Setrawa Project:
Ms. Edwina Alva
and
Marion Valladares-Smith's Weekly Report Dec 28 – Jan 4

Arrived and settled in smoothly – Mary has cleaned everything so that it all looks good. Got the rooms cleaned up and prepared the beds for all. Spent Saturday looking at the work of the students and orienting myself to the language classes that I am to do.

Walking to the village center, which seems to be the vegetable seller’s corner, we feel like royalty, greeting and bowing and acknowledging the people. But everybody seems friendly enough and certainly curious. Our immediate neighbour, Gunjan, is a sweet, honest and motherly soul, ready to help and make conversaton at the drop of a hat. Her husband is a vet and rides off to work on a motorbike everyday: her two children are Harsh and Harshita: the latter, a girl, sometimes attends Sambhali. Gunjan has been coming for sewing and English as well.

In terms of simple physical comfort, we seem to have what we need: “Mummyji” from next door has agreed to cook for us once a day, so that takes care of lunch and we eat the left overs fro dinner. It is nice to go shopping for veggies and get a few groceries such as we might need. Everything very basic is available so we are not lacking for things to eat.

The chaiwalla (tea seller) at the quadri-cenotaph is our morning halt for “adrak ki chai” and his wife is Ugamo Devi, who attends sewing class. There is a grain shop where we buy dal and sugar etc. We are trying to spread our business so shop at the bus stand for veggies and fruit on alternate days.

The Ladies’ English Class is at 2pm. They are motivated to learn but attendance depends strongly on house work: whether it is completed or not, whether the children are sick, the husband is home, the washing gets done etc. Indu stopped coming after the first couple of days since they had no water and the washing piled up. However her sister, Lata started coming instead. Meera is lively and by far the most advanced. Gunjan plods along – she has a self-teacher book for English written in Hindi!! Dhapu struggles gamely but cannot keep up. She thinks studying means to commit everything to Emory but she cannot distinguish letters nor attribute meaning to the completed words, nor “read” them back unless she memorizes them. Meena has a fair idea of English and is young. I started them on simple descriptions of objects around them, using simple structures such as This is a ...... and using cues such as shape, color, size, weight, value and uses to describe them: It’s big/black/round/heavy etc. In the days that followed they also learned to use the verb HAVE, to tell me about the things they had: I have a bangle. It’s round, expensive, made of gold etc. using a game involving a bag full of different objects. They were able to tell me about earrings, rings, bracelets, necklaces. They are curious about my jewelry and interested in anything to do with decoration and adornment.

The “Small Schoolgirls” Class took place at 4pm on Monday. Attendance is varies since some come others go etc. But there was a critical mass of 16v children so we played with prepositions of place (IN ON UNDER BEHIND IN FRONT OF) and using techniques that had them moving around the classroom.

The “Board Exam” group of Schoolgirls comes at 4pm Tuesday – Friday. They are supposed to be those in Classes 8, 10, and 12. A dismal lot. They have no spoken English at all. They took 45 minutes to understand the difference and use of I – YOU – SHE and were just about able to say and write sentences about themselves using the verbs SPEAK PLAY EAT DRINK LIKE. During the next few days I took them through the Present Continuous using mime and guessing games; their vocabulary is non existent and their reading is atrocious – namely, neither phonetic skills nor any understanding of what they are reading. After asking and looking at their text books we had a short discussion and we decided together to abandon the text (whose English is beyond them) and stick to “conversation”. I gave them a simple structure – S V O or Subject Verb Object, and got them saying and writing things about pictures I showed them, introducing other vocabulary like taking photographs, pushing and pulling, sitting and standing, riding a bike etc. They seem willing but tired after a day at school. They too needed practice in the prepositions of place but getting the question WHERE? Seemed too difficult, even after playing a game of hiding the Object.

Observations

I am satisfied with the way the language classes are going although by far the most challenging are the teenagers - Edwina calls them the Duffers. They’d not seem to be really interested in learning English – it may be just another subject for them. I will try again next week to have a more cohesive plan fro them so that they get the most benefit out of the class.

Other children from the village and their parents constantly ask if they may attend. We talk incessantly about how to expand and include these children but so far we cannot see a way. Stanley has started a mixed class – Civics – and it seems to be going well. For the moment we will have to be content with that.

