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Published: February 16th 2008
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Shiv - Work Placements
Shiv is a little town in the Barmer district of Rajasthan, not too far from the Pakistan border. There's not too much to tell about the place, so I'll keep it brief. It's a dirty, dusty den of Indian activity, the roadsides lined with market stalls, shops and a multitude of goats and cattle, and the road packed with buses, cars and bikes. The people are typically dark-skinned Rajasthani. They are reasonably used to seeing white people due to the proximity of the camp, but they still hustle round every time we step out, a steady stream of stares and "namaste's" bouncing off us.
Each morning the bus leaves at 9.45am, and drops us at our individual work placements. I get Child Labour in the morning, and English teaching in the afternoon. Child Labour is so named because the children regularly work from very young ages for their parents, as well as look after younger siblings. The children are generally healthy, though poorly clothed and cloaked thick in dirt, but a few are in a very bad state, particularly one emaciated young child, who is later taken to hospital due to the
life-threatening nature of his condition.
At child labour, myself and an unpleasant 20 year old Danish girl, who I'll refer to as Blondie, work with the older children, and those that are considered at a more advanced stage of their learning, and Sandra and Alicia take the younger ones. We wash their hands, and then warm up with songs and games (the Good Morning song, sung roughly to the tune of Frère Jacques, is a vicious cunt that gets inside your head and stays there for days and nights. I'll publish the lyrics at the bottom of the blog so you can all sing along). Then, school begins, and we churn out a mix of the alphabet, English words and phrases and maths.
Our classroom is the yard outside, and we lay out rugs and sit round in a circle. We hand out paper and clipboards, the kids scream for pencils, sharpners and colours, and mob us with their finished work for marking and a precious smiley face. At the end of each session, we break out the skipping rope and watch the little fuckers fight for a turn.
Child Labour is a touch
One of the Child Labour Kids
I love this kid - he was always covered in snot and never wore trousers, but he is a legend! work assignment, just because the children are so wild and undisciplined. At the end of the two hours, I'm drained, smelling faintly of child piss and ready for a shower and some down time. What we get instead is a quick turned around before we start our afternoon stints - time for lunch, a change of clothes and maybe half an hour in the sun.
At 2.30pm, I go to English Teaching with Sandra and our Indian guide, Sanjeev. This is a complete change of scene. The girls are all educated, most of them studying at university or college, and are aged fourteen and above. The first time we turn up to teach, it takes them twenty minutes to make it through the gate and into the classroom. They're not used to being taught by a man, especially a white man, and so they stand around giggling and talking behind their hands, until the braver ones take tentative steps forward, and the others slowly ghost in behind.
Compared to the morning session, afternoons are fucking easy. The girls are all keen to learn, and most pick things up quickly. I won't go into what we teach
them - just basic verbs, tenses and shit like that, but they seem to like us and our lessons, and when we leave after three weeks, we get a round of applause and lots of thanks.
Working in Shiv, one thing I learn about myself is that I actually don't mind children. I don't mean touching or eating them; just being around them. I can tolerate the sound of their voices, I don't get angry when they try to hold my hand, and when they jump on my back or demand to be swung round by the arms, I don't throw them down and rub their faces into the dirt. It could be it's just Indian children, or maybe poor Indian children. The thing with these kids is that they're always happy, smiling, and pleased to see you. Most of them have next to nothing. They lead hard lives, with little or no prospect of furthering themselves, regardless of how much we educate them. The girls will be married off and become housewives, and the boys will carry on working until they become men, and have kids of their own.
In the west, children always seem
to be miserable. They are never satisfied with what they have, always wanting more - bigger, better, faster. Instead of hammering steel and holding the baby, they play on games consoles, watch people fighting on YouTube and stuff themselves full of fast food and artificial colours. They get fat, lazy and addicted to excess, and they rarely come to appreciate how lucky they are to have so many options and different ways to fuck themselves up. It's not their fault - it's the world their parents present them with.
It seems crazy and ironic that by essentially making a slave of your child, and giving them nothing but a roof for their head and food for their mouth, and hopefully a little love, you can actually turn out a happier, better adjusted human being than the violent, angry thugs that grow up to prowl the streets back home. I know that not all kids in the west are fuck ups, but personally have always believed that when you are aware of how much is obtainable, of how many ways you can make things "better" for yourself if you just have enough money, you will always stand more of a chance of attaining misery reaching for that next rung on the ladder.
Maybe a few heavily-pregnant white women should make their way over to deepest Rajasthan, force out their offspring and leave for a few years. When they come back, without doing anything they might have managed to raise a happy, smiling child, ready and deserving to see what else the world has to offer them. In Shiv, Bagana, Bram, Luni and all the others have a very limited understanding of "what's out there", or more accurately they don't seem to think for a second that any of what is there can be obtained by them. It would be naive to think that they never have dark moments, never wonder if they might be a way out of this place, but they appear to be accepting of their fate, and to largely embrace it. So when I said goodbye, climbing aboard the bus, putting down the half-naked, snot-nosed toddler clinging to me, it was more with regret than relief.
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