Shishur Sevay

Mime Sir setting up the scene center stage while others wait in the wings.  He is explaining that the girl is pregnant, which brings giggles.  Actually it led later to the question of whether a girl can have a baby without being married… a discussion for another time.  Our girls have a combination of innocence, or rather ignorance, while also having knowledge of sexuality that children of any age should not have.  It’s a real knowledge split… the reality of their lives, and their childness.  I want them to feel safe as children first… a first step in strength and understanding.

OH NO!

IT’S A GIRL!!!!!!

Gibi’s daughter Preety (Harpreet), fifteen years old, wrote an email to me a few months ago:

Dear Mummy,

How are you?  This is for you and the girls.

Love, Preety

I am a girl.
   Who am I?
I am a girl,
    Born in this world.
>
Am I a mistake?
   Yes they say so,
   They call me a mistake.
>
What is my future?
    Not the future,
      Which they see for me,
But what I see for myself.

**********************************

Grandmother tells her son-in-law that he is wrong.                                                                                                                            

Stressed out, he goes to sleep.

                                                                                  The Fairy comes to him in his sleep.  She scolds him,     and enlightens him…. girls and boys, all of us, the same, the same worth, the same to love.

(From the Author — I give up… this is taking hours.  I’ll just post some pics….)

The audience

Mother and Child

.

END OF THE FIRST PART…. KABADI… KABADI… KABADI…TO FOLLOW

I have been trying to post for a week!!!  I am serious.  Last Sunday, 20 January 2008, I decided to document a day, especially since it was a really fun day. So I kept the camera close and took many pictures.  In the morning Mime Sir came, and we had the little ones playing the part of babies in a mime about a woman who is pregnant, and her husband wants a son, and then she has a daughter.  He is upset, very upset, enough to fall asleep so a Fairy comes and tells him that girls are good.  He wakes up and tells the story of his dream, and filled with remorse, he goes to his wife and embraces her and his daughter (well, after she at first doesn’t trust him and shields the baby from him).  We did it several times with different girls, and babies, playing the parts.  Then, since we had all had so much fun, we danced, all of us.

Next, and still before lunch, Gibi  and the girls played a game similar to tag.  The difference was that you had to take a deep breath and could only tag as long as you had the breath to keep saying kabadi, kabadi, kabadi…..  Once you ran out of breath you could be tagged.  Gibi was fierce!!!!!  It was wild and fun.  I took pictures.

Lunch was uneventful.

In the early afternoon a group of five volunteers came from AID-Kolkata to spend time with the kids. (more pictures).  The girls wanted to go to the classroom first with the visitors.  They have been learning rhymes in English and Bengali, and enjoy reciting.  Two of the girls (weak on rhyme) danced instead.  Then the visitors did some recitation too.  Oh, and then they wanted me to.  I led us in "If you’re happy and you know it clap you hands."  Next we headed for the roof.  This time it was skits, mime, running around, sitting around, and then the volunteers (with some urging) did a skit too.

Finally, as promised, we all went to the park!  We all went, handicapped children too.  The kids (our girls and the volunteers — not so far from being kids themselves) played on the playground equipment, wandered around, sat on the swinging seats, and kept the little ones in their arms.  We were a wonderful procession there and back. 

The playground is a real treat.  We only go when there are enough of us to keep an eye on the girls.  Girls don’t play outside much here.  And without a lot of us around, teenage boys will start hanging around and making us uncomfortable about staying there with the girls.  Girls don’t do much by way of sports for the same reasons.  In the US I’m used to girls’ soccer, baseball, volleyball….  Actually, women don’t even go out as much, even to markets — I know it’s changed in many places, but not here.  Actually, even the fish market in the morning is all men out shopping.

But, back to the technical difficulties.  I started that evening to put the pictures up on the blog album pages.  Then my broadband quit for a day and my dial up is too slow for pictures.  Then the broadband was fixed, but the typepad album kept dropping the pictures.  And then broadband quit again.  I have to remind myself this is Kolkata and everything that works is exported.  Well it was like that, and then I had to travel to Bangkok for three days and came back yesterday.  I started again last evening to try to put up pictures.  Today I spent about five hours… I’m not exaggerating… but the pictures that are listed are not the same as the ones that show up and the captions got lost on some….. So, I will try to put some pictures into the blog itself and see how it works.  But I won’t try to do much by way of captions, you will have to guess… 

It’s a rainy day today.  Some staff didn’t show.  We sent the big kids to Seema’s to see the Republic Day Parade on her TV, and to spend the day, which they and she treasure.  So, I’m at the computer… and happy to be home.  I’ll post this so if anything gets lost in trying to put up pics, at least this is posted… with the reason for my silence… Technical Difficulties.

