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Published: December 31st 2007
Grade One
Marius & BillstarLook at my photos from Providence at face value and you will see only bright smiles and happiness. Laughing children playing and learning in a mismatch of clothing and various states of dishevel (but they all seem to have shoes). A school facility that offers shelter, running water and even electricity. The classrooms have colourful tables and chairs, murals, blackboards, pencils, chalk. Food served at lunchtime, children playing marbles. But scratch the surface and discover some shocking truths - a smile can be deceiving. My volunteer experience in India is without question the best experience I’ve ever had in my life. Life-changing you might say. This blog is of epic proportion because I never want to forget the experience. The blog lag is because I wanted to ensure my words did the experience justice.
Admittance to Providence - a school for disadvantaged children - is based on several criteria, the key one is that the family of the child must earn less than Rs 1000 (rupee) per month - that’s around $30 dollars Australian. To put that in perspective - a large Kingfisher beer from the bottle shop costs around Rs 50, bottled water Rs 12, chai Rs 5 and
Learning to knit
Balakman & Aihunlung one banana Rs 1. There are six classes at Providence with students aged between approximately 4 and 16 years - age is hard to determine, as often parents don’t remember how old their children are. There are 200 students in the school and education, books and stationary are provided free of charge - through unsolicited donations or ‘providence’. Providence was established back in 1999 on the Grounds of Saint Edmonds boys college, by Brother Steve D’Souza - who is known, according to Wikapedia and everyone whose ever met him, as one of the most respected citizens of Shillong. The same Brother D’Souza that taught the King of Bollywood -
Shah Rukh Khan who was once quoted as saying "When I was studying at St Columba's, I had a teacher, Brother D'Souza, who used to teach us soccer, hockey, cricket and various subjects apart from sport. He would be more an ideal teacher than a coach and has been instrumental in turning me into the person that I am”. The aim of Providence is to provide an education for children who wouldn’t normally get one. To prepare them for the outside world by equipping them with practical skills. To achieve their high school
certificate. To give them a start in life that will hopefully result in a greater income than their parents before them.
A day in the life of a typical Providence student is typically long and exhausting. The child will be up early - collecting water, cooking breakfast (probably rice and maybe one vegetable), caring for younger siblings, cutting wood, in some cases working for other families as a maid. School starts at 8.30am - but most will be late, several will be absent. The walk to school will generally take from half an hour, to two hours. The school day begins with two hours of practical skills training - paper making, tailoring, cooking, confectionery making, gardening, screen printing, knitting, candle-making, even beauty therapy etc. The kids operate these ventures like businesses with the guidance of their teachers and the end products - like food and christmas cards - are sold to people in the community and overseas friends - like us. Once the costs are taken out, all profit is split between bank accounts for the children. They’ll get this when they graduate from Providence.
At around 10.30am, the children have assembly and are sent to their various
classrooms for regular classes. All classes are taught in English, rather than the tribal language - Khasi. Here students will learn the basics - reading, writing and maths. Resources are basic - a school reader, activities sheets, exercise books. Reading out loud as a class in a rote type method is common - in grade one - students will read out each letter individually before saying the word - ie. ”t”, “h”, “e” - ”the”. Then it’s lunchtime. Some time ago the teachers discovered children eating grass at lunchtime - they were so hungry. Now the school provides lunch - a basic meal of rice and vegetables. Often children are sent to school sick - that’s the only way the parent can ensure they’re fed. Sadly, this doesn’t mean the children are healthy. This might be the only meal they get all day and meat is absent from most of their diets. Though some of them claimed dog was their favourite food - when meat is scarce, I guess you can’t be fussy. Kev visited Providence over two years ago and reckons that many of the children have not grown since then.
In the afternoon classes continue. By now,
Grade One
Charlie, Balakamen, Sagrita, Samwel many children are physically exhausted from their early morning. Most will be yawning in class, making it a challenge for the teachers to get any level of energy going in the classroom. Like any school, there are behavioural problems here and often a raised voice is employed, sometimes a soft tap of the cane or exclusion from fun activities. If it’s a Friday, all the kids go to the hall for a sing-a-long in a combination of English and Khasi. Then at the end of the day, when it’s time to go home - many students stay. Marbles is the latest fad to take Shillong by storm and the children hang around for up to a couple of hours flicking marbles around the dirt by the school. Often it’s getting dark when Brother Steve sends them home. Then there’s the long walk home to contend with. Back to their tiny, overcrowded, cold, damp homes.
