Visual Tour

Hey, here's a little tour of Hebron campus!

To start with, this is the Corbett School, or, it will be in a few months. Right now half of the 18 planned rooms are finished and in use. Opposite the Corbett School is a block of five classrooms:

These are sort of open to the air. Back to the original Corbett school. Let's go inside.

Don't the finished classrooms look nice? Let's go to the roof.

Ok, here we are. As you can see Hebron Camus is decently sized. The big blue building on the left is where the rest of the classes are being held right now. This building was originally the boys dormitory (on top) and the Telagu Medium School (on bottom) but now it's totally taken over by the Corbett school in the day. The kids sleep there at night and some of them in the unfinished building at right. There's not a lot of room because those classes are full of desks. The smaller blue building near the center of the photo is teacher and administration quarters on the top floor and a kitchen in the bottom.
Probably almost impossible to see through the trees is the sprawling one story building to the left of the unfinished construction sight at right. That's the residence for Sagar and his family, and his extended family, and us, and any
one else who needs a place to stay. It's quite crowded at night with people sleeping on the floor. There's also a printing press back there where Hebron earns some money by printing hymn books.
The great muddy swath is the kids playground for cricket, football, tag, whatever. When it's dry at least. This picture is just after a big rain. Apparently when the rains are massive the whole thing fills with water and the kids slog around with water halfway up to their knees!
Let's go see where classes are taught now:

Yep, that's Grace teaching in one of the dormitory classrooms! Going now to the entrance of the campus there's an open area where sometimes people play cricket as seen here (in other Cricket news Grace and I bought an AMAZING cricket set. It would probably cost 150-250 pounds in the UK, but it only cost 33 pounds here!).

What's that in the background you say? Let's look closer...

No, that's not 75 foot pile of sand - that's a pile of rice husks! You know the white rice that we cook? When you pull it off the plant it doesn't look like that. It's in a little brown sheath. That's a rice mill over there and that's the pile of removed rice husks. Apparently it's good firewood...
Moving into our own accomodation...

Although this is Grace, I'm sitting here right now! This is our main hangout. Behind Grace is our room... let's go in...

We have a TV! All the classrooms are supposed to have TV's in the future, but as only half the classrooms are finished, might as well not let them go to waste...

Anyway, this has been home for the last 6 weeks!

Book Trip

Grace and I had the good job of going to Visakhapatnam a few days ago and buying a huge pile of books for the school library (which didn't really exist until we bought the books). We went to one of the best book stores in the state, "Pages." When we showed up we spoke to an employee about what we were doing and they assigned two salespeople to help us. But as the pile of books we were buying grew and grew eventually the manager of the store started helping us. The salespeople chased us around the store with plastic chairs for us to sit on when we wanted to browse a section and cups of coffee for free. We were there, just selecting books, for two hours.

The money for the books was given to us through the generous donations of two families in Iowa City who are aware of what we're doing here. We wanted it to stretch as far as it possibly could (I was keeping careful track of our running cost on a notepad and a calculator). For this reason we bought only books which are printed by Indian companies. The books they publish are no different from books published in the UK or America, except maybe for the covers, but they cost 10% or 20% of the price of those books. This let us buy a huge number of books for the money we had (it took them a half hour to ring them all up). The manager gave us a 10% discout too, which we used to add to the pile.

We were looking for books for three or so levels:
1) Picture books for the really young kids.
2) Science type books for kids in the middle
3) Simplified classics for older kids

We were worried about the first two categories because we believed color illustrations would be really expensive, but that wasn't the case at all. We bought tons of full color fairy tale type books for the kids, each one around 30 rupees (less than a dollar a piece!). For science type books we were looking for Eyewitness type books, the kind with the majority of the pages taken up by color photographs and then little facts scattered around the page with a big paragraph or explanatory text in the corner. These books were meant to be a lure for the kids, to get them so they learned to enjoy reading. We picked beautiful books full of huge photos about all sorts of topics - tanks, railroads, volcanoes, cultures of the world, monsters, human body, cats, the earth, space, etc. Our goal was the kids who had no patience for stories would start with these books and then get comfortable with reading.

The value placed on fiction here is... different from in the West. At least, it is in the region we're in. Most people don't even refer to fiction by the name "fiction." Instead they call them "Storybooks" which seems a bit derogatory to me. The value of reading fiction is seen mostly in terms of language practice, not for the actual joy of the story or the wider life lessons that can be learned from a book. I think in the west we think of reading, at least in Iowa City, as extremely important for becoming a good person. English class is where kids grapple with things like love, loyalty, death, etc, stuff that isn't really gone into during physics or chemistry. That idea is completely foreign here I think. People don't even seem to comprehend it when I explain it. Example:

Matt: It seems like people don't realize that there's more to reading fiction than just learning vocabulary.
Indian: Yes, they don't realize that you also learn sentence structure, how to present ideas...

One time I was really blunt about it with a guy here whom I talk to a lot. It went something like this:

Matt: I mean, in the west, schools really put an emphasis on reading. It's seen as helping make you into a better person.
My Man: Well, we're a developing nation. In the west people get jobs like being journalists and lawyers, but here we need engineers and science minded people. Our schools need to focus on teaching math and science. If you went to a bunch of students in the classroom and asked who they thought is the smartest in the room, they'll point to the strongest math student. That's what smart means to them.

Again, the attitude is just that here people don't have the luxury to read for "pleasure."

But that's not everyone. The manager of the bookstore, who helped us select our books, called himself an ambassador of books and made it sound like a lonely job. And the head english teacher, who we think is great, actually started crying when we showed her the books we bought. Her mother worked for Oxford University Press and, as she said, "brought home every scrap of paper with writing on it she could find." She was so happy for the books. She said kids here don't appreciate books and the reason is they don't understand the value of fiction is because they've never really experienced it, never had access to books like these. The english teacher even said most of them had never seen a book, outside of their textbooks. (Which are not like textbooks in the states. They have only paper covers, and they're printed on cheap thin paper, almost newsprint paper. They only have a few black and white drawings, no pictures.) Basically, as far as fiction, they don't know what they're missing. The english teacher also told us that when she was in 7th class (about 9 years old) her mother bought her an Oxford English Dictionary as her birthday gift and said, "Now, you will never have to ask me what a word means again," and she actually still has her dictionary.

Well, kids are not going to stay in the dark about fiction anymore. We make a formal presentation of the books to the school on Wednesday and the head English teacher has created a library period so that, for an hour a day, the kids will go and read from these books.

A Western Take on Education

The principal of the school here, Principal P, has decades of experience running schools. Big ones too, equal to the size of the Corbett School which is where we're teaching. He's Sagar the headmaster's relative, somehow. Anyway, I really like him. He's very committed to shaking up how things are normally done in Indian schools. He wants to break the standard mold of students just memorizing information and teach them to think creatively, independently and as problem solvers. Basically he wants to bring in a bunch of Western teaching methods. To start the ball rolling he asked Grace and I to prepare a presentation about Western Teaching methods, especially with respect to young children. We were told that Western theories of education were taught to education majors at University, but they primarily focused on older kids.

Well, my degrees are not in Education and neither are Grace's. But, they thought we would be a good place to start, having at least gone to Western schools. We decided that we would just consult the people we knew (friends, my brother, relatives, etc.) who were involved in education and we got several great responses which we sorted through and stuck in a powerpoint presentation.

The general thrust of our presentation was to break up the lecture format and use a lot more activities where the students worked with each other or independently. We were sick for a week which delayed our presentation, but eventually one of the orphanage assistants hooked the laptop up to a TV monitor and the Principal called the whole teaching staff in. They filled the whole classroom and we hadn't met most of them yet.

Grace and I gave our presentation, alternating between slides. I think it went well, except people in the back couldn't read the smaller type. We're printing out a copy so they can have the notes.

The principal wants to shake things up but it will be very difficult to implement any changes. There are a lot of obstacles:

1) Lack of Experience - All of these teachers went through Indian schools and they have been taught in a way very different from what we presented about. It's very difficult to jump into these uncharted waters. They're comfortable with the way they teach now and the students are reasonably comfortable with it too, since they've had it all their lives. Grace and I definitely realize that our English classes are pretty popular because they're so novel, so unique. They break up the kids day. And when I teach physics the kids giggle half the time, I think because what I'm doing seems ridiculous (I brought a pendulm demonstration to class - a shoelace tied around a piece of wood - and the kids thought that was ridiculous. They all kept asking to see it). But once we leave there will be no one here who has an experience of Western Education. The school doesn't have an obvious model to look to for guidance.

2) Lack of Resources - The school is blessed with TVs and Computers for every classroom. At least, they will be. The new school building is only half completed so many of the classes are still being held in temporary spaces where there aren't computers or TVs. But, even if everyone had a TV and a computer it wouldn't be that helpful. There's a major dearth of research materials: no school encyclepedias, non-fiction libraries, magazines or internet (it's available for the administrators so far, but they haven't been able to hook up the whole school yet). Already that imposes a major challenge - how can kids do research reports when there's nothing they can turn to for information but their school textbook? How can they do book reports when their only reading text is the a collection of short stories and speeches in their English textbooks?
Some donors in the US read our blog and donated money to buy books and now the school has 200 brand new books - a mix of non-fiction, simplified classics and picture books mostly. So the kids can definitely do book reports now and maybe some research, as long as they stick to subjects covered well in the 70 or so non-fiction books available. But we have to make sure the teachers make use of the equipment. We're scheduled to give a presentation about the books on Tuesday.
Another pressing issue is other materials. No lab equipment, no toys for the nursery kids, none of those little boxes of stuff you used in primary school to practice counting or something. The kids read about the kind of experiments we would actually do in the West. In my physics classes I draw a Vernier Calipers and talk about how to use it. At my high school we were each given a pair and spent the class period measuring things.
The school has plans for labs and a large library in the future. But from here it looks like a few years at least until those plans might come to fruition.

