a female freedom fighter (with a clear message of feminine capability and empowerment) and another that discussed the challenges of a large family and the basics of family planning. The women in the program seem very determined and proud of their new literacy skills, and many have learned to read remarkably well in a relatively short time.

The women we met were very kind and welcoming to us, and our colleagues gave them the opportunity, thorugh their translation, to grill us with questions about Canada in general, the landscape, public transportation, our jobs, families, houses, our ages, whether or not we were married, what kinds of food we like to eat, and so on. It often feels like as the Canadian visitors we get to ask all the questions, and the program beneficiaries are stuck in the role of being passive and questioned. So it was great (and fun) to have that reversed. Andria and i were even pressured in to singing a Canadian song(we chose O Canada out of sheer desperation)which was fairly ammusing to them, but was no match for the improvised welcome songs a few of them sang to us.

Yesterday's field visit turned into an almost nine-hour excursion, and we were exhausted by the end of it. Today has been a bit more manageable -- we went out with the driver again, but this time just for a couple of hours, to run similar errands to the project sites in and around some slum neighbourhoods within Varanasi itself. In the afternoon, while we were at Tulsi Kunj, the deadly heat was broken by a sudden strong wind which stirred up a cool, gritty dust storm. I went outside to investigate,and ended up dancing and "flying" ecstatically in the cool wind for a good ten minutes with one of the Tulsi kids, before my eyes just got too gritty to handle it any more. The dust storm was follwed by a light rain, and the air cooled off dramatically, and has been cool all evening. I'm hoping rather desperately that this means that the varanasi "winter" (which isn't as cold as ours, but actually gets positively chilly at night, i'm told) is almost here.

This weekend is Diwali, the festival of lights. Everyone in the city is in a frenzy of prepariation -- we see houses being panstakingly cleaned and repainted wherever we go -- and yet I haven't bought a single nice Indian outfit yet to wear for the occasion. I'm planning a slightly frantic shopping trip for tomorrow morning. Wish me luck...

Oh wait, one last afterthought of an anecdote: At one of the ALCs, one of the women asked why Canadian women took less care with making themselves looked nice (by this point in the day i was dripping with sweat, my hair stood out in all directions and my not-very-fancy clothes were wrinkled and dirty, while the women in the village we were visiting were neatly coiffed, beautifully dressed and looked mysteriously cool and collected). Our young female colleague fielded the question for us, and explained to them that we looked so tousled because in Canada we are always so busy with work that we just throw on our clothes and go -- no time for makeup or careful hair styling! I'm not sure how i feel about the accuracy of that explanation, though in this heat it's certainly the attitude i've adopted. I tried to tell the women that i actually do know how to make myself look nice but a straightening iron and foundation just don't work in a million degree heat, but i'm not sure the message got through. I'm afraid I'm not representing Canadian women at their lovliest!

Emily