The Providence teachers are angels. Fierce protectors, mother figures, disciplinarians, progressive educators and strong, practical young women. Aside from regular classroom duties they intervene in discretely handing out clothes (donated by locals and overseas groups) when required, matters of hygiene and confidants for problems in
Ricky
The smallest kid in the school the home. They know that the girls aren’t wearing knickers because their families can’t afford them, that a child's parent is dying, that another now lives with her grandparents a two hour bus journey away because she was being sexually abused in the home. Unfortunately, pay is about a third of that received by regular teachers in other local schools. Knowing that, these women choóse to stay - opting to work doing something they’re passionate about for the pay cut.
My companions on this journey were my uncle Kev, Michael (aka Grumpy), Ray and Michelle - all teachers at Parade College, a Christian Brothers boys high school back in Melbourne. Parade began fundraising for Providence after Kev visited India a couple of years back for a conference. He wanted to spend some time observing in a school whilst in India and Providence was the school the Christian Brothers sent him to. This time, Kev, now retired, was returning to the school on a type of immersion exercise - to expose the other teachers to classrooms here, to see how the donated funds were being deployed and identify opportunities for future donations. My involvement as part of the group was
Grade One
Sumerlung, the undisputed naughtiest kid in the school & Anamica simply to try my hand at volunteer work. It was something I’d always been eager to try and a few things appealed - the short timeframe, the fact it was in India - one of my favourite countries, it wasn’t a volunteer stint you needed to pay for the privilege of partaking in and the timing was right.
Providence is located in Shillong, Meghalaya - a large hill station town of 268,000 people in the north east corner of India - the bit on the other side of Bangladesh. The journey there was long and arduous. From Bangkok we flew to Kolkota, then on to Guwahati. From here, a 5 hour jeep ride, up a windy, potholed, backside numbing road finally got us to Shillong. This was not the India I’d experienced in Rajasthan and surrounds 18 months ago. Shillong is a predominately Christian town, the temperature was cold (down to below zero some nights), terrain is hilly, the air fresh, clothing is different, it’s also a matriarchal state. This means that the women here run the show - after the wedding the husband goes to live with his wife's family and the children take on the surname of
Canteen Duty
Selling cakes the mother. About town, women can be seen wearing a type of pinafore - usually in a gingham check that is fastened on one shoulder, tribal shawls decorated in unique patterns for their tribe are also worn by men and women alike. We are the only Westerners in town, apart from Michael Ryan, a good Irish character and volunteer at Providence.
I was completely in the dark when it came to understanding what my exact involvement would be at Providence. I’m no teacher - save a 20 hour TEFL (teaching english as a foreign language) qualification - so what was I to teach? I wasn’t sure I even liked kids. Travelling with Uncle Kev was also an unknown quantity - a great bloke, but my dad’s age, notoriously early to bed and the very same uncle who’d caught me kissing my cousin’s friend at a party at their house a good 15 years ago! Would we get along? Staying in a Brothers House - would I be expected to pray? Sure I’m Catholic - but a decidedly lapsed one. So many unknowns…
The Brothers House offered unexpected luxury to this weary backpacker. Five meals a day cooked by
a chef and served by smiling butler Chetri outfitted in white uniform in the dining room. Our own - albeit sparse - rooms with bathrooms and unreliable showers and little balcony if you had time to enjoy it. There was also an extensive library cum living room with TV - most often tuned into the cricket and internet. Leave your clothes outside your door and they’d be freshly laundered by the next day. Daily mass was early and optional. I never made it. Only two brothers are left here - Brother Steve (D’Souza) and 84 year old Brother Peter - a wonderful character with a passion for people and astronomy.
Day one was hard, very hard. I’d conducted training and presented to groups copious times when working in Sales and Marketing at Ford in Oz. The audience then was masculine, older, skeptical and argumentative. How difficult could a group of Indian Grade Ones be? A walk in the park. Miss Ellen was allocated to Miss Varina’s Grade one class. Around 35 kids aged between 6 and 14. A rowdy bunch, including Sumerlung, the undisputed naughtiest kid in the school. Affectionate (often clingy) and eager to please - the
children hung onto Miss Varina’s every word. It turns out they wore the same clothes everyday, making it easier to remember their often unusual Khasi names … like Onestar, Azulalie, Anamica - a girl in Kev’s class was named Usefully, allegedly another was called ‘birth control’.
