Education Tangle

The human knot game begins with everyone standing in a circle and grabbing the hands of people across from you. The result is a tangle of linked hands in the center; the challenge is untangling the mess without letting go of anyone.

The second school we visited this session was the Gogo village Full Primary School (FPS), which is about an hour and a half out of Lilongwe by bus. As always, our highly skilled and fearless driver, Dennis, delivered us safely—although maybe a little jumbled.

Stepping off the bus, the view of Gogo FPS includes four brick classrooms, a small office, and a well-kept courtyard. The school sits on a slope overlooking scenic rolling hills with terraced crop fields. Right next-door is an active health clinic staffed with nurses and counselors, which, on our first day, had lines of women keenly watching us as they waited to have their babies weighed and checked. During this week another volunteer, Leigh, and I acted as Teacher Facilitators. As we shuffled into the courtyard that first day the headmaster and a few of the teachers eagerly shook our hands.

Gogo FPS has a total of seven teachers to teach the over seven hundred students, but we rarely got to meet with more than four at a time. On our third day at Gogo, Leigh and I strolled around the rec field with some of the teachers, including Edward and Horace, who quietly observed the kids playing games.

The games we play on the third morning of our program are geared towards building communication and problem-solving skills as well as trust among the students. In one of the games, the trust walk, one person closes their eyes and is led around by a trusted friend. In another, two kids sit back-to-back with arms linked and have to stand up together, which requires a coordinated push to get off the ground. The teachers stood at a distance observing and often letting out a laugh, watching some of the kids trying to stand up. But, when they got to the human knot game, Edward and Horace couldn’t just be quiet observers.

After hearing how the game works, Horace got closer and closer to one of the class’ knots and tried to instruct the children on how to detangle themselves—he eventually put in his hands to work out the knot himself while the kids maintained their twisted state and laughed. Edward, a young and particularly eager teacher, actually joined a knot to try to solve the labyrinth of bodies from the inside.

After morning games, we headed back to the office for some serious discussions on the challenges facing Gogo. “Malawi needs to educate its people,” Edward emphatically declared as we sat in the tiny teachers office. Edward, who spent two years in college before he ran out of money to attend, has only worked at Gogo for less than a year. But, he quickly became aware that the Dowa school district, which includes Gogo, suffers from corruption and poor management. Proposals to fund basic education resources—like teachers—and extracurricular activities, including clubs like HIV/AIDS support groups in the village, are denied by the District Education Management office despite funding specifically set aside for such proposals.

Horace, a reserved but engaging teacher who has worked at Gogo the longest, calmly told us about the schools effort to improve the education programs. In past years, they set up new programs and curriculums, like support groups for girls and re-forestation projects. But, despite their warm reception in the village, each effort fizzled out from lack of resources and poor management.

Edward, who takes a bus every weekend to Lilongwe to attend classes in finances, energetically describes how funding should be evenly distributed in the district. “I want to solve problems by monitoring finances” in the district, he says optimistically.

Dowa includes a cluster of primary schools that all feed into one secondary school, which allows 50 new spots per year for incoming students. One of the other primary schools in the district is next to a military base, which somehow gets the lion’s share of spaces in the secondary school—nearly 80% says Horace. Last year, of the nearly 40 students that graduated from Gogo, only nine were offered spots in the secondary school. “That’s not good,” Edward says. Nine spots aren’t enough.

Of the tangle of problems that Gogo faces, Horace names teacher shortages as next on his list of concerns for the school—particularly after seeing its affects first-hand. When he received his teaching certificate in 2004, he worked in his village’s school—a rural primary school that had difficulty recruiting new teachers due to its remote location. When he left, he knew no one would replace him. With over a hundred kids in some classes, Horace says, it’s hard to make sure they’re all following along and getting the help they need.

But so far, the teachers of Gogo are working things out, despite the kinks. Edward boasts that the Gogo students who do go to secondary school are always at the top of their class even when they’re among students from more privileged schools. “The great thing about our school,” Edward says, “is that we always work together.

