NGO: First Day

                 The slums themselves aren’t what I originally pictured them to be in my mind. As an American, the word slum conjures up images of rundown shacks, stacked and stuck in an endless disorganized conglomerate of tents and makeshift huts. While yes, groups of these ‘huts’ could be found clustered within the slum, built mainly of things that could be found discarded or used in construction sites like metal sheeting and wood. Being that these people don’t have a Target or Ikea to go to, and that necessity comes before aesthetics, uniformity was a foreign trait to ramshackle housing like them. A sheet of metal from here, tied together with to another sheet from there using rope from over there, all of it coming together to create great quilts of slum tenements.
                 The slum itself actually had more substance and development within it than I previously expected. We entered from the main road between a couple of small plain buildings to what appeared to be a large network of low rent buildings whose construction clearly went without the obstruction of petty things like rules, or regulations. None of these buildings leapt beyond two to three stories but it was a clear to me within the car zigzagging below that even within this lower level of society there were obvious different class levels. The men and women living atop the shoddily constructed buildings sported cheap clothing it was at least in decent condition, free of any rips or tears. They were also groomed to a certain extent, with clean shaven faces crowned by many a bowl cut. However the mark of the slum was still upon them and it was obvious where they came from. They looked down from their balconies at us, as our cars swam through the crowd of the lower level of the slums. Almost every man was a bicycle rickshaw, and nearly every woman a maid. The men wore dirty and torn clothing, and the women thin sarees.
                 The school is constructed of orange adobe-like material and stands as one of the taller buildings in the neighborhood. Stretching to a few stories it is still however small. I’ll be sure to take some photos next time we come along.
    It was our first day, and Mr. Mishra explained to us that after a short session with our groups, we were going to head over to the nearby lot where the locals play cricket (or bat-ball as they call it). Sheen and I met our group of kids and ushered them inside a small room, which we were told, for the most of the day had no electricity. The first thing we did was have them line up, and have them each try and write their names in both English and Hindi on the tiny blackboard we were given. Some of the kids were unable to reach the blackboard, about half of them had no knowledge of the English alphabet, and two had no idea how to spell in either language.

One child, Bobby, showed up late to the class and darted towards the back of the room with his eyes on the floor. He cautiously approached the black board when his turn to write his name eventually came. As the chalk met the blackboard, he froze, and stood staring past the blackboard with empty eyes. I could sense something was wrong even before the tears started to fall. Bobby began crying, and immediately Mr. Mishra entered the classroom and spirited him outside from the inquisitive eyes of the class. I joined Mr. Mishra beside bobby to try and understand what happened and if it had been something on our part. Mr Misha explained that his mother has left for their village, and that he sorely misses her. In her absence he is responsible for all of her duties like cooking and cleaning, and for the most part lives alone as his father is rarely around. After soothing him down Mr. Mishra promised to get him on the phone with his mother.

For the rest of the day we played cricket with an instructor of indian descent from Luxembourg. He showed the kids proper cricket techniques and made them laugh. It was interesting to see how in the young children there were no lines drawn about male and female sport, that the girls were just as eager and focused on the game as the boys were and were in some cases more fierce players.

At the end of the day, we said goodbye to all of the kids who seemed sad to have us leave. We told them we would be back next sunday but for some reason I felt like they didn’t believe us. I wonder why.