Miss Varina was to run some classes and we agreed I’d run others - a kind of team teaching. Except that day one, without a lesson plan and no resources up my sleeve, I was left alone with the children for an hour or so. I was working through the activity set by Miss Varina - but the different pace of the children doing the work - meant that the smart ones were finished and growing impatient and bored. Sumerlung was running riot around the classroom! We’d been told the kids might take a while to adjust to our Aussie accents (the last group were Irish) and I was getting nowhere fast and couldn’t get them to settle down. The noise in the classroom was getting out of control, when fellow volunteer Ray popped his head around the door and asked if I needed help. Please, I begged. A game of ‘Sir Ray’
Lunchtime
Sometime ago the teachers discovered children eating grass at lunchtime they were so hungry. Now the school provides lunch a basic meal of rice and vegetables. says (which was to become one of the kids favourites) followed and the brilliant suggestion of getting each table to be quiet as we took their pictures worked a treat. Nerves were frayed, I was exhausted and frustrated by the end of the day. I didn’t feel comfortable with teaching in a rote style fashion, yet I really didn’t have anything else up my sleeve to offer. My respect for the teaching fraternity trebled in that one day! I was determined to continue though and each day it got easier, I came up with some games and ideas for lessons and I couldn’t go anywhere without hugs from the kids and cries of ‘Miss Ellen’, ‘Miss Ellen’. Okay, so it turns out I like kids!
Sarah Maynes emailed me about a new strategy she was trying in the classroom - the ‘golden hat’. A positive reinforcement technique - the best behaved kid gets to wear the hat. Until things get a little rowdy again and you look for another worthy wearer. In a stroke of genius, I awarded the golden hat (an aussie cap) to the unusually well-behaved ‘Sumerlung’. Never before had I seen him so smug and well
behaved, until another kid in the class stole the hat off his head and Sumerlung punched them …. Ahhh!! I lifted up Sumerlung and with his legs kicking furiously deposited him in the corridor outside the classroom to face the wall and reflect on his bad behaviour. It was hard to hide my grin, I’d come to love the little tiger!
Each night, completely exhausted - we’d retire to the library and chat. Not before an expedition down the hill to town to visit the local grog shop. The owner we nicknamed “Beetlejuice” in honour of his red teeth, permanently stained from chewing betal nut (like tobacco). The shop itself had a grilled rollerdoor, always down - they served locals through a little window in the grill - sadly there are big drinking problems here. Us Westerners received red carpet treatment, Beetlejuice flung up the rollerdoor, rubbed his hands together and let us in, completely flummoxed by the loud, Western woman asking for red wine and ‘mates rates’! The best discount he could muster was a paper bag of free kingfisher beer glasses and Rs 2 off full price! Back in the library, us volunteers would nurse a beer
or wine, chat about our day, rugged up in polar fleece and crowded around a tiny heater. We’d watch tv - snowstorm or cricket - at the whim of the aerial or play cards. Internet was temperamental depending on who you spoke to - Grumpy and Kev always seemed to experience problems and lose emails that had taken precious minutes of one finger typing!!
At the end of our first week, we spend a day visiting the homes of around fifteen students. Barely shacks, often without doors, thin walls lined with newspaper, dark, dank and without any bathroom facilities or running water. Generally they had either one or two single beds, a rudimentary kitchen comprising a few pots and pans and an indoor campfire - all housing anywhere between four and fourteen people. I’m somewhat numbed by the experience, I’m not shocked by what I see. I enter the homes greeting proud families, hugging children, taking photos, seating myself with ease in these surroundings. During the afternoon, the charismatic Marius is our guide. He’s a 14 year old in my grade one class. We have a laugh, I’ve been teaching him some Aussie slang. He holds my hand. It
breaks my heart. Here is this street-smart, bright, bold teenager stuck between childhood and the adult world. So vulnerable and eager to please - he’ll probably be married in the next 5 years. These poor families look at me like I have everything - I’m white (this seems to matter in India), financially stable, educated - I must have the answers. The ticket to happiness. How humbling that I see more joy and happiness in these beautiful, incredible, inspiring children who have nothing, than I do in my own circle of friends and family. Last year when Kev and Parade College donated each child in the school shoes for Christmas, Brother Steve had to make the kids put them on and run around and scuff them up. So their parents wouldn’t sell the shoes.
Our visit brings some new experiences to the kids at Providence. There’s an Aussie Rules football clinic run on the oval after school and frisbee for the senior classes. Perhaps the highlight of our visit is the Providence Marbles Competition. The brainchild of Grumpy, who uncharacteristically ungrumpy, purchased 200 marbles from the Cherripungee market as prizes. On competition day, virtually the entire school line up
in the hall for ‘registration’. They’re each given a raffle ticket and told to assemble for the competition after school by the unofficial marble patch beside the school. None of us get the rules, but it’s decided each class will have a winner who takes home a bag of marbles. Sir Grumpy and Sir Ray open the competition with a Khasi interpreter and appropriate pomp and ceremony. Competition is fierce, the crowd goes wild and a bunch of little kids walk away winners. Billstar, the snottiest, least confident kid in my grade one class is declared winner. Presentations are made by Grumpy with a handshake and photograph in a special assembly. Unforgettable!