After a lot of head scratching and frustrated ‘humphs,’ the human knots worked their way out. It took Edward’s knot a couple tries to solve it successfully. Horace, along with one of the volunteers, Meghan, finally solved another after a good ten minutes that ended with a relieved sigh and some high-fives.



Submitted by B. Mole

Living Positively with HIV in India

"I wanted to die. We thought, 'we should kill ourselves'." Kamraben's dark eyes tell us this story has a kind of suffering many feel but few can make sense of.  I steal a nervous glance at her husband, Kamleshbhai. So many questions, but I can't speak. He looks back for a moment and then quickly turns away as their 4 year old slaps her hand into his, plopping herself down in his lap. Kamraben is smiling now. It's in this moment that, once again, I am completely caught up in the intense extremes that coexist here in India. 

We're sitting on the cold stone of Ghandi's Ashram, a place of peace and a calm escape from the bustle of Ahmedabad, and yet my insides are raging as I silently curse my privileged life. How it's still not enough to sweep them up into my arms and take away every moment in the world a human has felt like that. 

Kamraben is 22 and HIV+. So is her husband and their daughter, Roshniben. She's talking about when they found out their status was positive. The helplessness, the discrimination, kicked out of their family's house in the slum, feeling that suicide was the best option. "We were going to die anyways. At least we'd die together." 

They've known for less than a year, but have been living with HIV for at least 3 years. The baby she's holding is the reason they know. When she gave birth to Virbhai, now 6 months old, the hospital tested her. Her positive status gave reason to test Roshniben and Kamleshbhai, who tested positive as well. The baby's testing is not final (blood tests test for the presence of antibodies, or our body's reaction to fighting HIV. It can take more than 6 months for an infected body to start producing antibodies), though the certainty with which Kamraben says Vir is HIV+ seems final. 

It's hard to believe because her smile is so huge, so warm and she says, "Now, we are happy. We are living life, we are together." It boggles my mind. Her body is being destroyed by this virus, yet her strength is immense. The amount of happiness, positivity, and love this woman carries makes a small part of me believe in the good of the world again. 

Video below: Roshniben playing peek-a-boo with his mother. 

Please check back to hear more of their story. A world of appreciation to Nimesh and our friends at Manav Sadhna for the care and work they've done for the family, and to Kamraben, Kamleshbhai, Roshni and Vir for being so open and spending time with us. 

Written by: Katy Lackey and Rina Kojima, India Coordinators

Sweaty Revelations

Our car wound its way through the bustling streets of Ahmedabad; jerking to and fro, dodging rickshaws, people and cattle. Our crew of four was on the way to a slum community called Ram Rahim to see some of the HIV curriculum in action as part of Orientation. As we neared the slum, the atmosphere of the streets shifted. We drove further and further; the width of the dirt road shrank between crooked brick houses and piles of trash. We finally parked and gathered our supplies. Curious eyes followed our every move. My senses were overwhelmed with sights, sounds and smells. Half naked children gallivanting about yelling, “hello lady!” Spices, incense, feces, decay wafted in my face. The air made you feel dirty.

We made our way through the shanty-town maze to the “school”, which was more like the roof of a family home, sheltered by a tin roof. A class of twenty boys of all ages sat buzzing at our presence. Songs and games proved difficult in the congested area but the boys seemed to enjoy the silliness. As Katy, Rina, and Prerna began the class, Sadie and I observed from the back; huddling by a creaking fan.

Buckets of sweat were running down our faces, backs and legs. All of our kurtis were completely drenched. The sweat is something we’ve all become accustomed to. I say “accustomed” with fluidity because although we are no longer embarrassed by sweat outlining the contours of our bras, the daily expulsion of salt and dirt from our bodies is accompanied by a rank smell which no amount of Tide can wash out. (Please note the sweat lines and subsequent undergarments visible on WC volunteers Jesse Pipes and Baker Henson below. We recommended enlarging this photo for full effect. Did we mention it's hot in India?)

