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Sambhali First Impressions Report, July 2008
Ms. Chloe Scott
I arrived in Jodhpur at about 10 am after an overnight train journey from Delhi. My first encounter with the girls was as they arrived at Sambhali for the day. As I sat with Govind and Casey, who gave me an introduction to the project and its work, they wandered past us on their way upstairs in small groups, waving and smiling to me. Later, after the girls’ morning prayer and meditation, I was taken upstairs for a proper introduction. Sat in rows, the girls stood up one by one and introduced themselves. As I am terrible with names usually, I felt slightly daunted by the task of learning almost 40 names in one day! But as I soon discovered, things at Sambhali are relatively relaxed, and my first few days was spent sitting, talking and just generally making myself at ease with the girls.
The language barrier was not the problem that I had expected it to be. A small number of the girls speak very proficient English, while most know almost none, and my Hindi was nonexistent beyond ‘Namaste,’ but we managed to get by. Very soon the girls’ individual personalities began to appear and I couldn’t help but feel at home with them. These girls were also desperate to learn, few of them have had the opportunity to go to school, and they were soon clamoring for English lessons. I couldn’t help but think how grateful these girls would be for the opportunities that are available to every child in the UK, but are so often unwanted there.
The girls and women at Sambhali have been born into the least desired situation in India. Not only are they ‘Dalits’, or ‘Harijan,’ meaning ‘Untouchables,’ they are also women. These two factors make life appallingly hard, yet I have never heard them complain about their situation. Sambhali is a refuge for them and although I am not here for very long, I hope that I can make a difference to the lives of the young women here.
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