Second Saturday

On the second Saturday of the month, there is no school at Ananda Vidyalayam and instead all of the sponsor children come to the SEDS farm. The sponsor children are those children who are selected to receive sponsorship for their education from Partners in Aid, Australia. The money covers school uniform, some non-uniform clothes, school bag, shoes, pens, pencils, notebooks, and so on, to fund the child's education. They also come to the farm each month for basic growth checks, fun and games, sports and activities, and a feed.

On this occasion however, there were no games as it was a time for distributing school bags, pens and pencils, chalk boards, and shoes.

An organised reception and signing-in was supposed to have taken place, but things didn't go quite to plan as the person in charge did not arrive in time. When I got to the school hall after breakfast there was a bit of chaos - made even worse by the arrival of white visitors which excited the children a lot!

 

I tried to help, and the first task I found for myself was to organise the ID badges. There was a big bundle of ID badges on lanyards, all tangled together - with the tangles getting worse as many small hands tried to pull at things all at once. Instead of leaving them in chaos, I untangled all of the ID badges and laid them out on the benches. I grouped them by ID number and put them all face-up to make them easier to find. I had to reorganise them a couple of times as the children didn't seem to have any idea of how to not jumble everything up, but eventually they got the hang of it and the minor fights and scuffles were prevented because everyone could find their own badge.

Photo by Alex

Photo by Alex

Next, Alex and I were asked to take the documentation photos for reporting to PIA. We went to another building where the distribution was taking place, and I went inside to see if I could help.

School bags, notebooks, chalkboards

Sorting out the shoes - photo by Alex

Shoes ready to distribute

I help organise the shoes ready for distribution, and then asked if I could help with this instead because it wouldn't take 2 people to get the photos. There isn't so much of a culture here of getting a task organised before starting, so inside the room where the distribution took place, my section was relatively well organised... I was giving out the girl's shoes, and had things organised by size and ready to go so that whatever size was required, I could hand it over in a moment. My system of work clearly impressed some of the young boys who were also inside trying to assist, and I soon had several helpers who were eager to learn my system and join in with the work. It wasn't difficult work, but it was fast-paced to keep up with the children coming through and it was hot and stuffy inside, so I felt like I'd had quite a work out by the time we finished!

I felt very rewarded when Balaji, the head teacher of our Ananda Vidyalayam school, talked to me afterwards. When we first arrived, Balaji wouldn't talk to me or look at me, and treated me in a very disrespectful fashion. Today, he said to me "thank you for working so hard. Very organised, very hard working! Thank you thank you for all your work". This felt like a bit of a breakthrough in my working relationship with him, and I felt good to have my efforts recognised as well.

Showing the children how to make origami cranes

The aftermath of the distribution session!

Speaking English with the children

Rasool handing out the bus money

Alex and I stayed to help as long as we could, often just entertaining the children and practicing English, but by 3.30pm when the bus fares were being handed out to the children, I was just too hungry to stay much longer. At 4 o'clock we went back to the house for a very overdue lunch.

We had another visitor at the farm arrive today, an old friend of Rajan's called George. George runs a security fencing company called Fenzgard, and he had some great products that were quite innovative and very clever. He also had some great stories about working in the conflict areas of Kashmir, and of going out spotting wildlife in the area around SEDS and his own property in Tamil Nadu state.