Shishur Sevay

 The year was 2001.  This was our second summer in Kolkata.  I’ve carried the picture of this little girl for years, and then put it up on our photo board at Shishur Sevay.  This little girl is part of our history. 

One day we were driving in town and stopped at a rather long traffic light.  The little girl was standing there alone.  I looked in all directions but there was no adult, or child anywhere in sight.  The little girl stood there, expectantly, as if someone would come for her.  I wanted to get out of the car and get her to a safe place, or just stay with her in case someone did come.  But our driver, and others insisted that if I were to get out, people would think I was trying to kidnap her and they would beat me up.  I knew they were right.  Eventually the light changed.  I’d taken her picture.  I’ve never forgotten her.  She is part of the story of why I am here, why we have Shishur Sevay.

That night I called someone who ran an adoption home.  I told her about the child, asked if there is a way to trace children, wondered what would happen to her.  My friend told me there was no system.  Sometimes police bring children to that home directly; sometimes they go other places.  There was no system, no way to know.  I kept wondering why there weren’t computers keeping track, records, posters, emergency sirens.  The situation is not so bad now.  If a child is taken by police to the correct agency, the child can be found if anyone is looking.  But sometimes police don’t take the children to the correct place.  Sometimes children are just disappeared.  And even if they are taken to the “right place” they may still spend their lives behind the bars of a government institution.  Ironically, in 1997, when I was Director of the Johnson & Johnson Institute for Children, I was able to get funds to help establish Childline in Mumbai. 

I’m working on the website for Childlife Preserve Shishur Sevay.  It will be accessible for visually and hearing impaired, and additionally will be supported by Widgit (c)  symbol language.  But it’s writing the content that slows me down and that slows everyone down in the process.  Today I was writing about the origins of our girls.  I was thinking about illustrations.  One of our girls was lost in a similar way.  She says matter-of-factly,   “My mother left me on the corner of the street and told me to wait until she came back.  But she never came back.”  And eventually the child wandered and eventually she ended up with the police, who took her to the government home.  She was there about a year and then came to us.  For a very long time she could not remember the names of anyone in her family, but then she started to remember, started to draw picture after picture of herself crying.

For a few years after I’d photographed that girl left on the corner, I’d talk about her.  A couple of times people offered to look for her, or rather promised they could take the pictures and find her.  I gave out her picture.  I don’t know where she is, but her lostness touched me, so she too is part of this home. 

Our girls all have terrible stories of violence, abuse, suicide and murder of parents…. and of course our two girls with CP each have closed earring holes, so they must have had families at one time.  Well, actually, all our children had families at one time.

I hope this little girl from the corner, who now must be 12-13 years or so, has found a safe place.  Sometimes I try to convince myself that five minutes later someone came for her.  But I know that’s not true.  In Kolkata, if you care about a child you don’t leave her unguarded for a minute.  It’s not safe.   You don’t leave money on the street and expect it to be there when you come back.  You know it won’t be there.  But people leave children all sorts of places, on corners, on trains, next to ponds…. those are the stories told to me by our girls at Shishur Sevay.

This little girl’s picture will be on the website too.  She is part of our history, her story is the story of all our girls, and the story of our lost children.

UPDATE ON 11 OCTOBER 2011

This morning I asked Gibi (Jasvinder Kaur, who founded Shishur Sevay with me) if she remembered this girl.  She said she has her picture up, looks at it from time to time, and wonders what happened to her.  She remembered that I’d sent my driver back to the area, asking about the child.  Yes, this little girl is part of the history of Shishur Sevay.

I consider this one of the “hard subjects” of taking care of orphan children, abled and with disabilities.  Some years ago I fired two teachers for hitting a child so hard her mouth bled profusely.  One was a Montessori teacher.  In both cases the teachers tried to hide what they did, and the children did not report it.  In both cases I learned about it quickly and fired the teachers. 

What happens when children do not have voice?  Yesterday I was suddenly called to the dressing room because Bornali was screaming and bleeding from the nose.   She had just been in the shower and was now on a mat being dressed.  She is difficult to manage physically because of her size and kicking.  No one would say what happened, no one saw anything.  I accepted that maybe she had knocked herself while being bathed.

That was yesterday.  Today I learned that one of the childcare workers had hit her in the face with her fist.  Another person knew but was concealing it.  She told a teacher who also concealed it.  This afternoon I learned the truth after someone told someone who told someone who told me.  The childcare worker and the teacher are gone.  For the teacher it was a second time she has known but not said.

Once, two years ago I looked up from my desk and saw a childcare worker “fling” a child by an arm and leg.  I rushed into the room, but everyone else in the room denied that anything had happened.  There was nothing I could do.  No, I can’t, especially as a foreigner fire someone for something no one else present saw.  Several weeks later this woman did something else bad.  I don’t remember what.  I fired her.  Then I heard many stories of how she had been abusing the children.

This is not unique to Shishur Sevay, or to India.  It happens everywhere.  It’s the “dirty little secret” of taking care of children, especially those who cannot speak.  All doors at Shishur Sevay have glass.  Privacy is dangerous to children.  I know I will “take heat” in the community for this.  I believe that abuse is widespread, in schools, Homes, and homes.  We have a “child protection policy” that says you MUST report any abuse you see.  But no one will do it.

Tonight I hugged Bornali and told her this person was gone, that she would never come back.  Bornali rested her head on my arm and closed her eyes.