WEEK II Jan 5 – 12

The Monday Class was fun – with the structure THIS IS A .......... which they also had to illustrate. Each child did a picture and wrote a descriptive sentence.

The Ladies Class – they attend erratically but have started on themes relating to their family, home, likes and dislikes. Also possessives of my-yours-hers-. Did a little comparative (bigger/smaller/prettier etc very basic). Some are picking it up quicker than others. Dhapu is the most determined so I have started her on a phonetic track that will allow her to read and pronounce words which she will later understand. Rani just copies stuff all the time, I have to simply focus her on a task and she will be happy.

Had a contretemps with the “duffers”. Found that stuff was missing from the classroom after they had been in there for a half hour alone (they had come early and asked to wait in the classroom). I confronted them with this information and only three came back the next day. However a couple of items “mysteriously” reappeared. After that, they were absent because of a religious program at their school. Only Hemlata, Meena, Sita and Nenu and Laxmi attended. I was upset that they had so little respect for us and for the work that we were doing.

At the end of the week Rekha(Local teacher working at Sambhali,Setrawa Project) invited us to her home for dinner as she will be going away for a wedding and we will be gone by the time she gets back. So we all went to her home one day and it was a warm experience. They made us eat before they did but we spent an hour looking at photographs of their family and learning about the other members. We also took them some oranges which I think the mother appreciated.

Observations

We are relating more and more to the people in the village. We get to know the “doctor” and the pharmacist, the cloth seller and the tailor, who made a “lehnga” or ghaghra for me. I wore that to Jodhpur and enjoyed wearing it. There are many who recognize us and speak nicely to us and even joke with us. It helps to speak the language and be able to interact with them.

We are disappointed that Mary will be leaving us – we really enjoyed her presence and she contributed much to our discussions. The dog she was feeding for Amanda will also be disappointed – although she is well on her way to health and confidence. Govind visited us on Friday with the two new volunteers Karine and Ellie – and a photographer and her friend....who upset us all by her callous and uncaring attitude to us, the students and surroundings. One of them smoked as well!

We are finding that everybody here is related to the other and it is sometimes confusing when they refer to their sisters and brothers who are really their cousins and so on. But the family is a unit and is closely connected.

WEEK III Jan 13 – Jan 20

The two volunteers who will be taking over from us accompanied us back here from Jodhpur. I am a little worried about how well this place will “sustain” five of us, considering the water and electricity problems we have just about managed to control.

In fact the toilet promptly got blocked up despite Narayan Singh having had it “cleared” a few days ago: and Stanley spent a morning literally up to his elbows in shit to clear the pipe of four stones that were in the way. However we got the toilet behaving as it should!

The electricity has been off all day since Monday: only on at night for a few hours. Luckily we eat all the food we bring in to the house – thanks to “Mummyji” next door, who kindly makes a vegetable dish for half the price of the vegetables we buy for her, plus “sogras” – a round millet flat bread for Rs 5 each that provides some protein.

The teenagers did not show up for a few days so we spread the word that the 4pm class would be open for all girls: of course by the end of the week, the Duffers showed up, claiming that their school program had prevented them from attending. Which may be true because they had come to invite us to the program on Monday to which Ellie and Karine went.

My current thought is that the Duffers should come from 4 – 5pm; and the school children could come from 4:30 – 5:30 so that the overlap will not be too much. Many of the children cannot make it before 4”30 since their school hour’s conflict or they have to walk too far. The older girls seem to be free by 3:30 so that it makes sense to start them off by 4pm. However this will be something for our successors to ponder.

Raju who has been helping Stanley with his Civics class also came by to invite us to dinner at his house. His sister Malti turns out to be a wonderful cook: she had previously sent us some Gajjar Halwa (carrot sweet) which was delicious. She is older than he and is waiting at home until she can be married – she has an older brother ahead of her. Raju is the youngest and the baby of the family. She produced idli-sambhar for us and we had a congenial chat with her mother with various members of the family and neighbors looking on. In the lamplight of course since there was no electricity.