3) Time - The teachers have so much on their hands now it will be difficult for them to find the time and energy to develop brand new, never tried lesson plans. The teachers must write tests, grade tests, write notes to give the class and, of course, teach classes. And this school is brand new so there are all sorts of short term challenges based around starting something. These start up challenges might fizzle out in a year or two, but by then a certain status quo will have been established that will be difficult to shake out of.

4) Language - This is a huge barrier. Many of the teachers do not have good English. Some of the kids are good but many are really, really bad. Yesterday I was talking to a teacher from Mizoram (a north eastern state in India with good education). I had trouble understanding him - he spoke English but we both had to repeat ourselves a lot and it was a halting conversation. But he had gone to a much stricter English medium school than the one where we are. At the Corbett school teachers teach in English only but the administrative staff doesn't and the kids talk in Telagu to each other. At his school if you were caught speaking a language other than English on school grounds you were punished - it was an English only environment. And it produced someone who still wasn't fluent, even after many years there! And now the kids are learning english from speakers who aren't fluent themselves, hardly the best role models!
This is just another barrier to everything in the school. It's like sand in the motor of a car - it just gums up everything. If the teacher gives instructions the kids don't understand. If the kids work together in groups they don't understand each other. If the kids have to do independent research they have trouble reading the books. When the kids have to write their reports they have trouble expressing themselves. When the teacher grades their reports they have a harder time understanding it and correcting mistakes. It's like a fog that covers the whole school, obscuring everything. The current method of teaching - lecture to the class, students write down everything the teacher writes on the board word for word, read the textbook for homework, take a test every month - minimizes the language problems I think. But obviously that comes with a big price.

5) Skepticism - No one has talked about this but I'm sure it's there. The principal is a big advocate of this kind of teaching but I bet some of the teachers are less optimistic. And I know some of the parents are skeptical. With this kind of teaching it's a little harder to see what's being learned. When kids come home without a days worth of blackboard notes the parents get worried that they haven't learned anything and then they complain. When you let the kids find things out for themselves with activities and independent research and small group work, there's a trade-off. The kids don't learn facts as quickly, but they learn how to think. But it's harder to see that, especially if you're used to a completely different sort of "learning."

But Principal P is not letting the status quo rest, at least not yet. His own education is in biology and zoology so he's started with that section of the school. He gave a demonstration class to the biology teachers about how he wants things taught. He's starting with doing away with the word for word copying off the board and advocating that the kids be forced to do homework where they write their own answers without copying from anything. I've seen some of the kids notes and it's clear some of them don't know what the words mean - they don't include spaces between the words, theyjustlumpthemalltogether.

Anyway, baby steps.

A Pigeon Story

One day I came out of my room to see a bunch of pigeons tied up on the ground outside.

It turns out a man was selling pigeons. I asked about it and I was told the orphanage keeps pigeons! I didn't realize this and I was surprised I hadn't seen any yet. Well, they bought the lot of pigeons. Yeah, pet pigeons! Then they put them in a cardboard box and...

They weren't pets. The heads of the pigeons were twisted around till their neck snapped and then they cleaned them up, as seen here. The eventual goal of this work was...

Pigeon curry! Grace went at it. She said it tasted like any other bird. We were told many times about the healthy benefits of eating pigeon. We should eat it whenever we could! Not chicken, not turkey, pigeon! If only the Londoners and New Yorkers knew what a gold mine they were sitting on! Healthy, plentiful food!

Well, Grace threw up the pigeon curry an hour later.

Maybe it was the Anti-Malarials.

Teaching and Stuff

All of a sudden it seems like I have no time left here! I went along thinking how we were leaving on Friday August 3rd, and thought I had 11 days left. But tomorrow we're driving up to Visakhapatnam to get a big pile of library books for the kids (thank you donors!) and also to buy the new Harry Potter book for ourselves (You might think no one could spoil the book for us when we're in a rural town in India, but you would be wrong. Anyway, we're looking forward to it and we don't know that much.). So that cuts two days out of our time here, bringing me down to 9. But we'll probably leave for Hyderabad on Wednesday, so we can spend one day with Grace's relatives. That means our last full day here is Tuesday, which cuts three more days out. Down to six. So under a week left! And we're only going to be able to teach Friday and Monday because Tuesday is a test day! So our responsibilites really are winding down!

I mean to talk about us teaching in this post. Things are a bit different now then when we were travelling around from place to place. We've been fixed in one place for about a month now. We left for two days to go to Visakhapatnam for our anniversary but otherwise we've been here nonstop. So I don't feel like a chronological order is quite as important.

Our very first class was on the day we arrived. After visiting the classes we were asked to talk to one. About what, no one said - I think they just assumed we were gifted speakers. Anyway we got put in front of a class of ten girls all 16ish and all moving into the vocational junior college in a week or so (there some will study fashion and design, some will study electrical engineering, some nursing and others computer animation!). Two chairs were brought out and we were just supposed to talk with them.

...

Well, we asked everyone their names, then their favorite foods, then favorite movies, then how many brothers and sisters they had and then we were a bit stuck. They asked us where we were from and, as I said, our answer confused them. They have a lot of trouble placing Grace since she looks Indian, was born in Andhra Pradesh and understands Telagu but spent her life in America, speaks with an American accent and can't speak Telagu. Grace decided to wear only western clothes from that day forward so people would think of her as American.

They also asked us if there were kangaroos in America and we said no. They went on to ask us about what Church we went to and so forth. The Hebron orphanage is run by a Christian organization and they pray together for a half hour every night (note that prayer consists of at least 20 minutes of song). Anyway, they're really into what I would call Christian folk praise songs. They clap their hands and sing things like "God is so good, God is so good, God is so good, he's so good to me!" It sounds a lot better with the tune. Anyway, they always ask us to teach them praise songs, and we always let them down. One girl also characterized the Hindu temple music which wafts in from across the river as "devil music."

We didn't think that class was so successful. When we left we made up a list of conversation topics - we still weren't sure what we would be doing. We were told we would be taking some classes but we were given no instruction on what to do with them, so the next school day we sat in on two classes and observed how things were taught.

The English class we watched was aged 14 and the class was similar in it's themes to an English class in the states, rather than a foreign language class. It was more like language arts. The students have a textbook of stories, poems and speeches and each day they read one and talk about it. When I say "they read it," I mean the teacher reads it aloud and the students follow along. She asks questions rapid fire as she goes. Example:

Teacher: "The Magician pulled a rabbit out of his hat and showed it to the crowd with a flourish." What does "flourish" mean?
Student: (yelling and reading out the definition of "flourish" from the stories little glossary) "a small movement performed after an extraordinary task!"
Teacher: Good, sit down. And what did the magician pull out of his hat?
Other Student: A rabbit!
Teacher: Good. "The Audience applauded and shouted..."

In this way the teacher walks the class through the story. At the end she asks more general questions about the story.

We also watched a biology class for the 13 year old kids. The teacher talked about the order of life - from atom to molecule to amino acid on up to organism and population. These terms were written on the board and the class quizzed frequently to see if they remembered what was said ten minutes earlier.

We were to take an English class in a few days. We decided to teach it like the Indian teachers taught, at least to start. We were given all the student texts and prepared for our first class. This was to be a small class of only 10 students, but the oldest ones, aged 15. The reading we were to teach was a speech by a heart surgeon about the value of suffering in life. The gist of it was suffering helps us appreciate the good things we have and when we face suffering well it ennobles us.

The first class we watched it took the teacher the whole class to get through the story so we prepared some questions about the story and then five or six general questions to follow up.

Well, when we arrived we presented the story in the space of 15 minutes, leaving us 25 minutes to fill. I improvised a ton of stuff from the story and we managed to fill the time. I asked the kids to think about this and that and "why did the author use this metaphor?" and "the author uses a statistic here, what's a statistic?" etc. The class went alright but we knew we needed a better lesson plan.

The next day we were going to teach a class one year younger but much bigger - 40 students. This time we had a (really, rather lame) story about a boy who wanted a donkey (he gets a donkey in the end). It was called "My Donkey Sally." Fortunately for us it was very long and we didn't have to worry too much about running our of time. Of course we did again. The problem is Grace and I didn't want to walk the kids through the story one sentence at a time. If they needed that much prompting it didn't really seem worth it to read the story. They would lose the thread of it much too quickly. And we didn't feel like we were playing to our strengths. This was a foreign approach to teaching for us and we felt the kids would get more out of the classes if the regular teachers were taking them. We weren't offering anything new or interesting.

So we regrouped. We ended up having a week to think about it because we got sick for that length of time.