No, this is not a joke.  I sent money with the girls to pay their computer fees for the year, along with a letter listing their names.  But a teacher told them that I had to fill out special forms and then take the money to the bank.  The teacher put four payment slips (see illustration below) in with the money and letter and sent it all home to me.  The next day when Gibi and another of our staff went to pick  up the girls, she stopped in the office to find out which bank, as we had never done this before. When she took out the slips, the man in the office became angry and accusatory, wanting to know HOW and WHERE the girls had gotten these forms.  It seems the forms are sold in a booklet  (below) at a cost of five rupees (ten cents) for twelve pages.  So the girls were called to explain how they got the forms. They related that “Aunty” had put them in the envelope.  He asked for the teacher’s name, class, when this had happened.

Two days later, after the money had been paid to the bank, the school asked that the girls bring proof, even though the bank is to do that.  I sent one of our staff, who didn’t know what had already happened, and she proudly brought home a book of slips for five rupees for the rest of the year (not knowing the fee was already paid for the full year.)  But then if she hadn’t, I couldn’t have scanned it for this post, so it’s worth the five rupees and more.

The five rupee fees book

I imagine that some teacher had helped the girls by putting four slips in the envelope with instructions to have them filled out.   She is probably in trouble now, like the teacher who was chastised  for tutoring  our girls with her other students and made to send our girls away.

We all had such high hopes for this school.   Something is terribly wrong there.  Many days only 2-3 of their teachers come.  The girls each keep a diary book to show me each day of what classes they had, subjects covered, and homework.  Many days they write for one or two subjects: teacher did not come.  It’s how they learned tense, positive and negative:  teacher came or teacher did not come.   Before exams the girls are told to stay home and study instead of coming to school.  For people here, none of this is surprising. 

It’s a struggle for the girls every day, but they are really determined.  And I’m determined to do more and more for their education  Next week I’m going to a conference of WORLDDIDAC 2011 in Delhi — immersing myself in education and technology.  There will be speakers from the Gov. of India talking about education plans.  I’m really excited, always trying to see our organization and home in the context of what is going on around us and what is possible.  There will also be talks about inclusion, so it’s nice to see issues of disability included in general education.  And then there is the Exhibition Hall where I want to look at teaching materials as well as hardware, interactive boards, touch screens.  I want the orphans to get what the “rich kids” get.  Orphans need it even more.  They have scars on top of early deprivation and abandonment.  Sometimes that produces enormous barriers to learning.  So we have to be more innovative, we have to try harder.

The girls at Shishur Sevay study in “Bengali medium” which means all of their instruction and printed books are in Bengali, except for English.  One of our girls is switching to English medium learning, and is being homeschooled.  Therefore we must have at least one good English teacher. as she now has to catch up with English reading in all subjects.  Simultaneously I have been working with all the teachers on verbs and tense.  I’ve discovered the girls are confused about tense in English AND Bengali, and that they also lack an understanding of the formal and polite verb forms of Bengali.  So grammar and parts of speech are on our minds, and hopefully theirs at least some of the time.  Two years ago I tried but the Bengali teacher walked out instead of teaching tense and verb forms.  I believe this is about lower expectations by teachers because of the backgrounds of our girls.

Last week I let a teacher go because I discovered she did not know tense  in English, and didn’t really know parts of speech.  She mixed up nouns, adjectives, and verbs.   Today another English teacher, one with years of experience, was teaching how to write a letter.  She and the student spent most of the afternoon working on the letter.  At the end of the day I asked for the final product.  I was really shocked!  Please look and see if you can figure out the mistakes.  If you do, you win a teaching job at Shishur Sevay.  Remember this letter is the end result of three previous drafts.  The red marks indicate the teacher’s corrections.  The language style was provided by the teacher.  (the rule seems to be never to make the student struggle.) 

Find The Mistakes!

I asked the teacher to meet with me.  She could only say that she made mistakes.   I told her I could not have her teach my children if this is her standard.  No, this is not the first “mistake.”  I know exactly what is going on. 

1. She wants the girl to like her, and boasts that she is favored.  I have warned her over and over that this is a trap.

2. She has adjusted her expectations because the student is an orphan, and so this may have seemed “good enough.”

3. She did not expect me to look at the work.   In spite of my work load, I remain quite vigilant in all areas.  It’s how I keep standards from dropping.  Everyone knows my pattern but no one thinks they will be caught.

The pincode in the letter  is wrong (32 should be 38), but I had ignored it.  I learned later that there had been an argument over the pincode.   Gibi, Mrs. Jasvinder Kaur) who is our Vice President, and co-founder with me lives about ten houses away.  She monitors many of the classes.  But the teacher refused to believe her that the code was 38, and insisted that the student was right.  Again, this is an experienced teacher drawing an excellent salary from Shishur Sevay.  We don’t try to “save money” on teachers.   Last week this teacher had another girl in tears about her speech defect, made fun of her, said the others would laugh at her.  I spoke to her about it.  I’m sad about the speech defect because four years ago she was assessed by two experts who said she was fine and would outgrow it, but instead it is worse, especially when she is tense. 

The girls sometimes get very angry with me because I want work corrected until it is perfect.  It’s doable in an assignment like this.  We have had temper tantrums over having to redo work, but eventually it gets done and then the girls always feel good about having something perfect.  Remember, they are always fighting their sense of inadequacy.  It’s a really good feeling to get something right.  It takes work.  I want them to have this experience, the rush of getting it right. 

This evening the girls all went over the “letter” and had fun finding mistakes.    I’m consistent at least — I don’t accept from teachers what I don’t accept from the girls.  These are important lessons for the girls about standards, work behavior, expectations, and getting things right.

Finally, to my blog readers,

Thank King you

I remain

yours faithfully

Dr. Michelle Harrison

ShiShur Sevay school