The story of the electricity took a while for us to understand. The rooms we have apparently are not connected to the grid: our landlords have made an application for a separate meter which has not yet been installed. So, we are connected to BSNL’s grid with some sort of extension wire system. Unfortunately the switch is loose so every so often it comes loose and while everyone else has electricity we do not. In that case we have to call Rawal and he gets the key to the BSNL office and rectifies the situation. The guy we deal with there is called Magar Ram.

Many times the water supply has been turned on but the electricity has not. In this case we have to fill buckets manually: Rawal has done it once or twice for us. But in this way the overhead tank does not get filled. We have had a couple of tense moments when we have been waiting for water...but so far so good. Also, our landlords have a HUGE underground tank that gets filled so that if there is a severe problem they can connect their pump to a hose and run it to our overhead tank. Everybody is on the lookout for the water so we get alerted each time.

Rawal’s brother Chanderveer is back from wherever he was, with his 4 month old and his bride. He has a limp (perhaps polio) but is cheerful and is always telling jokes. He can be very helpful as is Rawal.

Ellie and Karine have been “observing” the classes. They are eager to learn and to get started, but neither of them has had any experience in this field. They clearly want to execute their own plans and do what they are planning in terms of their own abilities and resources rather than on the needs, vision and mission of the Setrawa Project. They are, understandably, taking more than a few days to find their feet which have left little time for community or communication. The ladies are curious as to what they might bring to the classes, and the children have already welcomed Ellie and her guitar.

We started an 11am class for Street girls – those who do not go to school for one reason or the other. This was inspired by Guddi, an attractive 6 year old that roams the streets and follows us around. We told her to get cleaned up and come to Sambhali School. She did and so did her sister Laxmi. And Maya and Bhakti – who are basically too young for the program. It should not become a baby-sitting service. Meera would like her 4 year old daughter Lalita to attend. However, we would like to open it to street girls who are 6 years old and up. Stanley went to the local Women and Children Development program to alert the person in charge (Anandi??) To the class in case she knew of any whom she could recommend.

I think the most progress has been made by Dhapu in the Ladies English Class. She has learned to phonetically read one syllable words with the first four vowels. It is up to Karine to continue (from U – Z) and four letter words. She has still to understand the words she says or reads which might be a difficult task both for her and her teacher. But she is eager and willing and most of all, determined. Her husband has said that she can close her little shop for two years while she attends Sambhali School to learn English. One of her son’s lives and works in Goa, and her daughter Hemlata goes to school regularly.

I think we are leaving things in good shape for anyone else who comes here. Below is what has been done with the Board Exam (Duffers) class.
English Class 4 – 5:30pm
8th, 10th and 12th Class school girls

Week 1
ABOUT MYSELF:
I eat/ sleep/ play/ drink / like....
You eat/sleep.... etc
She eats..etc
WHAT? as a question word
What do you eat?
What does she eat?
PRESENT CONTINUOUS
I’m running / sitting/ listening / standing/ pushing/ eating / washing clothes etc etc
You’re listening/ standing etc
She’s running/ playing etc
NEGATIVE
I’m not running etc
You’re not sitting...
She’s not listening etc
PREPOSITONS
ON IN UNDER BEHIIND IN FRONT OF
WHERE? as a question
Where is the ball? the pen? the pencil? etc
It’s ON the floor
It’s under the book
It’s behind the door
etc etc
SONG: Are you sleeping (2) Brother John (2) ... in rounds
Week II
PRONUNCIATION
Vowels: long and short
Diphthongs: CH SH TH SCH
Identify and read, combine with long/short vowel sounds
SENTENCE STRUCTURE
Subject – Verb - Object
I eat an apple
You see a book
She drinks coca cola
TIME
At what time do you. eat/ have lunch/ go to school/ go home/ come here/ go to sleep.
I go to school AT 4 o’clock (insist on AT0
I eat lunch at 1 o’clock
(They have not mastered the half hour or the quarter hour ort anything less)\
DAILY ROUTINE
In the morning I get up. wash my face, brush my teeth and comb my hair. I get dressed, eat my breakfast and go to school.
In the evening I play cricket, eat my dinner and I go to sleep.
(They have very limited verbs and do not know how to spell)
ACTIVITY: write and illustrate what you do morning, afternoon, evening and night.
SONG: This is the way I wash my face/ brush my teeth etc