The ruckus from songs and games drew little girls, mothers and their babies to the rooftop. The children's skin was covered in heat rash and gnat bites. A girl of fourteen or so named Jemna was living on the rooftop and looking after her two little brothers. She would lock eyes with me and giggle. We greeted as best we could, “Kemcho! Majama!” and the rest was body language. This is one time in life where I wish I could speak every language.

After an hour of curriculum I will admit, I was ready to leave. Teaching proved difficult with this population because they are not used to sitting and paying attention for so long in one attitude. Interesting to think of how the most difficult children to teach are the ones who need this information the most. 

The team packed up and hobbled into the streets again, children swarmed us. Jemna walked next to me and offered to carry my teaching bag. I of course declined so she took my hand and accompanied me to the car. Her face will forever be engraved in my memory. 

Driving back to the city, I started to grasp the harsh juxtapositions between wealth and poverty in 

India. The city felt clean, our apartment felt like a five star hotel. My heart ached for all those children. It torments me to think that we all got to leave, wash the slums off our bodies and souls, put clean clothes on, and all of those children are still in Ram Rahim. I wasn't strong enough to last three hours without feeling disgusting. Many questions arose in my heart; why am I so lucky? to be born in a culture where women have rights; where I've never had to worry about going hungry. It is difficult to comprehend how we come from such a land of abundance when we know that children are abandoned to rot in the slums, in 120 degree heat. 

I guess that is the answer to why we all came to India. To reach out to those children who deserve every opportunity to be educated. inspired. changed.

Written by: Kendall Strautman, India Volunteer 2010

Oh no! You must finish!

Saturday morning, we visited Vinay Mandir, an all girls' school. Instead of doing our traditional 3 day camp with the girls, the WC team is teaching three consecutive Saturdays.  Prerna Aaroa, one of our Field Assistants, and her family invited us to visit a Jain temple outside of Ahmedabad with them that afternoon.  The temple is called Mahudi, and the god it was built for is Sri Ghantakar.  We've been passing tons of temples on the roads, and we thought it would be a fabulous opportunity to learn more about the different religions present in Gujarat if we went with an Indian family.  We were told the food at the temple was delicious and how beautiful it was by several different people.  Aarti, Prerna's sister who has worked with WC before, rode in our car and told us a little about the temple on the way.  

(Photo below: intentions made/promises taken at the temple and tied on our wrists)

When we arrived, Mr. Aaroa rushed us in to purchase food, and he demanded that we buy at least a 100 Rs plate to split between all of us for prasad.  While Katy waited for prasad, Prerna took the rest of us to see the statues of the different deities.  When we came back, we found Katy holding a huge tin plate the size of a large pizza, filled with a thick cookie cake (minus the icing and chocolate chips).  Mr. Aaroa ushered us into another part of the temple where we had to offer our cookie to Sri Ghantakar, the god the temple was made for, and the Maharaj (Jain priest) took our plate, put some on a huge platter for the offering, and then made us hold a burning pot of incense.  We waved it over our cookie and said a quick prayer, and then Mr. Aaroa herded us all outside to get these little red bracelets. You are supposed to wear it everyday until your prayer is granted; at this point, you have to return to the temple and visit Sri Ghantakar again, offer more prasad, say another prayer, and get a new little red bracelet.  

We were all slightly overwhelmed while being hurried around to pray and offer prasad, so Mr. Aaroa led us to a small room where there were a bunch of metal picnic tables.  Katy was still carrying the gigantic cookie around, which was made from ghee, sugar, and flour.  She set it in front of us, and Mr. Aaroa looked at us and said, "Now you must finish it all!" He quickly explained that it is both disrespectful to Sri Ghantakar and bad luck to take any of the prasad outside of the temple gates, so you must eat all of it.  The daunting task of eating the entire cookie was only made worse when Prerna's aunt brought over another huge plate of the ghee cookie. "Oh no!" I said. "Oh no! You must finish!" Mr. Aaroa replied emphatically, standing over us and demanding that we eat more cookie.  I am pretty sure we each ate at least four times more than he did.  