Whilst staying in Shillong, we also had the great privilege of spending a day with Sister Judith - a formidable Shillong personality. Sister Judith is the founder and blood, sweat and tears behind ‘WISE”- women for integrated sustainable empowerment. Part of her program is designed to equip women with the skills, business acumen and financial backing to lead their communities in establishing viable money-making schemes. Like setting up a pig pen to breed pigs, or a roadside stall to sell handicrafts or food. We set off for
a day with Sister Judith to visit two such communities near Cherrapunjee. At both meetings we are greeted like royalty, with warmth and some trepidation. The first group of women bombard us with questions - they want to understand what life in rural Australia is like - what hardships and struggles does our local community have. We talk about bushfires, drought and youth suicide - Sister Judith interprets in Khasi. The second group is terrified of us and barely speak - they don’t understand what we want, why we’re there. It’s only later we learn we might be the first white people they’ve ever seen! We must have had some impact though, because one woman is so overcome by emotion, that after the meeting she first shakes my hand, calls me ‘sister’, then pulls me to her to firmly hug and kiss me.
Cherrapunjee itself is stunning - the Scotland of the East! Apparently it receives the highest rainfall in the world. Ironically, they also suffer from terrible water shortages and locals often have to walk huge distances to get water for drinking and cooking. From spectacular cliff tops we see the floodplains of Bangladesh and Sister Judith serves
up by far the best picnic I’ve ever had! A couple of goats wander the cliff tops, an impressive waterfall is visible across the ravine. Later, we wander the Cherrapunjee Market - crammed with people, fruit and vegetables and handicrafts. Unusual that the locals didn’t seem to stare, even though 5 ‘whiteys’ wandering around with a nun must have been a strange sight!
Our last day at Providence, we are treated to a performance extravaganza. The kids had secretly been preparing songs and dances for us. From traditional plate dancing, to Shakira by Napisabeth who suffers from rickets and my favourite performance to 50 cent which had me laughing at my loudest! Us volunteers were overcome by the brilliant reception - holding back tears and laughing all at once. Then the children lined up and gave us handmade cards - kissing each one of us on both cheeks and thanking us for our visit. Back in the classroom with half an hour left for the day Samwel comes to the front of the classroom to speak to me. ‘Miss Ellen, Purnima is crying’. I go to speak to Purnima - one of the older girls in the back corner
of the classroom. Her head is rested in her hands and she is literally bawling - “please don’t leave Miss Ellen’. I’ve held it together until this point, but couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. As the other volunteers said - the ice queen has melted. Interesting to note that there were no tears after eight years at Ford!
All too soon, we are preparing to leave Providence. Riots in Guwahati which leave several people dead and hundreds injured are at risk of delaying our travel plans. We investigate the option of catching a helicopter directly to Guwahati airport, but find that their safety record is less than acceptable. There have been several fatal crashes in the last few years. Fortunately the riots and associated bans in Guwahati are lifted in time for our departure. We leave at 4.30am to allow extra time for the treacherous road conditions and other unforeseeable delays. We find a truck broken down across the road which takes a while to get around, then get a flat tyre. Nearing Guwahati airport we are pulled over by two stern looking officials. Ray rolls down his window. Trouble. The Aussie government’s Smartraveller website warns against
travel to this area because of “risk of armed robbery, kidnapping, extortion and terrorism related incidents”... They speak to our driver in Khasi. I hear Australia mentioned. They look through the window at us and suddenly bright white grins break out in black faces - “Ricky Ponting?!!!” (Captain of Aussie Cricket team) they exclaim! We exhale in relief and crack up laughing. “Brett Lee”, I volunteer … they are slapping their knees with enthusiastic laughter. The Australian Cricket team, the key to Indian-Australian foreign relations. Gold!!
PS - Providence now have a website - it's www.providence.org.in. A few people have asked about volunteer opportunities - all the details can now be found on the website.
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Robert Lee
non-member comment
Can We Make A Difference
It's a crime that hunger and such unsanitary conditons still abound in so much of our world. Aftrer all these years of prosperity we haven't been able to eliminate such conditions. If the money that is spent around the world on WAR ,could be diverted to uplifting the people in such circumstances, we could then say, WE HAVE MADE THE EFFORT. As usual Ellen, your descriptive blogs transport us to where you are, Keep it up and enjoy. Bob