Our wireless is up and running and we couldn't be happier! Right now I am sitting in the Madhya Pradesh District Government Hotel watching satellite TV of the inauguration and very excited (the news programs are calling this the 'coronation of hope'! Gobama!
So, we left Delhi on Friday night, heading to the ridiculous Delhi train station to catch our overnight train to Jhabua. Dr. Fabian Toegel accompanied us, thankfully, because I would not want to navigate that place on my own. Think crowds, piles of bags, cat-sized rats and filth (I guess the MTA isnt that far off). We boarded our first class 'sleeper train' with overly high expectations. Erase any images of the orient express you might have right now. There is one long narrow hallway with stacks of 'beds' on each side. On the left, there are two stacked on top of each other and on the right there are little cubicles, each side with three beds one on top of the other (thats where our seats were). I must have had some crazy dejected look on my face cause Matt kept looking at me and asking 'are you okay? really?' Despite the filth, the noise, the snoring, the smells, the bumps, the cramped quarters and the unspeakable toilets, I slept for 8 hours straight of the 11 hour journey! Insane.
Essentially, we realized pretty soon after arriving in Jhabua that Dr. Toegel is a total Paul Farmer type: brilliant, motivated, able to navigate bureaucracy and get anything done. He has started a boarding school for the poor children of the district (more later), organized an HIV testing, treatment and prevention center that serves the city and at least 22 surrounding villages, helps run a living facility for sick HIV patients and much much more. He is thirty, has an MD, speaks English, German, Hindi and Urdu and probably something else. Our first day involved visiting the local hospital, meeting the head of the HIV program, visiting the school and dormitories, negotiating the tuition with the principal for a local child who attends another school in the village, visiting the construction site for the new school site and meeting our host, Patrick. We are staying in the downstairs 'apartment' Patrick's house in the countryside outside of the village (He is from Jhabua but was one of the lucky ones to get educated and start a prosperous business and now gives back). Sharing a wall and an open air window with our bedroom is a smaller house containing a massive water buffalo and its calf, two huge cows and five geese. Our place smells alternatively of farm and cooking fire. There is no hot water. Trust me, the accomodations are BARE, but its warm and its a roof over our head and although we complain to ourselves, we are grateful for it. And we get woken up by the pack of geese at 6am (geese make noises that sound like scrap metal in a blender on the 'liquify' setting).
I could go on and on about the town, the beautiful surroundings, the amazing night sky with more stars than I have ever seen, the roaming cows that rule the roads, the stray puppies that are everywhere, the INCREDIBLE food that is cooked for us at every meal by a plethora of cooks, the abundant fresh roti and nan breads, how dirty and exhausted I am, how friendly and giving the people here are, but all I really want to talk about are the students.
The school, known as the Bhil Academy, was started by Dr. Toegel and some other locals (including Patrick) about ten years ago, when Fabian was here for his Peace Corps year. The school is only for kids of Bhil background, which is a very poor, marginalized tribal race (for lack of a better word) that is predominant in Madhya Pradesh especially. It is a boarding school for kids as young as 5 years old, up until 7th grade (hopefully up to 12 next year when the new school is built). These kids are beyond amazing. They are the sweetest, most loving, kind and caring kids I have ever met. There are way fewer teachers and guardians for these 230 odd kids than are needed, so these kids have learned to take care of each other and there is next to no fighting (i havent seen any). Everytime we step into a classroom, they all jump up and say 'goodmorning sir!' (apparently you also have to then tell them to sit down after that...oops). They take very special pride in making sure you have a chair, a pen for the white board and by no means ever let you erase the board. And although they have nothing, their clothes are filthy, they sleep without beds on the floor of the classroom every night, they play with pebbles and a deflated soccer ball at recess, and live without their families, you never see anything but a smile on their faces. Matt and I are going to be involved in a lot of projects here, especially with the HIV outreach program, but what excites us the most are our mornings spent at the school. Because of a teacher shortage, a lot of the classes are left to fend for themselves, and most of the time they work quietly on their own (though how much gets learned I seriously doubt). Can you imagine that in N. America? So Matt and I basically pick the empty classes and teach them either English, Math or Science (from 5 year olds to 14 year olds). It is a real challenge and the kids are easily (over)excited, but it's well worth it. The first day I got stuck teaching Agricultural sciences to 7th graders. Here I was unprepared and trying to teach them the basics of growing crops, crop rotation and whatever else their outdated, very poorly/hilariously written textbooks contained. Pretty ironic topic to teach migrant farmer children for someone who just flew thousands and thousands of kilometers from New York City...but I tried (Plants need minerals! Madhya Pradesh is the soybean state!). Im getting a copy of the book so I can read ahead and hopefully make things easier. If anyone has any ideas on how to teach English to really young kids while keeping them engaged, Matt and I would greatly appreciate it!
On top of teaching at the school, Matt and I are kind of the resident doctors. There is also a very dedicated team of health workers that visit twice a day to check up on the sick kids and dispense tylenol, antibiotics etc. and we pretty much do what they say. Today I sent a kid home who had a cough, conjunctivits, runny nose and a rash that looked a lot like measles (probably chickenpox but who knows. However, he seemed to have the cardinal 3 C's of measles: cough, choryza and conjunctivitis...). This role is really testing our knowledge and skill!
All for now. Love and peace to you all. And let's all hope this next administration can turn the tide!
T
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