Rina and Prerna went to crack the coconuts, and soon we were all shoving as much ghee cookie and coconut in our mouths as possible.  Finally, when only a little was left, the Aaroas said they had to leave and tried to give their entire prasad cookie to us.  When it became apparent that all of us would vomit if we were force fed anymore cookie, he started directing us in different directions to offer the cookie to other people.  

The best part was a family of four, sitting around a plate as big as a swimming pool for toddlers.  They all had the same forlorn expression of dread that we had on our faces, only amplified.  I think they may have bought the 500 Rs plate without anyone telling them how big the tin was. Poor family! 

The whole experience only took about 45 minutes, and we climbed back into the car with ghee cookie babies in our tummies and sugar hangovers.  I don't think we will be returning for prasad anytime soon!  

(Photo below: "We ate too much prasad" faces.)

  

Post by: Sadie McCleary, WC India Volunteer

Spinning Molly

“It doesn’t matter how many pictures you look at or even how many video clips you watch,” Molly says, “nothing comes close to the first-hand experience of seeing those little rugrats stampeding the bus, chanting “wazungus” in complete unison as we rolled into school the first day.”

A swirl of noise and wind surrounded our circle of kids during the morning songs on the first day of camp. The first school we visited for the second summer session of World Camp was a primary school composed of 5 brick buildings and a few hundred kids in the village of Mitundu. We screamed out songs over roaring bulldozers paving a new road next to the school and a sea of surrounding rugrats (our affectionate name for the kids who play around the school, but aren’t old enough to attend). Somehow, Molly, Brittanny and I managed to get all of the school kids spinning and cheering about bananas in the middle of the circle.

Molly, a tall, energetic brunette who likes to refer to herself as the token Jew on the volunteer staff, recently graduated from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and decided to volunteer before finding a permanent job. “I had been looking at a variety of different programs all around the world. I would look at them, bookmark them, and then never apply. When I found World Camp I had applied and was talking to Jesse (the program director) within 20 minutes,” she says.

Although our four day program at Mitundu went by in a whirl, Molly bonded with her students and is already teary eyed about having to leave them. “I think that it took two solid days before I knew my students on a personal level,” she says. “I guess on the first day I never foresaw the relationships that I had made with the students just two days later.”
The four day camp session includes sections on HIV/AIDS education, environmental education and gender equality. Each day is broken up into different sections of each, emphasizing hands on activities and group work. On the first day, the kids pretended to be T-cells and had to defend their classroom for a cold at the door, only to be killed off by the HIV virus.

To get the kids thinking about alternative sources of energy, we did an exercise on wind energy where they got to make their own pinwheel. “We took the kids outside to try their pinwheels. At first, they were working but the pins would come out,” Molly says. The kids kept running back to her and her teaching partner, Paige, and their Chichewa field staff, Segas. “Then they got a glimpse of these two boys on a dune by our classroom. All you could see were their pinwheels really spinning. It was quintessential pinwheel spinning; it could’ve been a commercial for pinwheels,” she laughed. “Once the class caught glimpse of that we all raced out to dunes and just stood on top of the dune to watch our pinwheels spin.”

Although she’ll miss her class at Mitundu, she did exchange numbers with them. “If I’m ever back, we’ll have some nsima together,” Molly says.

post submitted by B. Mole

The sky here is endless, and the clouds hang as if suspended by twine; immobile. Jesse calls them Simpson clouds, and even in their perfect stunning glory, the moniker fits. The sun rises in rainbows, slowly at first, then pulsing and bleeding into other colors. Like droplets on a painting. Like fire. And as the other colors fade from the sky, the new light illuminates them in the landscape. The turgid soil is the color of burnt sienna crayon, and this crayon has dappled everything. Houses, trees, children, all display the occlusive artwork- the children most prominently of all. Their feet, hands, hair and clothing present the dust, although it isn’t grimy or filthy. It’s elegant. The children are so beautiful they make the dirt attractive. Their smiling faces emit sunbeams, and their laughter and cheering is by far the most beautiful sound in the world. A drunk man told us in the market the other day “Since you guys have such bright faces, you can have everything. We can have nothing.” But he was wrong. The brightest faces of all belong to these children, and in their enthusiasm to interact, to listen, to learn, they could have everything. They should have everything. They deserve it more than anything.