Third times a charm. We decided our classes would be all about having the kids practice expressing themselves in English. Originally we envisioned them writing original things and playing lots of games that involved speaking and communicating in English with nothing. We planned to avoid having the students be read to, lectured to, or read silently to themselves. As things went on we focused our energies on speaking in English.

I had downloaded a manual written by the Peace Corps about teaching English as a foreign language in a developing country when you yourself have no english teaching qualifications. The perfect book! It warned us to introduce changes into the classroom gradually because the kids would need time to get used to a new style of teaching. Our eventual goal was to get the kids working in partners for most of the class so they got the maximum practice speaking. But we decided to work up to that over a few class periods.

The very first classes we arranged we planned to make ice breakers. We just wanted the kids to get used to the idea that they would need to be confident and comfortable speaking a lot in our classes. And that they could not get through our classes by sitting passively. We had to set up 3 different activities for our three class size levels. There was the old kids class, which was just 10 kids. But there were also three classes of 40 and two classes of 80 kids.

For the small group we decided to play a version of "Taboo." We made on the computer about 100 cards with different english words on them like "Wedding," "Monkey," "Water," "Doctor" and so on. We cut these out and divided the class into two teams of five. One at a time a member of the team would come up and try to get his teammates to guess what was on the card. He had to find a way to describe the word in English without saying the word. For example with the word, "Fire" he might say, "It's really hot, it burns" and someone would yell out "Fire!" Each team had three minutes to get as many cards as they could. The kids were really good at this and we ran out of cards with five minutes left in class. But they really liked it and we invented a new game for the last few minutes.

For the classes of 40 kids we played a game called "Find Someone Who..." For this we made tons of handouts each one with a 4x4 grid on it. At the top of the handout it said "Find someone who..." and in each square of the grid it said something like "...went swimming this week" or "...has three brothers." The kids have to get up and walk around the room and talk to each other and find someone who matches each description in the grid. Since there were 16 things to find it took them a good 25 minutes. Then we went over the answers. This went rather well too.

We had a harder time with the class of 80. We weren't sure what to do with them all. We ended up inventing a form of Bingo where the kids make a 4x4 grid on their own paper and randomly put a letter in each box. We had a grid on the board and we would say put an "Animal" in this box and if they could come up with an animal that began with the letter they had put there they could fill in the square. Other squares were "cities," "movies," "things that make noise," etc. It took half the class for the kids to understand what we wanted them to do, but I think they got good practice listening to directions.

By the way, we didn't pull these games out of the air. There's a suberb website called www.eslcafe.com which is chock full of more english class activities than you can imagine. And we didn't teach all these classes at once. We taught two per day meaning we saw each class twice or three times in a week.

We were encouraged by the success of these classes and tried more ambitious things. For the old kids we tried to teach them the game "Mafia," but it was a complete failure. If you don't know how to play Mafia, well, it's terribly hard to explain (which may be why it failed). It's a game of lies and deception where you have to try and protect a secret identity while other people try to figure out your secret identity. But I think the kids could not grasp the idea that in this game lying and deception were encouraged, were the whole point. Example:

Person whose Secret Identity is Villager: Are you Mafia?
Person whose Secret Identity is Mafia: Yes, I am Mafia.

That was frustrating. We called it off after two failed tries and played 20 questions instead. They didn't grasp the strategy of this at all. They just guessed whatever they happened to see. For example, I was thinking of "Ghandi." These are the questions they would ask:
-Is it a desk?
-Is it a book?
-Is it a blackboard?
-Is it a mobile?

When I explained it wasn't anything they could see they went:
-Is it a dog?
-Is it a house?
-Is it a desk?

Yes, they would ask the same question several times from different people. Eventually they got a little better.

For the big classes we still didn't dare risk having them try some big game so we asked them to write a paragraph entitled "If I could go anywhere..." At the beginning of the class we brainstormed countries on every continent and things you could do there and we intended them to write statements about where they wanted to go and what they would do there. We collected there answers at the end of class.

This showed us very clearly how varied the English language skills were in the class. Probably less than 5, certainly less than 10 people wrote exactly the kind of thing we wanted with no major errors. The majority of the class wrote sentence fragments about either A) how they would go to Delhi and see the Taj Mahal or B) how they WENT to Hyderabad with their parents and saw some kind of film studio amusement park. Probably about a third of the kids just copied the names of countries and activities off the board. These ones clearly had not understand a word we said and just copied what was on the board, verbatim onto paper.

One paper was really sad. It said something about how the kids had never been anywhere because his parents were poor farmers and they couldn't go anywhere. But it ended on the upbeat non sequitar "I want to be a doctor when I grow up." One kid wrote about going to New Zealand and meeting the power rangers. But most everyone wrote about India and Andhra Pradesh. We got the impression they don't really dream about visiting the wider world. Personally, since India is on the move economically, I think it's OK for them to have ambitions to visit foreign lands. When they enter the job market in five to ten years time, it might be really good for them.

We adjusted our lessons a little downward after that eventually settling in on a running theme of a trip to New York - though I explained that the skills they would be just as usable anywhere they went that spoke only English. We first started playing games where the kids were divided into two teams and they had to construct full sentences and speak them outloud to get points. When they made mistakes they could get the points back if someone else on the team could correct the error. This was a really successful activity.

Eventually we brought in partner activities. We had great advice from our friend Emily about how to first do this. We wrote a conversation on the board between a tourist and an airport receptionist about how to get to the tourist's hotel in New York. First we went through this as a class, then we divided the class into two halves. One half read outloud the tourist's lines and the other half read outloud the receptionist's lines. Then they switched. By now they had read both sides of the converstation three or four times. Then we had them do it as, gasp, partners!

They were really shy about this at first but there are two of us so as we marched up and down the aisles we were able to talk to each partner group and get them to do the conversation for us. After five minutes of this we had partner groups present their conversations.

Over the next few days we started pulling back the help we were giving them on the conversation. First we erased all the exact lines and wrote generic terms, changing the converstation from this:

Tourist: Good afternoon, can you help me?
Receptionist: Of course, what can I do for you?
Tourist: I need to get to my hotel in Manhattan. How do I get there?

to this:

Tourist: Greeting. Ask for help.
Receptionist: Polite response.
Tourist: Needs to get to hotel in Manhattan.

Then they had to make that into a workable sentence with their partner.

We eventually got it down, at least for the older classes, so we just had roles assigned for them:

Tourist - Wants to see United Nations, needs to know where it is, when it's open and how much it costs.
Receptionist - Knows the United Nations is at 42nd and First street, open 9-5 and is free.

Later we moved onto giving and receiving directions from a map that we drew on the board. The first class we did this on was a wash because, again, we overestimated the english skills of the class and I drew a way too complicated map that had street names too small for the kids in the back of the classroom to see. We remedied this.

Over four weeks we came to the somewhat sad conclusion that, with the exception of the oldest kids, the age of the student had no bearing whatsoever on their english language skills. It became starkly clear when we did the same activity with the 14 year olds and the 10 year olds. The ten year olds did better. Each class has a group of two or three who are excellent, four or five or ten more who are pretty good and the rest who have a lot of trouble. If we ask them to make a full sentence using the words "statue of liberty" and "see" they will say something like: "I to see statue of liberty." The stronger students will then whisper the right sentence to them (points are at stake after all!) but this wasn't as helpful to them as you might imagine.

The kids really need to all be subjected to an English language comprehension test and divided up into skill levels not grade levels.

The worst was yesterday. One of the classes of 80 students was finally divided into two classes of 40 because more classrooms were completed. Well, most of the strong kids in that class of 80 must have ended up in the other class because these kids did not understand a word I was saying. I would write on the board "Restaurant" and point to it saying, "Who can tell me what a restaurant is?" Then they would all yell out "Restaurant!" Eventually we figured out they thought they should just repeat any word I pointed at. In the class of 40 only two or three people understood me a think. But hey, they can read english, if not understand it. They certainly know how to put the letters together to make a word, even if they don't know what that word means.

So now we only have a few classes left. Originally we wanted to have a major game using all the skills they learned from us but it seems like such a small amount now! We have till Friday to figure it out.

I'm also teaching Physics a little bit. I've taught two classes so far. The first one went pretty well considering I showed up for class and was given the textbook. But it all came back to me and it was just the class of the ten oldest kids so they really paid attention. The next one was the opposite, a complete disaster. Without the two of us in the room the kids misbehaved all over the place. Normally one of us is teaching and the other is sort of keeping an eye on things. Then we switch. But when I taught physics on my own the kids just talked and talked and I had to shout and people still couldn't hear me. It didn't help that the assigned topic was really boring - "how to use a vernier calipers."

A Vernier Calipers is a little tool you use to accurately measure the length of something. They're not high tech, they've been around for a hundred years at least. But these kids didn't have access to any so here I was drawing this instrument on the board and explaining how to use it. If I had control over the content of their tests I would have skipped it, but what can you do. Anyway, I had to spend the majority of the class yelling at them to be quiet and making threats. One of the good kids in front told me the only way they would be quiet was if I beat them, which is what I needed to do as a teacher. The other teachers also said beating is necessary to get the kids to stop talking, but it's discouraged much to their chagrin. I think it's actually banned but how do I know, I'm not everywhere. Anyway, of course I didn't beat anyone. But still it was a terrible class and it slowed the lesson down so much that we didn't finish and we'll be going back to the Vernier calipers later.

