VISIT TO THE LOCAL SCHOOL – February 12, 2010

It was almost as though we were bursting at the seams… All of us had brought lots of trinkets along to share with the children of the village, and today was the day to share these with them. The drill would be that whatever we wanted to give to the children of the village, we would bring to the dining tent. At that point, Kelly Wike was “in charge” of the sorting process. She, along with her roommate, Jill Olsen, and a few others, including Susan Wischhusen, had the task of sorting through what we had brought and then trying to deal with these gifts in an equitable manner.

Our goal was to bring happiness to the children. However, we also wanted to convey a very important message to the village – if you go to school and attend regularly, you will be rewarded. This meant Kelly had to get a number from the foreman or one of the members of the Panchayat as to how many children actually attended school regularly. The next bit of information was to learn the gender breakdown among those students. Now, with those bits of knowledge, it was then up to the sorting team to delineate our gifts into two sections – boys and girls. As it ended up, there were four cartons and a couple of plastic bags which we carried to the school. We caused quite a stir in the streets of the village as we approached the school yard.

Since Atul Dev – one of the other Rotarians from Delhi, who was also intimately involved with the dam projects – had driven out with another member of his Rotary Club, we invited them to come along for our “fun” portion of the day. It turns out that Atul Dev was a great help to us. Since Sanjiv was filming all of our activities, I asked if Atul Dev would be willing to address the children on our behalf and provide our “message” to them. He agreed.

What he told the children was, “These folks, who are Rotarians from USA, Canada, France and Russia have come here to your village at their own expense. They have left their families and their jobs so that they might come to Teenchvala to work on the construction of the dam, in order to benefit your village. In addition, they have brought some gifts to you, but these gifts are only for children in the village who regularly attend school. This is your reward for being good and attentive students.” He then suggested they give us a round of applause. The gun-shot precision of their clapping was startling, to say nothing of nearly deafening, even though we were all sitting outside in the school yard. The teachers had grabbed an old tarp-carpet and covered a raised platform at one end of the playground, and invited the team members to sit there. He had also provided about five chairs and asked that Atul Dev, Kelly, two other team members and me to sit there, in front of all of the children who sat on the dusty ground, cross-legged.

Once the applause subsided, Atul then instructed the teaching staff to have the youngest girls and the youngest boys to come forward to receive their gifts. Each child received a “Frisbee” – either one of the more traditional plastic ones, or one of the fabric disks that seem to be all the rage nowadays. In addition, each girl was given a small doll or a bit of jewelry (or as it is spelled in India, JEWELLERY). Each of the boys also received a “Frisbee” as well as a nerf baseball or a nerf football or the like. These children were so much more orderly than the children in the village of Chahalka where our teams had worked for the past three years, and they actually seemed to be very appreciative of their gifts. In an effort to cement relationships even more, I asked that Atul mention to the older children that we would so much appreciate it if they would come to the worksite and stand alongside us and help to pass the rocks or the masala mix. This way, we hoped the children, and therefore their families, would take some pride of ownership in the dam project that will benefit them all for years to come. Once again, Atul suggested a round of applause for us and once more, that gun-shot precision of clapping lasted for about twenty seconds. In turn, our team stood and applauded the students for being students and for attending school regularly.

At that point, I suggested that two of our team members, Vanessa and Sarah go out behind the students who were still sitting on the ground and to catch the Frisbees I was going to fling out to them. I thought this would be a good way to show the kids how these funny disks actually work. I flung out the disks to the children’s great pleasure. I then invited the older boys to join us out at the other end of the playground and we tossed the tiny footballs and the softballs, as well as flung the Frisbees. Several of the team members joined in this exercise and we all seemed to be able to blow off some steam, and really enjoy becoming kids again!

We left the school and walked back to the dining tent for lunch.