Education for All

This week, we started a new project with the Young Dreamers. We had two meetings since the hygiene rally that have been quite productive. Our new topic is to end child labor in Ambedkar Nagar and teach the importance of education. Since we only have a month left in India, and it’s a big project, we have to move quickly. We also decided some main goals. We are going to find at least 50 kids who are not going to school and try to get 20 of them into school. I gave the idea of focusing on a small amount and letting that small amount influence the others. We’re going to focus on kids who are not going to school because their parents can’t afford or because they work instead of school. I really, really want to do this because forcing young kids to work is not cool. This project relates to Radhika, who I wrote about last week. She’s 10 and she has been working cleaning houses instead of going to school. She’s definitely on our list. Someone in the group had the idea of asking parents in Ambedkar Nagar to sign a pledge saying they will keep their kids in school until 12^th grade. If we get that, it will be a huge success. It’s definitely a big job, but keeping this life lesson in mind, it’s do-able. If you put your mind to something, and you really, really try, you can do amazing things.

On Tuesday, we had the big community meeting in the Elephant Village. We talked about the importance of education. The volunteers working there showed the kids’ work and talked about the immense progress they’re making. We also talked about the importance of going to school every day because some kids there just kind of stop by whenever they feel like it, but they don’t truly want to go all the time. They are some kids, though, who have gone every day and it’s incredible to see the progress they’re making. At the end of the meeting, we delivered the news of the new school we will be forming in the Elephant Village. All the kids were super excited and the moms were too. They especially liked hearing that they will b=get backpacks and uniforms. A father even came and started asking a bunch of questions. We’re putting up the ad to hire 2 new teachers this week, so hopefully they come quickly. I am very excited for this new school. I still can’t believe that after 500 years, of this community not having a school, we’re finally making this happen.

Some more great news. A few days after I started writing this week’s blog, Radhika’s dad finally agreed to let her go to school. He even made a public promise to my dad’s partner. She’s not going to the government school. For the rest of the school year she will get private tutoring. Then she will have to take an exam in March to see if she can qualify for 5^th grade next year. We’re going to give her a scholarship for the private school She’s going to be a Young Dreamer! I’m really excited because we succeeded to get another girl to school.

This weekend we’re going to Himachal Pradesh which is along the border with Tibet in the Himalayas. With a visit to the Dalai Lama Temple and hiking and camping in the mountains, I should have a lot to write about next blog.

A March for Hygiene, Helping a Girl and Burning the Devil

     Saturday we had the march and rally for the hygiene campaign and I’d say it was the highlight of the trip so far! There were probably 700 or 800 people following us and everyone was chanting and yelling. There was an aura of energy, excitement, and just pure happiness. It was like an adrenaline rush, but of happiness. I don’t even know how to put into words the feeling that was there, everybody marching, kids running all around you, people stepping out of their houses smiling and waving, it was amazing. Everybody from our group including the Young Dreamers had posters and banners. Friday we walked all around Ambedkar Nagar and passed out promotion flyers about our rally the next day and said that we would give handouts of toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, and bandages. I don’t really think people thought that a huge rally was going to take place. I think they thought we were just some volunteers and local kids with no real experience. Only when they saw 800 people marching past their house did they really realize that is was no small thing. Once we got back to the booth, which was actually a huge tent with a stage and a big table off to the side, most people stayed and sat down. I was really surprised. I thought people were just doing the march for the fun of it, but people sat down and listened to talks about hygiene and why it’s important. After that my group did the skits and it was a success! Earlier that week we had done them in front of the government school, but it wasn’t performed very well and not many of the kids actually understood it. This time we were on a stage with microphones and we did it better. When the skits ended we started passing out the handouts to people. We also gave people some food to show our gratitude for coming. Unfortunately there were only enough handouts for the kids so the adults didn’t get any. Hopefully they’ll share;) It was such a great experience. It really showed that if we put our minds to something and work really, really hard to do it, we can do unimaginable things. That’s a life lesson that has been proved to me time and time again.