It's too bad that there are no materials for demonstrations. That's the best part of physics class. Instead we draw demonstrations on the board and they just have to take our word for it that things happen the way we say they will. But for tenth class, which I'm teaching tomorrow I've come up with a little demonstration. I've tied my shoelace around a scrap piece of wood and I'll swing it around my head to demonstrate rotational motion. Then I'll throw it to demonstrate tangential velocity. It's too bad they've already finished their unit on Gravity. I was eager to take a class field trip to the roof and throw things off then time the descent.

Hebron House

Well, as you can see we got quite the welcome!*

*Actually Grace's name is not Clancy, but we'll let it slide.

When we got off the train in Rajahmundry we were picked up immediately by two gentleman from Hebron House. We got into the biggest car yet in India - a four door sports utility type that the school uses to haul things like giant orders of uniforms - and then hit the open road.

I couldn't help but notice the roads were really, really good. Four lanes with a big concrete island in the middle to keep each direction of traffic seperated. And so smooth! They were the best roads I had seen in India. Later I learned they ARE the best roads in India. There's one highway chain like this that goes around India, called "The Golden Quadrilateral." We were on part of it.

Anyway, the wonderful roads didn't keed people from driving the wrong way on the shoulder or worse, in the passing lane. Sometimes you just can't be bothered to find the gap in the concrete island that lets you access the other direction.

Out the window I also noticed that we were now in a very green country. Previously the countryside was dry, dusty and brown but here it was lush, wet and green. We asked about it and found this region is called "The Rice Bowl of the South" and provides most of the rice for the State.

After an hour on these immaculate roads we turned off and were on the normal extremely bumpy ones, sharing them with bull carts, buses charging us down in our lane, bicycles, people walking across the street, standard Indian chaos. We were quite used to this by now. Another hour on these roads and we arrived in the town of Palokol, population 250,000 and Hebron House. We saw the banner and were really pleased. When we got out of the car we met Sagar, the head of Hebron House and he welcomed us in. Garlands were placed around our necks and as we walked through the gates the children were lined up on either side of us and they showered us with flower petals while chanting, "Welcome to Hebron! Welcome to Hebron!"



Note here Grace can be seen wearing traditional Indian dress! This was the only day she did so. Most of the other teachers wear Western clothes.

So, what the heck is this place we're at? Let me try to explain.

Hebron Orphanage was established back in the sixties by a local man who thought something should be done about all the street children he saw. He owned some rice paddy fields and (I think) sold some of them to build the first orphanage. He took in some 30 children I believe.

Within a year or so he decided to also build a school, the Hebron House school. The children would be educated and then trained in a vocation so they became self-sufficient. An Australian Church committed itself to funding the orphanage and school.

They did for decades. In the 80's the original founder died and his son, Sagar, took over the orphanage. A few years after that the Australian Church that funded the orphanage issued a warning: it's members were growing old and young people were not joining the church. As the membership in the church declined so would the funding for the orphanage. They advised Sagar to find a new sponsor.

Eventually he did and for several years the orphanage grew. A computer lab was built, water tank and so on. The number of orphans grew to around 70.

Rewind back to the 1990s. India has traditionally been an ally of the USSR, though it has tried to follow a policy of self-sufficiency and not been too wrapped up in foreign affairs. It's constitution declares it to be a secular, socialist, democratic nation. The submarine fleet that they used was made by the soviets for instance. Well, in the 1990s two things happened. The USSR collapsed and then finance minister Manmohan Singh shifted away from the policy of economic self-sufficiency and towards a policy of open trade with the rest of the world. The future appeared to be American now, not Russian and the talk of India was that everyone should learn to speak English. This was not lost on Hebron House and they began to teach English as a subject in their school. But they hoped one day to start a school which taught in English - this would give their kids the best advantage in life.

So, fast forward to the Tsunami. The sponsor of Hebron was able to get a lot of donations for Tsunami relief and the orphanage swelled as it took in over 200 Tsunami orphans. But, within a year or two, he was unable to continue to send money.

This put Hebron house in a real bind since it had a lot more responsibility and not nearly enough money to fulfill its duties. They contacted everyone they could and eventually found another donor. This person, who we'll call M, actually lives in Cambridge. He russled up money to let the orphanage continue and further funds so the long planned English medium school could be opened. This was in February of this year. In March construction of the new school and hiring of teachers frantically began. The plan was to admit both the orphans and poor children from the town of Palokol, since it was important that the orphans should be comfortable mixing with the rest of the town. They expected admissions of around 200.

During this frantic search for English fluent teachers M contacted the Cambridge University International Development Club and told them about the project and asked if they knew anyone interested in volunteering as an English teacher for this school. The club sent an email out to all its members. I was a member and got the email which is how we ended up here.

Anyway, the response to the new English language school was overwhelming and nearly 1,000 people signed up. Sagar didn't want to turn anyone away. The orphans are generally from low castes and would face a lot of prejudice in their life. But the school was getting requests for admission from families of all castes - high, low, middle - and all religions - Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist. Sagar hoped that getting all these children to mix would help break down all the barriers (which, sadly, are alive and well) put up by the caste system and religious intolerance in the future.

Of course, admitting 1,000 students to a school originally intended for 200 presents some difficulties.

And we arrived on the Friday of the very first week of the academic year.

The state of things is as follows:
The school is not complete and not in use. When finished it will have 18 classrooms. For now though students are taking class in the dormitories. At night the orphans push the desks to the back, roll out their mats and sleep on the floor. But there's not enough room in the dormitories either. One class is taught in the garage, several in some open air (but roofed) temporary classrooms (that will one day be dining halls), one is taught in an abandoned hallway, some are taught in spare rooms in other buildings and so on. Even still there are not enough rooms and so some grade levels that should be two classes are pushed together. This makes for some classes with 80 students in them, sitting three to a desk and once or twice, even on the floor. At the front of all these classrooms is a chalkboard and chalk and that is what we have to teach with. When the school is built there will be televisions, computers and more available, but in our temporary situation we have blackboards and chalk. But we've found that to be more than adequete.

All the kids also have a set of textbooks which they have to buy themselves. These texts are not as nice as anything you see in the US. They are made at a photocopy type store and they are either stapled or bound. They're black and white with no photos (though lots of illustrations) and paper covers. It's actually not a bad system because at the end of each chapter no one feels bad about writing answers to the example questions right in the book. And of course it keeps costs down for the families which is paramount.

Upon Grace and I's arrival we took a whirlwind tour of the classes, led by the principal, Sagar's brother in law (I think?). I really like the Principal. It's great to talk to him about the challenges and solutions to running the school. Anyway, he showed us each classroom. At each one the students would bolt out of their desks and stand at attention yelling "Good Afternoon Sir!" He would introduce us as visiting teachers from England and we would go on to the next class.

I should mention that it's terribly, terribly confusing for the kids that we live in England but come from America. They always ask where we're from and they would really prefer a solid answer. Instead we have to explain "Well, we live in England but we're from America. Except Grace was born in India, but well, she's lived in America since she was two." Eventually we simplified this to, "We're from America but we live in England right now."

So we saw all the classrooms. And that's where I have to leave you for now. I'll try to type more tomorrow.

Visakhapatnam

Sorry for the delay, we have been without internet for a week or so. Continuing with our story...

The train arrived in Visakhapatnam, a city on the western coast of Andhra Pradesh, on the ocean. We were going to visit the other side of the family, another side with many uncles.

We got off the train with very heavy suitcases, and got a porter to lift them all to the car. He hoisted them up on top of his head and carried them that way. You see people doing that a lot, even with weirdly shaped packages. We got to the car and drove to my uncle's house. When their car backs up, it plays a little backing up tune, like when trucks beep--this one plays the Macarena!

The family was very happy to see us. They like Matt a lot. They remembered me as an infant and kept asking if I remembered things, but I don't remember a thing. We got there quite late at night but we hadn't eaten so we took baths (bucket baths) because we were filthy from the train again so it was nice to wash it off. They were all surprised we had not come by AC car. They said they never travel second class and they didn't know how we could do it. Then they gave us dinner and showed us old photos of my parents and themselves. It was very late then, so we went to sleep in their AC room.

The next morning we woke up late and had breakfast. It was too hot to go out so Matt and I rested in the AC room reading books most of the day. My cousin did a very complicated henna design on my arm for me. Around 4PM, we went in the car for a drive up one of the mountain/hills that surrounds the city. At the top was a sort of amusement park with huge statues of Shiva and Lakshmi, some Hindu gods. Our camera had just broken so we paid a photographer at a stand to take a photograph of us overlooking the city and the wide beach. There was a little train you could ride all around the top of that hill, so we rode it all around and saw all the mountain views around the city. After the mountain top, our cousin took us to an old submarine that had been decommissioned and set up as a museum on the beach. It was huge and ancient. It had been purchased from the Soviet Navy in 1968 and was still in use up until 2001! The tours were only in Telugu and Hindi but my cousin translated for us. It was air conditioned in the sub, which was nice. And also it was pretty cool to be inside a real sub and see how people lived there and see the torpedo bay, which was full of huge torpedos.

Down on the beach, there were food vendors selling corn on the cob. This much is certain, Indians do not know how to cook corn on the cob. Give me some good old Iowa sweetcorn with butter and salt. Now that's the stuff.

