River of Wonder
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Somehow the days have blended into one fabulous chain of humanity moving our little tribe along on wonder. Friday we traveled a few hours out of town to visit the rural village Nimgaon Bhogi where we met a women’s self-help group, facilitated a sports day, presented lessons to our perspective grades, and shared a traditional lunch with a village family. Any one of these would be perspective changing.
In the evening we met our host families and traveled to their homes. Three other delegates joined me as Mrs. Shalinia Pawar and her driver collected us. What fun! We were going to travel 78 kilometers in a vintage ambulance. Our sense of adventure was a bit stilted by fatigue, but the smile of our hostess eased the way. Dr. and Mrs. Pawar live on a mission hospital campus. We arrived to find out that we were to be guests of honor at a special meeting of the Daund Rotary Club. We were introduced, awarded trophies, asked to give a brief speech, and then answered questions for about an hour and a half.
Saturday dawned and the cultural experience of shopping and site seeing did not dawn with it. The Powars had arranged for us to visit three schools, an orphanage, a women’s self-help group, and the slums of Daund. The day was filled with humbling and inspiring experiences. The schools were very different from one another. One was a public school, one a private school, and one a village school. The class sizes would make any teacher cringe. Classes are either only girls or boys or in the younger grades they are co-ed but the girls and boys are situated on different sides of the room. I will let the photos speak for themselves regarding equipment and set up. Several things happened this day to reinforce the fact that this trip is exactly what I should be doing right now. In one of the girls classes, about 8 standard I think, the teacher asked me to give a few words of encouragement to the girls. I was standing in the center of a group and she walked directly to me, looked me in the eye and made her request. I looked out over the sea of pink and spoke from my heart – that their education will be all their own, that it will take them wherever they want to go, and that they should not give up even when it is difficult. It was short, but emotional, and their clapping gave me goose bumps.
The visit to the slums for the women’s self-help group, orphanage, and other visitations gave me a glimpse of the India I have been reading about. I may have to leave that for tomorrow. I have to share a market visit, a Hindu wedding, and two more days of visiting Tata Consulting, The Serum Institute, two temples, and Humayun’s tomb to share next, oh, and a visit with India’s Minister of Education, but the bus leaves at 8:15 am and we will be on the road till 10 pm tomorrow. Thanks for reading. More on this journey soon.
Themocracy