     Radhika. A girl that is super smart, always happy, and wants to go to school. A girl that can't go to school because her mom and dad won't let her. A girl that has to work 12 hours a day cleaning houses when she's only ten years old. A girl that brings joy to me whenever I see her. A girl that represents a problem throughout India. A girl that all of us want to save.  Radhika is one of the kids that goes to the YDN center in the morning where the volunteers teach. 2 months ago her parents pulled her out of school and a month ago she stopped going to the center. Her father drinks a lot and her mother can't stand up for herself. Her father wants to take her back to the village where they're from where they'll leave her to do labor work. If that happens she will never get an education, so we're trying to prevent that from happening. We've gone to her house several times to try to convince the parents to send her to school but the dad never comes out and the mom just says that they won't be able to convince the dad. The only one really on her side from her family is the aunt who has agreed to take care of Radhika when the parents go to their village. The parents mainly don't want Radhika to go to school because of financial issues. If Radhika goes to school, even if we pay for her scholarship, she's not bringing money in. The other thing is the dowry. When the daughter is married in India, her parents need to give money to the husband's family as a type of offering and support to care for their daughter. It is actually illegal to ask for a dowry but the law is not enforceable so it still happens. If the daughter has a good education then she will marry a man with the same level education or higher. If the husband has a good education then his family asks more from the bride's family, Radhika's parents don't want her to have a great education so that they don't have to pay much for the dowry. The dowry is a big problem in India because it sometimes leads to woman abuse. Sadly, Radhika's situation happens to tons of women in India everyday. I really, really hope that we can help her because after just an hour teaching her and showing her I saw how bright she really is. This girl that is always happy deserves to go to school. The volunteers here with us on the gap year have started a fundraiser to give scholarships to Radhika and other like her that we know in the community. If you can, please donate to the cause of sponsoring kids like Radhika to go to school. Just go to the Young Dreamer Network website.

     Last night there was a huge Hindu holiday called Deshera and there was a big celebration that we saw. The holiday actually lasted ten days but last night was the grand finale. For weeks they had been making these huge paper statues that they would burn them on the 22nd. We went at 7:00 to watch these huge statues burn and we thought it would be really cool. We got there and it was kind of like a fair. There were games, prizes, and even a ferris wheel. We played some games and then sat down to see a performance. It turns out the performance was really a bunch of people talking in Hindi. We sat there for two and a half hours listening to people talking, which we didn't understand. It was very, very boring, so boring that after a while I had to resort to twiddling my thumbs. I thought we were going to stay there until midnight and I was literally falling asleep. At around 10:30 my dad finally decided it was time to go so we got up and left. While we were walking out, a huge crowd had gathered and fireworks started shooting up. We stayed for the fireworks show, which was really cool and actually lasted quite a while. When that ended everybody was ready to go home because it seemed like they would never light the statues on fire, but there was a huge commotion and when I got up on a car I saw that a fire had started at the bottom of one of the statues. A few minutes later one of the statues completely caught flame and since it was made of paper it went pretty quickly. We discovered that they had filled the statues with firecrackers, so other than being on fire, they started exploding! That was definitely the highlight because after all, it was what we had come there for. That holiday was about getting rid of evil. They would make these giant statues of the devil and then burn them and make them explode to make evil go away. It was definitely not what I expected when I heard we were going to watch these things burn. I thought we would stand on the street with a big crowd and just watch something burn and after 30 minutes go back home. It was a good cultural experience and in the end, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

This weekend, we’re going to visit a small village in the country. That should be something new.

Gandhi, Religions and a New School

YDN and Saarthak have been supporting education and volunteering as teachers in Elephant Village now, for almost two years. Not long ago my dad and his partners had the idea of making a private school there. So now they’re trying to start a formal school, with full-time teachers who teach every subject and have more resources. Saarthak, YDN, and the community will be in charge of the school. Whoever doesn’t come will be looked for and if they still don’t come they could be reported. It’s going to be like any other school where they have to go to school. It’s really exciting because for 500 years or so there has been an Elephant Village and there has never been a formal school for the kids. This coming Wednesday we’re going to have a big meeting with the community announcing what we’re going to try to do and to really get everyone excited about it. We’re all trying to get a plan to start fundraising money for the school. Since we’re going to have teachers that teach every subject they’re going to cost money. I will keep you guys posted on that if anyone wants to help these kids with great potential, but not so great resources at their disposal. I'm super excited for the school because I think it's a good reminder of what we're doing, to help kids have an education and have a good opportunity in life while they otherwise would not. To break a 500 year streak of no education for these kids is certainly doing that.