Then before we went home, we went to a shop that my sister had told us about--she described it as Indian Wal-mart and we found it pretty much is (complete with an article decrying it in the newspaper shortly afterwards claiming it destroys livlihoods of smaller merchants). It's called Spencer's and it was pretty sweet. I wanted to spend all day there, but we left eventually. That night after dinner we showed everyone our wedding photos which they liked very much.

The next morning we were going to another uncle's house to see him, his wife and their kids. They are all older than me and married with kids. They also liked our wedding photos which we brought to show them. We had lunch there, amid many comments that we don't eat anything. When we left in the afternoon, we stopped at the beach and took a little dip. No one wears swimsuits, you just go in. Afterwards, we had Coronettos while we dried off, which are ice cream "drumsticks" for the Americans. They were delicious. It had been so long since we had something so purely sugary. We also looked at beach bumuloo, which were hideous piles of glued together seashells, plastic flowers and other bits and bobs. Afterwards we went to an aquarium museum and when we exited, we went through a giant shark head!

The next day, we hopped a train in the AC car to a town called Rajamundry where we were being picked up by car to be taken to Palakol. The AC car is like being in a different country or something. It was cool and clean and a pleasant three hours. Steps off the train, someone asked if I was Kaveri, and we were taken to a huge SUV and headed to Palakol.

Then I Got Sick

I’m going to try and work hard to get this blog up to date since we’re currently doing English teaching and some of our experiences are interesting. But there’s just so much to talk about!

That pilgrimage temple, Tirupati, has been in the news in the last couple days. It seems the temple is nestled in among 7 sacred hills and if you hike all 7 hills, it’s good or something. Well, anyway, we just had 7/7/07 and lots of people decided that was a particularly auspicious date to visit the temple. Man, we thought we had it bad. Now the queue stretches 4 kilometers before you even get to the entrance of the queue facility. Keep in mind we walked straight into the queue facility, where there were metal detectors and giant auditorium rooms for sitting. They’re saying it takes 4 or 5 hours to get to the line place where we started from now! And on top of that there is nowhere, literally, nowhere, for people to stay now. All the cottages are booked up. People are sleeping in the open air. And worst of all, the receptionist people at the pilgrim amenities place have fled their post because they’re so scared to face the mob of angry pilgrims. So there’s no place to sleep and no one to help. Finally, on top of all that, all public transportation is completely booked until next Monday! The only way to escape is to hire a private driver and he can charge whatever he likes. Man, glad we went when we did!

Anyway, let’s pick up on the story. Grace left off when we were entering the train to go back to Vijaywada. That train was a sleeper car so everyone sat on benches until the bunk beds were folded down. As usual there was no air conditioning but dozens of fans on the ceiling and open windows. And, as usual, I was gawked at the whole time. I’ve since realized that the trouble is two-fold: 1) very few non-Hindus come to Tirupathi in a year and 2) almost all Westerners are probably willing to spring the extra 10 bucks to take the air conditioned train cars. So people were definitely not used to seeing me.

So lots of people wanted to talk to me and ask me who I was, where I came from, what I was doing in India. It’s kind of a sticky situation since Grace is Indian and, the truth is, the conservative don’t really think it’s acceptable for us to be married. And, as Grace said, people don’t have a lot of problem interrogating you. So one guy was grilling me and everyone else was staring at me while I answered. It was lucky that I go to Cambridge because, since it’s British and the British have a history of sorts with India, people know what it is and lay off me a bit.

Well, the train started moving and this one guy suddenly fell over and started having a seizure right there on the train car floor. Next to me a man leapt to his fit and started trying to help the man. Everyone was on their feet and saying things in Telugu. I didn’t get up but I was simultaneously thinking what to do and keeping an eye on my bags during the confusion. Eventually the seizure guy seemed to get better and he stood up and walked away. All discussion was in Telugu so I missed out.

All this Telugu was frustrating and Grace’s mom had bought Bernice a book called “Learn Telugu in 30 days.” I borrowed it and started memorizing vocabulary and getting Cousin N to quiz me on it. I figured I had another 6 or 7 weeks in India and it couldn’t hurt to know some rudimentary Telugu.

The man who had leapt to his feet to help the seizure victim overheard me and interrupted.

“No, don’t learn Telugu. Know telugu.”

This was pretty cryptic and I as worried he was going to get all mystical on me but it turned out he was a great guy, one of the famous Indian software engineers that is supposedly stealing everyone’s job. He worked for an international corporation and he had recently got back from Florida on a job. He spoke excellent English and was listening to an iPod shuffle.

So it turns out this guy was really just trying to say it was a bad idea to learn Telugu by memorizing random vocabulary. He believed I needed to understand the structure of it and to do that I had to start with the alphabet. Telugu doesn’t use the roman alphabet and there are 54 letters. He said that was how he learned English – first with the ABC’s and then understanding how words are written and pronounced and up from there.

I thought it was good advice but since I didn’t really want to put that much effort into a language spoken nowhere else in the world I figured I would probably just try to get by in English. I didn’t tell the guy this though.

By now Grace had come to sit with me, kicked out of her illegal seat (see the end of last post for Grace’s angry account of the great seating fiasco). Anyway we talked to this guy some more and he asked about our trip to Tirupati. His parents lived in the city, so that was his reason for being there. He wasn’t a pilgrim. He asked if we had eaten some traditional Tirupati food (I can’t remember the exact name) and when he found out we hadn’t he opened his duffle bag and pulled out some food. His mother had made it. He insisted we have some and explained that it was rude in India to refuse an offer of food. He also gave food to everyone else sitting nearby.

This is one really good thing about India. Strangers on a train very often start up conversations with each other to pass the time. It’s very easy for them and not a problem at all. Everywhere you look people who have never met before are sharing food and speaking to each other in Telugu. It’s very sociable and very different from the Brits.

As you know, I got sick the next day. Perhaps it was this nice man’s food that did the trick. Grace sometimes jokes that he poisoned me.

But, over food, I asked about the seizure guy, since all the conversation about him had taken place in Telugu. He replied that the man didn’t really have a seizure and was actually a thief trying to sneak on the train! He said he was faking a seizure to cause a distraction or maybe because someone had seen him sneak on the train and he wanted to avoid certain questions. Anyway, I was suddenly glad that I kept an eye on my bags during the confusion.

Well, talk wound down and Grace and I started to get the feeling that people were secretly unhappy with us sitting where we weren’t supposed to be. The two of us piled into my bunk bed, which was on top. I won’t lie it was pretty cramped. We both sat up and I listened to my iPod while Grace read. But I’m too tall to sit up properly in the top bunk of a second class train car and it wasn’t a long term solution. Fortunately the nice software engineer saw our discomfort and told me to take his empty bunk because he wouldn’t be able to sleep till 11 at least and our train pulled into Vijaywada around 11:15. I thanked the guy a lot and sank into an iPod stupor. It drowned out the noise of babies crying and people talking and the train rolling over the tracks. Grace went to sleep to escape the noise.

It was really hot up there and at the end of the hour I was a grimy mess. I also didn’t want to sleep because I was worried about thieves now. Down below Cousin N was sharing a bunk bed with a stranger women who was very obliging. But, being a kid, he was a bit oblivious and tried to lie down and, in doing so, took up more than his fair share of the bed, preventing the woman from lying down. If only we had all sat in our assigned seats we wouldn’t feel like unwanted vagabonds! Since I had a full bed to myself I offered it to Cousin N, so he would stop bothering the obliging woman. I spent the next hour walking around or perched at the very end of her bunk bed, so she could lie down.

By now it was dark and the car was quiet. We arrived in Vijaywada after 6 or 7 hours – it was a direct train. Upon departing the train we had more problems with trip organization. Since we had shown up in the middle of the night there were no taxi cabs around and we settled for riding the 1 hour journey to Uncle K’s house in Autorickshaws. Those are the three wheeled yellow vehicles I mentioned a long time ago.

I actually prefer to travel by Auto since I’m so tall and they have a high canvas top. I can usually sit up straight, which is almost never the case in a taxi. They’re a bit frightening to ride in though because they’re so small that if a bus hit them (which is not at all unlikely) it would be like a semi hitting a smart car. Still, they’re open to the air and it was a nice enough ride home.

When we got home Grace and I took Dettol bucket showers and emerged into Uncle K’s AC room feeling wonderfully scrubbed free of 6 hours accumulated grime. Fortuitously Bernice decided to sleep in Yesu’s old room tonight, trading AC for privacy. This allowed me to throw up in peace later that night.

So yes, I woke up at 3 in the morning and was sick. The first time it happened I drank some water. When I threw up the water 2 hours later I didn’t repeat that mistake.

So I woke up the next day sick. My body was working hard to get everything out of my system. I was lying in bed, sick, when the power cut out and the AC died. Fortunately it was morning and not too hot yet. Still, it was a bad way to start the day.

I contemplated eating a mango for breakfast but I was warned off the plan by somebody, I don’t know who. It was decided that I should let my system clear out until the afternoon and then maybe I could have a light lunch.

