The two schools

31 October 2007

City School

The city school takes place in the same building as the Church. It has a room downstairs where we meet as a Church and which is used, as well as two other rooms, as a classroom in the day. The school is a fifteen minute walk from the apartment and is on the edge of a slum rehabilitation area set up by the government.

Becky and I work with the small children (between 4 and 18 1-4yr olds!) for an hour in the morning, playing games doing crafts and, at the moment, learning about the five senses. It’s a lot of fun but quite tiring! The main lessons are in the afternoons (one hour teaching, half an hour games/dancing). Becky teaches a group of about twenty 11-13 year olds. They are of a mixed ability but really keen to learn and have fun! Ruth (a BMS short term volunteer who will be here until the 9th November) and I teach a group of around twelve 13-16 year olds. They are a lovely group of girls whom I’m really looking forward to getting to know better.

As the school and Church are all one building quite a few of the children that come to the school also come to Church which is really great and gives us an extra chance to get to know them.

Naomi Simmonds

Rural School

David and I are working at Anusaran’s village school located in Chanchal Park, a small village around 40 minutes (extremely bumpy!) drive away from our apartment. The building itself actually used to be a poultry farm, but it functions well as a school with four small classrooms, an office, a storeroom and a kitchen where the girls have cookery classes.

Most of the children go to government schools in the morning so lessons at Anusaran run in the afternoons. We have an hour of teaching followed by half an hour of games. The number of children that turn up each day is a little unpredictable but there are around 60 altogether between the three classes.

David is teaching ‘Group 2′ which consists of around 25 children aged 8-11 and I’m teaching ‘Group 3′ a much smaller class of 10-13 year olds.

There is also a young womens empowerment programme running at the school; the girls (ages 14-20) spend most of the day at Anusaran learning stitching, embroidery and English. Some of the older girls who have been coming to Anusaran for longer help to teach the newer girls the vocational skills and David and I have started teaching their English Class.

Anna Davies

Our First Week

So much has happened in the past week, its been amazing. We were wanting to get to the Internet cafe after only two days because we were already overloaded with things to tell people. We were greeted warmly by John after a sleepless flight (apart from Anna who slept almost the whole way), and taken straight to the apartment where we were given the rest of the day to settle in.
It really is true about cows wandering the streets, cars using horns at every oppertunity, and the general insane busyness of things. The other day we were driving along when we were over taken by a speeding hatchback with a family of ten packed into it. Something quite weird also is that most of the dogs wandering around have udders because this is puppy season.
We have really been made part of the family here already- we meet every morning with a few neighbours and church members for devotions, which we will often be leading- we have had several lessons from John and Abha (our hosts) about culture and things, and we had our first Hindi class yesterday, which was excellent. The church service on Sunday was a very powerful experience, despite much of it was in Hindi. The fellowship here is really alive and since there are only 30 or so people quite a large portion of the service is sharing good news and problems. They all talk and pray so honestly, and it has been really encouraging to be told so many stories of healings and miracles amongst them.
We had saturday off, which gave us the oppertunity to spend the whole day with Ruth, a student from the UK who has been working in Anusaran for the past 6 weeks, and will be continuing to live in our flat with us for 3 more weeks. We went together around some sites in Delhi- one in particular was very memorable- the Dilhi Haat Bazaar. It was a large craft fair, selling all sorts of hand crafted Indian things, and with some traditional performances like dances and music and things. I was watching a particular dance when a large sweaty man approached me with a camcorder and began asking me various questions about where I was from etc. It soon turned out he was a TV directer, and there were several other people with him with huge cameras. microphones and other things like that. He asked me for an interview, and when I mentioned I was with others he pushed all the dances aside, the music stopped abruptly and he pushed us all into the spotlit area where the dancers had been. We were all asked to say our names, where we were from and what we thought of Dilhi Haat, and by then there was too large a crowd forming to refuse him. So we gave a short interview to the cameras, in front of the increasing crowds of Indians. We asked him afterwards what the interview was for and he told us it would be shown on national TV next month, as part of a cultural series called “Little India”. So after 5 days we are already on national TV.
We started teaching today which was a daunting experience, but more about that at some other point.
Jamusiki (Praise the Lord)
David