june 11 javeh nagar

June 11. Javeh Nagar
So, a bit daunted at the prospect of leaping into an english lesson in a culture I didn't know in an environment pretty unlike any classroom I've been in, I decided to observe my roomates teaching at their slum, Javeh Nagar, for the day. This caused a bit of confusion at the ASHA centre, no one seems to really communicate over there, but they are all laid back as well so it wasn't a problem. I thought for a minute they were going to cart me over to the slums and present me with kids when I was completely unprepared but luckily Dr. Krishna supported my observation day. So Anurag, my Delhi partner, and I piled in with Ross and Kerry. We passed the Adoption center, the population control center, and the passport center on the way.
We arrived at a center much nicer and more open than the one at Zakhira. Anita, a chubby smiling woman dressed in a dark blue sari greeted us pleasantly. We put our packed lunches (dry bread, mayo and cheese) into the fridge and were soon swarmed by children! Girls dressed in brightly colored Salwar Kamiz came up to me shaking my hand and saying -Hello, how are you I am fine- all at once. Boys with mischevious smiles and bare feet eagerly shook Ross and Kerrys hands. We ushered the boys into a small room with a single fan and they laid blankets down on the floor, very concerned that Anurag and I fit on the cloth. They practiced introducing themselves, each other and us in order to practice His, Her, Our and Their names are. We then did a word search of family names, which proved to be challenging as the words went backwards and diagonal. The boys cared less about getting it right (some of them just circled all the letters of a word such as an A, U, N, T, that weren't actually in order) as getting it done first! We then did opposite words, and matched them up (tall/short, thick/thin, old/young), followed by comparisons-(taller than, shorter than) and lined them up in order of age and height. The 10 or so boys loved running around and being active. One boy showed me his name written in English, Hindi, Sanskri and Bengali. They were familiar with a lot of the vocabulary already (later on we found that the girls were not).
After boys class was lunchtime. This beautiful girl Reka chatted with us in pretty good english, she has the loveliest laugh. She looked very elegant in a red and gold salwar kamiz. Their duparta (the scarf) makes the girls look very formal and put together. Their clothes are immaculately clean which is surprising after seeing life in a slum. They were even criticizing Kerry for not having ironed her salwar! (the pants part of the traditional outfit). All the girls have the left side of their nose pierced, this means beauty. (I'm considering getting my own, everyone says I look Indian). Reka and Pooja began teaching me to count in Hindi, while Jhoti painted exquisite designs of Henna on my arm. The ASHA women cracked up because Ross wasn't matching. The girls asked me if I used whitening cream and said how beautiful Kerry was because she has light skin, hair and eyes. This is a sad phenomenon in a country where everyone is different shades of brown. How ironic that in the states people spend so much time and money trying to get Darker?
The girls class was much more chatty and playful than the boys. As I mentioned before they were much less familiar with the material. The games with the were more about getting it right and writing neatly than doing it quickly. They kept getting distracted by my henna, instructing me to not touch it not wash it put coconut oil on it etc. They did both of Kerrys arms and we noticed the older girls got more henna and the younger girls got only very simple designs that did not reach one's palm. They were very eager to learn and very chatty. The language barrier hardly felt like a problem. After the lesson I went outside with them to play in the compound. The boys challenged them to a singing contest and after finding me a chair they all began to sing hindi songs. The woman from Asha came out to get me to come inside, on account of the heat ostensibly, and was surprised when I said I was perfectly content to play with the kids. The heat was just as bad inside or out but I was beginning to get used to being sticky.
Kaal Malangue (no idea of the real spelling) =See you tomorrow!