So, with a plan, I went to sleep and the power came back on. Grace was my nurse, staying with me and keeping an eye on me. I had terrible fever dreams that were made 10 times worse by my choice of iPod music the previous night on the train. My friend Austin had recommended a new CD called “Spiderman of the Rings” and I listened to it in full for the second time on the train. Normally I really like the CD but it’s really crazy music and really trippy. The next day its weird and wild melodies were floating in and out of my dreams and it was really unpleasant. I didn’t touch that CD for another 2 weeks afterwards.

When I awoke I tried to take some tea but could only manage two tiny bird sips. I was still making frequent trips to the rest room at this point. And Grace’s cousins were completely unhelpful harassing me and generally bothering me while I was sick. You see, everyone likes to hang out in the AC room during the hottest part of the day. And these kids had no sympathy.

Whatever. I felt better mid afternoon and ventured a lunch of plain white rice. This course of action sent me back to bed for another few hours but by dinnertime I felt strong enough to get up again and eat a light dinner.

By then, whatever I had was on the way out. The next day Grace’s sister and mom were leaving for the USA and we were leaving for Visakhapatnam to stay with Grace’s father’s relatives, so there was frantic packing that night. We weren’t coming back to Uncle K’s, since he had to go to work far away for the rest of the summer. We couldn’t pack everything since half our clothes were being washed but we did what we could.

Laundry in India. Some people have a washing machine. Most don’t. Here’s roughly how they do it.
1) Wet all your clothes
2) Beat the wet clothes against a rock or concrete step – whatever’s convenient.
3) Soap all your clothes
4) Beat the soapy clothes against a rock or concrete step again.
5) Rinse
6) Hang to dry!

The wet SLAP sound of a woman hitting clothes against stone is heard all over India. I hear it right now. In my free time I’m reading “A Suitable Boy,” a book about a bunch of families in India in the 1950s. They wash their clothes the same way in the book.

My 24 hour sickness passed and we went to bed.

I woke up healthy the next day and managed to eat a normal breakfast. Our clothes were still wet (it’s difficult for things to dry overnight) so we laid them out on hot concrete. When the sun came out it baked them dry in the space of an hour.

We didn’t have to leave until noon or so and most of the packing was done. Grace’s mom and sister went one last time to Vijaywada for shopping and they bought Grace some jewelry, which you now know is very important. We stayed behind, finished packing and had lunch.

Finally it was time to say our goodbyes. The taxi was here. And we had something like 10 pieces of luggage to put in it. And some of the luggage was massive. And there was no way, literally no way it would all fit with us. I think the volume of the luggage was more than the volume of the car.

Everyone refused to accept this until it was getting dangerously close that Grace and I would miss our train. Then a new course of action was decided on and a second taxi called. Grace and I hurriedly put all our luggage (two suitcases, two small backpacks and a shopping back full of toilet paper) in the car and climbed in. We had a little over an hour and it takes a little over an hour to get to the train station. Grace’s mom explained the situation to the driver and warned him “I will hold you responsible if they miss their train!”

Well, he drove fast and furiously and we made it with ten minutes to spare. That was good because we had a lot of trouble figuring out what platform we were on. Eventually we found someone who knew and we boarded our train. It ended up arriving late so we had plenty of time.

Once again we were traveling second class and once again I got shocked stares from everyone. I was determined not to face this again. I dislike riding second class mostly for the stares and attention, but the grime and dirt in the air certainly doesn’t sweeten the deal.

This was a famous train journey because you go across the longest bridge in India. It’s over a massive river. I think it’s three or four kilometers across, but I can’t be sure (on the banks people do laundry, beating their clothes against stones – like I said, you hear the wet SLAP everywhere). One of Grace’s cousins had earlier asked what the longest bridge I had ever been on was. When me and my friends drove down to the Florida Keys we went across the 7 mile bridge which goes over the ocean and out to the keys. I told Grace’s cousin about this and he was not happy. I think he wanted to impress me with the size of the bridge that lay enroute to Visakhapatnam. He declared that the 7 mile bridge didn’t count as a bridge because bridges only count when they go over rivers. He said the 7 mile bridge was just a road over the ocean. I didn’t argue, but really, c’mon. It was a nice bridge though.

This train was completely packed. People were standing everywhere because all the seats were taken. Grace and I basically sat rigid for six hours. I heard later that there was some kind of religious thing going on which accounted for the crowd.

It was a fairly dull ride, but Grace says I had a captive audience the whole way. The worst was when I guy came around selling “Mango Frooty” which is just Mango juice. Grace wanted one so I flagged him down and – gasp! – pulled out my wallet. All eyes shot over to me. The Mango Frooty was 12 rupees but I didn’t understand so I gave him a ten. He said he needed two more. Naturally the only thing I had was a 50. With every eye in the car on me I looked through my wallet and tried to explain that all I had was a 50. Eventually the guy grumbled and made change. But all eyes were on me again. Grace says they saw how much money I had in my wallet and that was what drew their attention. It was a lot by Indian standards.

Also on the train people asked me questions. I feel a little bad because I was pretty rude to one of them, answering his questions in monosyllables, but then again I felt he was being rude to me. In England and America no one, no one, would say, “What are you doing here?” “Where are you staying?” “Who are you staying with?” “Why are you here?” “Do you work for HSBC?” “What are you studying?” All in a harsh, abrupt, accusatory style. Later I read not to take it personally in a guidebook, but it’s pretty off putting.

Night approached and Grace and I were worried about missing our stop. We had no relatives to be our Shepard this time, so we had to find our stop on our own. Luckily Visakhapatnam is the second biggest city in Andhra Pradesh so we knew it when we saw it. Upon arrival we immediately saw our Uncle’s face waiting for us outside the train door. We passed out our suitcases, strapped on our backpacks and arrived in Visakhapatnam, or Vizag for short.

The Pilgrimage

(Matt: Grace wrote this post. In the following post we journey with Grace as she descends to the farthest depths of grouchiness before coming out the other side of the valley and into the light of acceptance and good cheer.)

You will recall from the previous post that plans had been made to go to Tirupati, a Hindu temple. We all had to wake up at 4AM to catch cabs up to Vijaywada to catch a train down to Tirupati—it would be a nine hour journey.

This trip was a bit poorly planned. It had been talked about previously but the night before we left was the first time we heard anything concrete about it. In India, you have to reserve seats on the trains ahead of time or else go standby, which is literally standing unless extra seats are available. There are two classes, second class and AC car/first class. Previous attempts to buy AC car tickets were unsuccessful and now there were only 2nd class so they bought them while they were available.

My mom was embarrassed of my clothes because I had only brought (completely modest and decent) skirts and t-shirts. She bought me two outfits of this somewhat stiff, uncomfortable fabric. It’s called Punjabi dress and it’s long baggy pants with a drawstring waist, and a long tunic to wear over it. On top of that you have to wear a neck scarf that hangs around the front of your neck and drapes in back. When I put the pants on, I realized they had no drawstring. I had to take the drawstring out of a different pair of pants. When we were about to leave for the train, I bent down to tie my shoe. Rrrrrrrrppp! The seams that held my pants together at the crotch ripped up. I surveyed the damage with my hands and determined the hole was about 6 inches in diameter and I thought, well, I’ll have to sit with my legs together, no biggie. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered the hole was many times bigger than I imagined, more like a foot and a half in diameter and completely ragged. It was only my long tunic down to my knees that concealed it, and maybe sometimes not even then.

Anyway, in the car up to the train station I started feeling a bit queasy. By the time we were seated on the train I was doing okay. The second class car is just wooden benches, and it's very crowded with open windows.

I needed to go to the bathroom but no one could tell me where a bathroom was and so I had to go on the train. Afterwards I got queasy again and for the first time in India, felt like I needed to throw up. I slept for a little bit and felt better.

In India, vendors go through the cars back and forth and back and forth selling their snacks, drinks and meals. They have incredibly loud, high-pitched, nasal voices and shout, “Coffee, coffee! Chai, chai!” all up and down the car. It’s the kind of voice where your reflex is to look up towards it because it is so annoying. This makes the vendor think you want something and can be awkward.

Trains in India go an average speed of 30 mph and stop at each station along the way. At every station, even more vendors come on to the train and try to sell their food. It makes for a loud, crowded environment.

It is also very hot in the trains, despite copious fans on the ceiling, so it’s good to be by a window, so at least you have some fresh air. Unfortunately the air is very dirty from the debris on the tracks, soot, people freely urinating and defecating on and near the tracks, smoke from about a million cooking fires, trash which people throw out the windows of the train without hesitation. By the time we finally got off that train, my face and arms were visibly filthy and my hair was absolutely stiff with dirt and dust. It hadn’t felt so stiff since once when I was cutting drywall and all the dust fell into my hair. Luckily I brought facewipes and wiped my arms—it came away completely brown with dirt.

So the city we arrived at was called Tirupati but the actual temple was on top of one of the mountains surrounding the city. There is a whole tourist development up there to cater to the many pilgrims who come to see the temple. The reason it’s so famous is because it’s for a god called Venkateshwara, a monkey god, and the whole temple is made of solid gold. The image of the god is in the temple and if you shave your head and give him your hair as an offering he may grant you a wish. So that explained all the completely bald-headed people we saw everywhere at the train station.