submitted by E. Saul - Youth to Youth Outreach Program

Bananas

Wrapping a little banana in a condom could make even the most stoic health professional crack a smile. First off, it’s a bit tricky to hold the banana while pinching the condom tip and unrolling. Then there’s the fact that the bananas we get are miniature compared to the ones in Western grocery stores—they barely fill the palm of your hand. After a little wrangling and unavoidably coating my hands with lubricant, I successfully ended up with a slimy protected crescent with a dangling latex skirt. The group of adults and volunteers gathered at the Yossa village community center rightfully burst into laughter as we all followed along with Jaren, the Volunteer Coordinator, who tactfully taught proper condom use—then ate the contents of his well-protected package.

The demonstration was the first taste of the HIV/AIDS education program for us second session World Camp volunteers, who arrived and hit the ground running this weekend for volunteer orientation. The weekend was spent on policy discussion, curriculum practice runs, tours of the World Camp house and area markets, and a visit to Yossa.

A community center that provides a place for kids to play and stay out of trouble, Yossa is a place World Camp volunteers visit often. After spending Saturday running through our class plans, we set out on Sunday for the bumpy 30 minute drive. When we turned onto the dirt road in front of the center, we were instantly greeted by children who quietly gathered to stare at the Wazungu (white people).

Standing by the well-used playground in the courtyard of the center, we gathered up the children and headed to a field adjacent to the community center for song and dance. One of the shyest of the bunch, a small girl no more than 5 years old who continuously sucked on the sleeve of her red sweater, wouldn’t tell me her name but insisted on holding my hand down to the field. Before you could blink, Jaren, along with the other coordinators, Rachel and Karen, and our Chichewa field staff, Peter, quickly got the kids shouting, doing the funky chicken—generally going bananas. (My new friend didn’t shout, but she did giggle on multiple occasions.)

When we finished song and dance we sorted the kids who were old enough for our program and headed back up towards the classrooms. I said goodbye to my new friend and joined some of adults and other volunteers for an HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention discussion led by Rachel and Jaren. We went through a game that demonstrated how quickly HIV can be spread through a community using hand-shaking as an analogy. In a culture where sex isn’t discussed openly, there was definitely some giggling from the start. Then came the bananas. By the time everyone dangled their properly protected bananas at their desks and Jaren was half-way through eating his, the room was full of comfortable laughter.

Once we got back from Yossa, the rest of the evening was spent preparing for the next day; the first full course-load of second session camp. We decided as a group to designate who would sing the songs during our camp opening. Molly, Brittanny and I thought it only appropriate to sign up to sing the ‘banana’ song...

eat bananas, eat eat bananas. GO BANANAS GO GO BANANAS!

submitted by B. Mole

India Arrivals

World Camp is back in action in India and things are heating up (and we don't just mean the weather, which by the way has been well over 105)! The past week was full of happy returns and excited arrivals. Stepping off the train from Mumbai, Rina Kojima was thrilled to return to World Camp for the 3rd time and Ahmedabad for the 2nd, as she joined Katy in finalizing camps, outreach projects, and cultural excursions.

A 4:40am flight from Qatar brought Kendall to us, a native Coloradan, and sister of a former Malawi volunteer. Kendall hit the ground running on her first day in India. A quick breakfast stop at the city's famous chai stand, Lucky Chai, energized us for a morning of house and school supply shopping, and a taste of fresh coconut juice, in the Old City with new Field Assistant, Prena Aaroa.

24 hours later, Sadie landed in Ahmedabad. A devoted World Camp applicant, she was pumped to dive right into her first experience in India and our volunteer orientation. The day was complete with shopping for Indian clothes, a tour of the city, our first (of many) Gujarati thalis, an introduction to World Camp curriculum issues, and a conversation about service at Seva Cafe. Pictures and stories are coming.....

With love from, the India 2010 crew