Before leaving...
This is my last report before living India and I thought many times if I should write it or not. The truth is that I don’t want to start feeling nostalgic while I am still here, but it is getting more and more difficult to avoid this feeling.During this last month and a half I continued, of course, giving English lessons to Elected Women Representatives, in Barrod village, and to adolescent girls, in Dughera village. However, now I am more focused in younger girls, between 11 and 12 years old because they are really eager to learn. In fact, they appear in my “class”, with their notebooks and pens, immediately after knowing that I am in the village. It is so nice to see how interested they are! And in the beginning of this week we did a mimic game, in order for them to guess the names of the animals in English and, in case they didn’t know, in Hindi. We had a lot of fun and I also participate trying to imitate…a bear!
Besides that, I organized a program about violence against women, in Barrod village, called “Bass or Nehin” (in English “It’s Enough”). I must admit that I faced some problems because I delegated responsibilities to four of my colleagues and I tried to be very easy going and flexible with them, but it seems that it doesn’t work that way. They need to feel there is an authority otherwise it can become complicated to make them work. So, I can say it was hard to organize this program, but in the end we did it.
Normally when the project organizes an event in a village it always starts with a school rally, but this time I thought that we should do something different, in order to catch people’s attention. So, I wrote a play about domestic violence and my colleagues were the actors. However, as they didn’t have rehearsed much, they invented a lot of things that were not in the script. Well, that was not entirely bad…In fact, one of them used the opportunity to talk about different laws that protect women.
After the play I did a speech about the life cycle of violence against women and its different forms having, of course, as special focus India (i.e. female infanticide, dowry deaths). Then it was time for three women to speak: our special guest, the Sarpanch from Gadoj village, Smt. Khajani Devi; the Sarpanch from Barrod village, Smt. Nirmala Devi and finally the Punch also from Barrod, Smt. Urmila Devi (to whom I give English lessons).
My idea was to involve both men and women in this program, but the truth is that only one man, a journalist, plus 45 women appeared. I was happy that so many women were present and my colleagues told me that their feedback was positive, even if not everyone understood completely the message. However, it is a shame that no man was interested in participating in the program…Without them I got a bitter taste because this program was definitely also made for them. My idea is now to try to organize this play in other villages, in order to create awareness about this subject, so I hope that next time some men will come.
From all the work I have done in these last weeks there is one that I am very glad to have had the initiative to go for it. In March we conducted a survey about malnourished children having identified a total of 24. However, the Anganwadi workers (preschool workers) didn’t report to the authorities these children, so basically everything was in the same situation as before. In other words, none of these children was benefiting from a Government scheme that consists of providing double food to them. I found it out because there is a child in Dughera that is malnourished: a girl with 22 months only weighting 6 kg. So, I told what was happening (or better what was not happening) to my project manager and he said that I should write a letter to the Child and Mother Department Office (CDPO) and give it to the responsible, together with the survey. First, I went to the office alone, but the person in charge was not there and, besides that, no one speaks English and my Hindi, as you might have a clue, is not that developed…So, next day I came back with Rinki (a DI) and we explained the situation to the officer. He said that he didn’t have any register of severely malnourished children (grade 4) from Behror Block. Why? Because the Anganwadi workers don’t want to be bothered with that, even if the health of a child is at risk.
In the end of our meeting the officer told us that he was going to Dughera to check the girl as well as the other children identified in the survey. And, in fact, he was there. He measured the little girl’s weight and made sure that the Anganwadi workers would, from now on, provide the double food (baby mix). However, the problem is that the girl is not eating it because she doesn’t the baby mix, so this week I went back again to CDPO and now he is going to give her a card, so that she can have free medical treatment in Alwar Hospital. Besides that, the officer is planning to go next week to Nangalia village to check the 9 children I had identified in the survey.
I still have so many things to know, to understand and to transmit to others…But the clock is not on my side anymore and only the ones more close to me know truthfully how I will miss this country and the people I am working with…They mean a lot to me. More than I could ever imagine…
Before coming here I said I don’t plan to change the world and that, in fact, I would be already glad if I could put a smile in a child’s face.
I have seen this smile… and now it is time to leave…
posted by Naty Bett @ 10:17 AM
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