As we mentioned before, people in India have very little (some would say no) public manners when they’re in a fairly anonymous setting. They will push and shove people out of their way. They rush to crowd onto the train cars before people are even able to get off making a crushing jam of people at each door. We were mildly surprised to find it was true of these religious pilgrims as well. In fact, we found they were especially pushy, rude and impatient.

We got off the train and took a taxi to the top of the mountain – we were a party of 6 adults and 4 children, and we all squeezed into one taxi. It was unbelievably hot, without a cloud in the sky.

When we got to the top, the taxi dropped us off at a center for pilgrims with a sort of barracks called ‘pilgrim amenities lodge,’ a few hotels and street vendors around. My uncle left us all with our bags sitting under a tree while he and his oldest son went to find us a hotel. This was supposed to be a three day trip.

While we waited, Matt had to go to the bathroom. The public toilets (squat toilets) had no running water. They collected water in a huge cistern at the entrance and you had to take a bucket of water into the stall with you with which to wash out the toilet afterwards.

We waited there for a half an hour before it started to rain. We went into a hotel lobby to get out. Actually, it was a multilevel concrete cell block that people slept in for free on concrete floors (Matt: This is a pilgrimage after all). Toilets and showers were whatever shack was nearby or the street. The place was so crowded, there were people lying on every spare bit of floor in the lobby, and we could see all the way back in the hallways.

Finding a hotel was taking longer than expected, my uncle’s oldest son reported to us. Every place was very crowded. My uncle was going to try making a booking on the internet. His son led us to some benches closer to where my uncle was looking and there we sat. We waited there under a tarp to protect us from the rain with no further information for five hours.

How did we pass the time? There was some tea found. We walked out in the rain to see some of the junk the vendors were selling. We discovered the women’s toilets were the same as the men’s. Matt and I had a strange conversation with my mom. She kept insisting all these people – the pilgrims all around us, the people in her village living in huts, the people we saw walking the city streets with filthy clothes and no shoes – were not poor, were far from poor, were just people going about their lives. She seemed pretty adamant but I think by any international standard these people would be considered very poor – if you can’t afford to buy yourself a pair of shoes and eat only one meal a day, you’re poor. But she also said that Indians have been getting “too rich” because they all have family members in the UK, US and Canada who send back money to them. One hundred dollars a month sent back to India is 4000 rupees, enough to build a new house.

(Matt: I thought Grace’s mom’s comments were really interesting and said a lot about just how far India has come in the last 10 or 15 years. They have had 8% growth since the early nineties when then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh – educated at Cambridge! – instituted a bunch of economic liberalization programs. For comparison’s sake, the USA usually has between 2 and 3% annual growth. From Grace’s mom’s memory what we’re seeing now is a vast improvement from 20 years ago. Other evidence bears this out. Most people we met live in pretty nice houses now, but they’re old family photos show them living in palm thatch huts. And I could count the number of beggars I’ve seen on two hands. I was hassled more in DC then I have been here. And reading about the children’s home where we’re staying is really enlightening. Ten years ago they didn’t have running water, regular power and they owned one scooter for transportation. Now they have a full western shower with heated water, a generator with 24 hour power, internet access and a fleet of buses to take kids to and from school. India seems poor compared to America, but I don’t think that’s a useful comparison. Compare it to itself 20 years ago and things are going nowhere but up. The future is promising for India.)

Eventually my uncle came back to us with accommodation. They were called “cottages” but they were pretty dismal. They were one-room apartments in little 2-storey complexes furnished with one bed, one lawn chair and one table. We had two such rooms between us, in different complexes. The beds were covered with a single ripped and filthy sheet. The single mattresses underneath were also soiled and filthy and damp from the windows being left open in the rain. There was a bathroom with a squat toilet but no sink. There was no running water at all. There were two buckets which had to be filled at a pump down the street and carried up to the room. We would have to take baths in the bathroom from these buckets. And there were cockroaches crawling on the floor and walls.

Everyone was angry and miserable, even my mom. She said, "That’s it, I don’t care about seeing this temple, let’s leave tomorrow morning and go back." Someone mumbled something about having to go standby. We didn’t understand until later but the tickets they had bought for the trip were not return tickets, they were one way.

It was 11 pm and no one had eaten anything since 6 am. My Uncle told matt to go with him and he took all the males to a restaurant. Matt was good enough to have a takeaway order packed for us, and brought it back so the women could eat.

Afterwards we went to sleep. Mom, my sister, Matt and I slept in one room (Matt: on two double beds put next to each other) and the other six people somehow slept in the other.

Before we split up, there was talk of going to see the temple when it was least crowded – its open 24 hours a day but it is very crowded. My aunt wanted to go wait in the line at 2 am (evidently, there is a line even at that hour). Most people didn't want to do that. Five A.M. was agreed on instead.

The next morning we woke, some people took baths (not me), we went to a hotel on the premises to eat breakfast. My uncle spent the day and the after this sleeping in their apartment. My mom, ever embarrassed of me, insisted I buy some bangles so that I would look right.

In India, for some reason, a woman (or girl) is not properly dressed unless she is wearing lots of jewelry. Women do not look “right” unless they have on at least one necklace, earrings, multiple bangles and bracelets, and if they are married, toe rings. Indians love gold. They love 22 and 24 karat gold, what in the US is known as ornamental gold. It is bright yellow/orange and Indians love it. I suppose it is a display of wealth. If you can’t afford gold bangles, you have to plastic ones, which I did.

After buying the bangles, we took a free bus they provide down to the temple site. You apparently had to go through a building in a queue to see it and at 7 am or so, people were pouring in. They did not let you take shoes or cameras or cell phones into the queue so we had to check everything. Then everyone had to go through metal detectors. Then we all got herded into this huge auditorium size room where we would have to wait. There wasn’t a single place to sit, people were crowded everywhere we tried to walk up the steps to the top of the room, but people were sitting or lying on the stairs and wouldn’t budge even if you started walking up. The auditorium was just a big room with rising wide concrete steps. There was nowhere to sit but people were perfectly willing to stretch full out wherever they were and not budge for anyone. Everywhere people were yelling and shouting, shoving people around, breaking their necks trying to push or cut ahead in line, physically forcing their children between people’s legs to secure a spot for them to sit. I cannot stand such a crowd. (Matt: It’s a good thing Grace never used the bathroom. You checked your shoes at the door after all…). Men kept trying to talk to me, and other people kept asking my mom who is that white boy. Indian people also have no problem asking you what, from a Western perspective, are the rudest questions in an interrogatory style. Eventually this started making my mom really angry because people refused to believe that Matt was part of our family, and would tell her so to her face (Matt: At this point in the trip I had not seen a single other white face since stepping off the plane in Hyderabad). Poor Matt was never aware when this was happening because he doesn’t speak Telugu. My mom can speak and understand it just fine and she was on her last nerve with this crowd too. Later she said she had to very firmly say to many people over the in Telugu, “Stop touching me! Don’t touch me again!” She couldn’t believe the complete absence of manners. In India people in public always seem to put their own desires, impulses, or convenience above others.

(Matt: I saw a book about just this topic a few weeks later. It was written by an Indian economist and it was trying to explain these strange behaviors of Indians en masse. I think the basic point was everyone would be better off if everyone practiced good manners but any individual is worse off practicing good manners when everyone else is being rude, so no one bothers to practice good manners. The only way to ‘flip’ the system would be if they could get everyone to switch at the same time, but I’m not sure how you would do that.)

Some of us were finally able to sit down except for Matt, myself and one of my cousins, the second of three boys – call him Cousin N. It seemed from this point we could expect a 5-6 hour wait as the crowd was moved from this room to the one next to it, and on and on and on, before seeing the temple. The three of us decided to take the room key and leave. Already the room behind the one we had been in had filled up. No one over the whole trip really told us what was going on or what to expect. If we had known we would have to wait in that situation for that long, we might have brought books or something like that. Bernice brought one so she was okay waiting. Matt and I bailed. I was glad to get away. The crowd was vicious and I wasn't very interested in the temple anyway. Matt was more disappointed and wished he’d known what to expect because he had really wanted to see the temple, being a religious studies scholar. But he was also glad to get away from the crowd.

(Matt: Here was my thinking. We’re going to be in line for 10 hours and we can’t bring cameras. This is a pilgrimage sight and I haven’t seen a single white face around. Maybe this is NOT something you do just to “see” it. Maybe it really is something you do as a religious pilgrim. For instance, whether you’re a Christian or not you can appreciate St. Peter’s Basilica. But what guarantees did I have that this was something like that? What if it was just a little statue of the god or something? I wasn’t Hindu so I made the call to skip the 10 hours. At the time I thought I could still see the temple, in the way you can see Westminster Abbey and think it’s really great even without going in. I even hoped maybe you could go in, just not to the part where the god is. Alas, I was mistaken.)

Matt, Cousin N and I went to buy some drinks (the first money we’d spent on ourselves since coming to India) and had a Mirinda (orange soda) and Thums Up (Coke). We were told you could see the outside of the temple but not the inside if you went up to it, so we went to take a look but you could actually only see the top, it was surrounded by a tall wall. Sure enough, what we could see was gold (the same 22 karat gold Indians love, probably why a solid gold temple is the most visited pilgrimage site in the world).