Mahatma Gandhi is an amazing man and an inspirational figure. This weekend I saw Gandhi, a documentary about Gandhi. He was a really, really good person who believed in nonviolence and never went back on that. Gandhi was a big leader of the Indian independence movement. He also helped stop the Hindus and Muslims from going to war  when India and Pakistan split. He was fighting his entire life for nonviolence and went to great efforts over it, including almost fasting himself to death. He faced death dozens of times to stand for what he believed in. He thought that the British treated the Indians really unfairly and he thought it was time to get India’s independance. He didn’t want to get it by bloodshed and fighting though, rather by noncooperation and stubbornness. He led lots of rallies and marches, broke unjust laws and got the people to respect and love him. He got sent to jail many times during his life and every time the people didn’t like it and demanded to let him go. Finally, after almost his whole life, he finally got his wish and got India’s independence from Britain, without any violence involved on India’s part, in 1947. Later that year riots broke out between Hindus and Muslims. They killed each other, men, women, and children. It was the cause of the separation of India and Pakistan. Jinnah, a muslim leader and powerful man wanted to be prime minister of all of India, but he wanted a haven for Muslims, so he separated Pakistan for Muslims alone. Many people were angered by this because they were separated by their families and friends. A rivalry broke out and there was almost a civil war. Gandhi wanted nonviolence so he fasted and when he was on his deathbed, all the people agreed to stop fighting and to care for one another. Gandhi accomplished so much in life, he stopped violence in India, at the time a country with 350 million people. He was a brave and all around good and honest person. He said, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” Well, he certainly changed the world and in a very good way. I think there’s something we can all learn from him.

There are a lot of different cultures and religions in India and we learned about them on Monday. Hindus take up about 80% of the people in India. The roots of Hinduism started around 5000 years ago but it really became what is is today around 1500 BC. It is the third biggest religion in the world following Christianity and Islam. Hinduism is based on the concept of reincarnation. A person moves closer to Brahmin, the highest caste, by obeying dharma. Karma is all the sum of your deeds, both good and bad that affects how you live in the following life. Good deeds involve following your dharma which is what your actions are supposed to do. Hindu philosophy is that you keep reincarnating until you get to Brahmin, by doing tons and tons of good deeds. If you are of low caste this means that you did bad things in your previous life, but if you are of high caste it means that you did good deeds in your former life. In India there are also Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs. There are some non-Indian religions like Christianity and Islam. Muslims are what people who follow the Islam religion are called. Islam began in Arabia and was invented by Prophet Muhammad. Muslims believe in only one god, Allah, which is the Arabic word for god. The word Islam means, “submission to god” so a Muslim is one who tries to submit to god. Muslims believe that Islam is the complete version of primordial faith and believe that prophets like Jesus, Adam, Moses, Noah, and Abraham emphasized that. I’ve actually found several similarities between Islam and Christianity since they branch off from the same original religion. They both believe in one God, they believe in a lot of the same people, like Jesus, and Christians have churches and Muslims have a form of church too. There are other things but I didn’t focus on that. Sikhism is a mix of Hindu and Muslim belief founded by Guru Nanak in the 15th century. Sikhs believe in one creator god, equality of all people, and to try to get social justice and honest livelihood. Gurus are the fathers and main priests of Sikhism. Guru Nanak was the first one and he had ten successors after him. Jainism was founded by Mahavira, but some Jains say he just revived it. Some people say Gandhi got some of his principles from Jainism because Jains are completely nonviolent. They believe that they cannot hurt a fly, literally. Jain diet is very strict because they cannot hurt anything so they can only eat food that would fall by themselves anyway. No animals, and no roots, like carrots and potatoes, etc. Buddhism has roots up to 2500 years ago when it was founded by Siddhartha Gotama, aka, Buddha. He got enlightened at age 35 and is called the awakened teacher by Buddhists. Buddhist beliefs include the ‘"four noble truths’: existence is suffering ( dukhka ); suffering has a cause, namely craving and attachment ( trishna ); there is a cessation of suffering, which is nirvana; and there is a path to the cessation of suffering, the "eightfold path" of right views.” The country of India is full of cultures and religions other than the ones that I have mentioned. If I keep going on and on you will be still reading by the time my next blog comes out. India is an extremely diverse society that just keeps surprising you with the differences.

Tomorrow is our big hygiene march and rally with the Young Dreamers. I’ll be telling you all about it next week!

Beach Time and Sacrifices for Work

Last weekend we went to Goa, which is a state in the southwest of India. We stayed in a small beach town and had a mini vacation near the ocean for 4 days. It is very, very, very, very different from Jaipur. First of all, there is the ocean and all the green and lush landscape. Jaipur’s a big city with trash and tons of buildings, the town in Goa was like a tropical island. There wasn’t as much noise and honking, the streets weren’t as crowded, and it was more humid. I know I’ve been talking about India like just Jaipur and Delhi, dirty, poor, and crazy. But India is so much more than just the big cities. There’s lots of beaches and green, and it’s not hectic everywhere. Imagine if you were from India and you came to the US and saw a bunch of mansions and then left. You would think, “Oh, people in the US are just rich and spoiled, they know nothing about suffering.” If we had just seen Jaipur and Delhi we might have thought, “Oh, India is just a dirty,  chaotic country,” when really it’s so much more. I loved Goa because we spent so much time outside playing sports and playing in the ocean. I even did the pacer (running test we did in P.E. last year) I think it was a good mini vacation, to get away from the city and spend some time outside. Another interesting thing about Goa is that it’s influenced by Christianity and there are cathedrals and churches. The Portuguese dominated that part of India for a while so Christianity was ingrained there by them. I thought it was really interesting because everywhere else you go it’s either Hindu, Muslim or Sikh, or other minor religions, but if you think of the religions in India, Christianity doesn’t really come to mind. 