(Matt: It’s probably the most visited sight in the world because India has over 1 billion people, 82% of whom are Hindus and, unlike Rome, Mecca or Jerusalem, none of them need so much as a passport to visit this temple, which is the only one of it’s kind in India. (Grace: DUH.) There’s another temple to this god outside Aurora, Illinois, of all places).

There was a market of souvenirs all around the temple which we looked at. Cousin N, who is a really good lad, kept trying to buy us things that we didn’t want like fake gold rings and things. Wherever there is a sight like this, there are many shops selling souvenirs, trinkets, figurines of Hindu gods, and prints of painting of Hindu gods. These my mom collectively calls ‘bumooloo’ which literally means pictures, but here can mean any of the above. My sister says my mom loves bumooloo, especially pictures and painting but not of specific gods, and especially likes anything with a bobble head.

Anyway, we were looking at these bumooloo and then walking away when these two little beggar boys came up to us – one had a small little monkey on a leash sitting on his shoulder, but when we didn’t give them anything, the monkey lashed out and tried to grab my shirt! But I got away.

So we wandered around a bit more. There was a large garden area where we sat. At one point some kind of gypsy man approached us and tried to tell us our fortunes because if they do, you have to pay them some money. Luckily, we didn’t speak any language he spoke (he spoke three: Telugu, Hindi and Tamil) and Cousin N, who speaks Telugu was able to make him go away. We were all pretty tired from having woken up at 5 that morning and 4 the day before so we took the free bus back to our horrid apartment and slept for awhile. Matt had some vague idea that he wanted to go to an internet café in the afternoon and get some grad school application work done.

When we woke up we all three were very hungry. We went to the café where the men had eaten the night before and my cousin was instrumental in us being able to order lunch. We had two options – North Indian meal or South Indian meal. They give you a big plate with five small bowls each with a different curry and they put a mountain of rice in the center. Then it’s unlimited, you just keep eating and people come around refilling your rice and curries. Indians eat too much rice. It is fairly cheap and it is the staple of their diet. There are actually thanks to globalization and the improving economy relatively few starving people in India – almost everyone can afford rice and some curry for their family. To give a reference, an adult or teenaged Indian usually eats about the amount Matt and I would make to supply us both for dinner one night. But you see this is why so many Indians have diabetes. Also, I expected Indians to be painfully thin and gaunt, but only the very young, and I suppose the very very poor are – everyone else is clearly overweight. We haven’t seen anyone who is grossly overweight or obese (Matt: it’s not America), but that may be only a generation away, judging by the children, my cousins included.

(Matt: We’ve actually read in the papers about the serious diabetes problem in India. I think part of the problem is the economy has gotten better so everyone eats way way way more rice than they used to eat. Grace isn’t kidding about how much rice they eat. When they serve us they always think we hate the food because we only eat the amount of rice we're used to eating).

After lunch we went in search of internet at a tourist shopping center. This of course proved fruitless. We braved the free bus one last time, among pushy sweaty pilgrims. Indians don’t seem to have a concept of leaving people their personal space. I found myself (obviously not for the first time) longing for the British and the cushion of space everyone provides each other. It could be a fraction of an inch, but simply to avoid the sensation that someone is touching you, the British will brave any muscles spasm or cramp. Not so the Indians.

We returned once more to our apartment and put the chairs outside and sat to read our books for awhile. After a few hours of this and when it was getting quite dusky the lot who stayed at the temple came back. They all had smiles on their faces and told us about the temple, which they were able to enter. Sure enough it was gold and my sister said many of the pilgrims had no reservations at all about scraping and jabbing at the gold with pens to see if they could tear a chunk off. She said there were guards though and she now knew the Telugu word for “stop that!” All the cousins kept telling us over and over how great the temple was and told us over and over that is was solid gold like we wouldn’t believe it (Matt: I don’t believe it. I bet it’s stone with gold paneling. A solid gold building? Surely there would be a James Bond movie about some villain trying to steal it if it’s true). Mom and my aunty had bought bumooloo, real photos this time, and the cousins pointed and said, “Look, see? Real solid gold! Twenty-four karats!” I hypothesized that they were trying to prove to us that THEIR country has some fabulously extravagant and valuable sights too. Matt was sorely disappointed not to have seen it.

Several days later though my sister confessed that she had temporarily felt it was a mistake to stay in the temple queue when the 10 year old boy in front of her threw up on everyone and she had another few hours to wait. Apparently the newly wet pilgrims were pretty unhappy. She also confirmed what I had feared, that the queue was like a five hour mosh pit.

(Matt: Later we read that work is being done to address the crowding problems at this temple. Recently rejected was a plan to build a gigantic moving walkway.)

We all went to the same café again where they knew us well (the only white boy in 100 miles) and knew that we liked Mirinda (orange soda). Matt ate puri which are flat doughy rounds that have been fried in oil.

I had decided I couldn’t avoid taking a bath for another day, I would have to brave the bucket. But I insisted on buying some soap first (previous showerers had gone without). There was a kiosk on the street selling all manner of things, including a surprisingly large collection of soaps. I wanted something heavy duty – hospital grade even. I wanted to be clean, not smell nice for the 30 seconds before my sweat took over. I scanned the bars and my heart jumped at the bar of Dettol soap. Dettol is the British form of Lysol. That was the winner.

Another time we went back to the kiosk because one of the ladies of the party needed sanitary napkins. They took the package, wrapped it up in several sheets of newspaper and handed it to us in a brown paper bag like we were trying to buy booze on a Sunday in Ireland. Indians do the rudest things imaginable in public but they can’t even be straight about natural biological processes. It’s feminine and vaguely related to sex – therefore unspeakable.

Anyway, Matt brought up a full bucket of water for me. I screwed up my courage, grabbed my shampoo and industrial strength Dettol anti-bacterial soap. Halfway through my bath I noticed a cockroach on the wall behind a pipe but could not do anything about it. I kept my eye on it but it did not move. Finally … success! I had taken the worst bath of my cognizant life. And I felt better. It had rained and it was now cooler than the last few days and I felt relatively clean. The next morning I was considerably more chipper.

My uncle had gone back down the mountain to the train station the day before to buy us tickets home. They were for 5 pm and I gave up hope that they might be AC car tickets.

The night before Matt and I had gone for a short walk and this group of people seeing Matt asked if they could take a picture of him. He said no. That morning, a whole family down by the water pump asked matt to join them in a group photo. He again declined.

There was not much left to do in Tirumala so went to the Tirumala museum which was a huge pink and white building, half birthday cake, half Disney Princess Barbie Castle. It had some interesting photos and artifacts and statues of gods. It was the same sort of stuff you can see at the British Museum in London. My mom was quite indignant about that when she visited us in the UK. We were supposed to come back to the apartments at 12 because my uncle said so. We were all under the impression we need to relinquish the apartment keys by then. On returning that proved not to be true. My mom said we would go wait in our room and one of the cousins could come get us when it was time to go. The train was at 5 and it took half an hour to get there. For some reason they came at 2 and we relinquished the keys to our apartment. On going to my uncle’s apartment there was some confusion. Were we leaving now? Later? After lunch? It was three hours until the train, why had we left our apartment, it was at least a place to sit in the shade. These questions went unanswered.

During all the confusion about whether or not we were going yet, Matt, my sister and I wandered over to this landscaped garden to get a view down the mountain. We took some pictures and it was a pleasant temporary distraction.

We left. On the way down the mountain… Matt was thinking about the nature of arranged marriage in economic terms.

(Matt: Future research paper?)

At the base of the mountain, it was much hotter than up in it. We were still several hours early for the train and had not eaten lunch so we went to a restaurant near the train station and had chapathis and curry. (Matt: I got sick the next day and I wonder if it was because of these chapathis). Then we went to the station which was packed with people. The station office floor was covered with people spread out asleep. There was an old toothless man selling a sweet called luddu. They had given away luddu that had been “blessed” at the temple but no one had gotten any. My mother cannot let these things go, so she bought four or five bags of luddu from this man, even though it was the train station and they weren’t even blessed. Luddu are sort of crumbly balls of sweet dough.

At the train station we found a spare bench and sat. Beggars kept coming up to Matt and he obliged by giving them all the rupees he had. Another guy came up and chatted with Matt in English for a long time. Then he started asking Matt if he had any foreign currency, pounds and dollars, because he collects them and could he have them, but we actually didn’t have any on us. A five pound note is 400 rupees (unlimited lunch costs 50 rupees).

(Matt: On this train station I saw the first white face in Andhra Pradesh. The guy was a scraggly bearded, gaunt hippie type. He nodded at me, but looked a little too intense for a casual conversation).

Finally the train came. It was a sleeper train because it was going all the way to Mumbai, a long way. We were only going to Vijaywada. Hereafter followed what we refer to as the seating fiasco. Because the tickets were booked so late, our ten seats were spread over three cars and not a single one was next to another. Instead of going to our proper seats though, we just sat together in one place and as people came to claim ther reserved seats, moved into other that seemed empty. This basically resulted in everyone in our party being yelled at, at one time or another, for being in the wrong seat. Our own seats were lost to standby passengers who would not move. The little boys were left with nowhere to sit at all. At one point Matt and I were scrunched up into a single bunk, trying to get comfortable enough to read our books but it was not possible. Luckily, we were only on that train for 6 hours.

Tune in tomorrow for Matt’s exciting account of the train ride and possible causes of his mysterious illness the next day!