There are two cooks working at the Idex house in Jaipur where the volunteers stay and where we’re eating most of the time, Kedar and Archana. They live in little rooms next to the kitchen and they never really leave the house. I wondered for a while when they got to see their family, or if they ever really got to see them. I found out that both the cooks have families that live very far away and they only get to see them every 4 months. Archana has two kids who live about 6 hours away. She was living with her husband's family, but when he passed away she moved back in with her mom. The younger one, who’s 8, lives with Archana’s mom, but the older one, who’s 12, stayed with the husband’s family. She’s been working at the guest house for 6 years so when she left, her kids were 2 and 6. I can’t imagine not seeing my mom for 4 months straight because she has to go to work. Kedar is older and her kids are already married and have kids of their own. So it’s normal that they go somewhere else and don’t see their parents much, but because of work she can’t see her husband. A lot of families in India are like this, even some of the Young Dreamers’ families.

Our big hygiene campaign with the Young Dreamers is just one week away. I’m excited to see how it turns out.

Hindi, Arranged Marriages and Time to Relax

I can't believe it's already been a month since we left. Time's gone by extremely fast for me. I remember that before we left all I was thinking about was that I just wanted to get back to Mountain View. I wanted it to seem like a book, where it says "9 months later" and you flip a page and you go forward in time. I wanted it to speed by really fast so I could be back home. Now I realize that I want to soak it all up, to get the full experience of this trip. Don't get me wrong, I don't want it to go agonizingly slowly either, kind of fast but to be able to take it all in. It's already been a great experience and I have learned a lot and matured (I think.) I have even learned a little bit of Hindi. Very little, but I can introduce myself and greet people. Aap kay se ho? That means, "How are you?" It makes me appreciate that I grew up with two languages because it's hard and complicated to learn new ones. Anyway, I've enjoyed being here, things aren't that crazy anymore. I've learned a lot but there's still eight months to go to keep growing and maturing.  So, even though I miss home I want to experience these eight months head on.    

I’ve learned that in India, women don’t get the freedom of choosing who they are going to marry. Their parents choose someone for them, sometimes without a say from their daughter. It can be sad because women might just be waiting to see who their parents choose for them. That actually doesn’t happen often, usually the daughter gets a small say, but still back home it is nothing like that at all. Now, the man doesn’t get that much more of a choice. His parents give him some options and he chooses between the options. A lot of times when he comes of age his parents put some kind of resume in the newspaper, then some other family puts a resume on their daughter and the guy gets to choose which of the ones to marry of the ones that responded. People also marry very early. One of the women in the women’s empowerment program got married at 13! Some of the Young Dreamers might actually have been married if they hadn’t been going to school. Going to college actually saved one of the girls from getting married against her will. Another thing that is really sad and unjust is that their whole life women are told what to do. First it’s their father, but as soon as they get married they get turned over to their husband. The husband says everything they have to do. Men kind of control their life. Imagine having to ask your husband, “Can I go to work today?” Or, “Can I go to the store?” It’s not just letting them know where you’re going, it’s genuinely asking for permission to do stuff. That’s why we have the women empowerment program, so that women learn and have confidence in themselves so they can stand up for themselves.

Last Friday, we had a rest and relaxation day. It's meant to let everyone have a break.  We went to a hotel that had a spa with the volunteers. There was a pool, a jacuzzi, a steam room, a sauna, a massage room and game room. I mostly stuck to the pool, which was huge, though only 5 feet deep, and the game room, which had a ping pong table and carrom board. My mom and the volunteers had massages and they said they were different than home, but they really liked them. The jacuzzi was also interesting, it was basically a bathtub with luke warm water and jets above the surface. Not until we got there did they fill it up so when I got in it was at my shins. None of us went in the steam room or sauna. Just being outside was our sauna. Two of the girls got pedicures there, but they didn't get their nails painted, which I think is pretty weird for a pedicure. That's what we're learning here, a lot is different, but we can still like it. It's amazing how there's such a contrast of things in India. Just the day before we were in a slum helping set up a hygiene campaign and then we're sitting in a pool and drinking a peach sunrise. The place was interesting, and it felt really good to just hang out at the pool and play ping pong. It certainly was a relaxing day which what all of us needed, a day to ourselves.