I enjoy the mornings most of all.  I love waking up at five, Ganga’s smile …

Well, that’s how i started this just a minute ago, but instead I’ll write about what just went on, because it’s how things are here, moment to moment, with these children… basically with any children. Class was just over.  One girl (Girl A) came down first and stood next to me, gave me a hug, said something I didn’t understand, but it was just nice babble.  next think I know, just as I started writing, is that Gibi is bringing her to me, and the others are all coming too.  (no one wants to miss a good scolding of someone else).  The first girl (A)had called another girl (B) cross eyed (some truth) and said she would hit her, and lifted her hand in the threat.  Gibi heard the whole thing.  We don’t know the provocation, but Girl A if often more predator and Girl B more vulnerable.  Some of this is directly related to shades of skin color… which we struggle with in terms of ingrained prejudices.   Anyway, I heard the whole report (I’m the judge) and said Girl A had to say she was sorry, and touch Girl B’s feet.  Girl A was crying by now, and did what she was told.  At that moment Girl B put her arms around her and wiped her tears, and hugged her and the two of them went off arm in arm.

I don’t know what it’s like as reader, and maybe it’s my own blindness to my kids, but they see so NORMAL.  Because they are orphans, their behavior is much more examined.  They have some very bad street language, but other than that, even the extremes of their misbehavior are within range of what I’ve seen in the peers of my American daughters, children of friends, professionals and non…  Recently I saw a listing at the bottom of a yahoo group for help with misbehavior — something to effect of "dontscream?"  but it listed behavior problems, spitting, biting, hoarding, hitting, tantrums.  It’s not that my kids are deserving of "best behaved children of the year" award, but they are so NORMAL!

They were very moody when they came.  One incident would define the rest of the day.  But that’s changed… there won’t be remnants of today’s skirmish… each seems to want her moment of justice, of being heard, and that’s it…..

The skin color stuff will crop up again… it never goes away.

Well, back to the morning… the girls no longer walk like ducklings.  They walk in twos or threes, sometimes holding my hands or Seema’s… just ordinary school girls on their way.  These days Ganga comes in my backpack, and she is truly our ambassador of friendship.  People stop to ask about her, take her hand, say tata…  She makes people smile, which is what she does at five when I open my eyes, and she is waiting for me to see her, and then she smiles… 

Interrupted again… now late in the afternoon.  Here is what happened:  Girl B (the dark and vulnerable one) came to Gibi crying.  Girl C hit her.  I sent Girl C to the corner after yelling she was never to do that again.  Now we had two incidents.  The "provocation" was that Girl B was cleaning her dish too slowly and Girl C wanted to start washing the floor.  (The girls have regular cleaning chores).  I remembered back several months, near the beginning, when the girls got together and announced that they all wanted to leave, to go back to the institution where they had been.  I interpreted this as their wanting assurance they wouldn’t be sent back.  We all talked about it, and on individual polls, only two wanted to go back… Girl A and Girl B.  I wasn’t surprised about Girl A as she was accustomed to be praised for reporting bad behavior of others.  For instance she once complained that another girl had belongings of yet another girl in her locker.  So I asked her what she was doing in her locker.  Are you the police?  "That is not your locker."  I sent her to the corner for going into someone else’s locker.  She had been in a system where you got points for reporting bad behavior of others.  Here I ask, "What your business?"   Girl B said she wanted to leave because Girl C was hitting her, which we did not know at all.  We made it clear this was not acceptable, and would not continue.

Girl C has never hit anyone else.  Clearly others have provoked her.  Girl A hit two of our staff people, our darkest skinned childcare workers.  Of course we dealt with the color issue, which is that I yelled at her that she thought she was better just because her skin was lighter… and this was disgusting.  (I"m sure experts would suggest other things to say). 

On this same day I was chatting online with my younger daughter in NY, my Indian daughter.  She said, "Mom, an odd thing happened to me today.  I was having coffee with a (white) friend of mine, and this man (white) came up to me and said, ‘Are you untouchable?  Do you want me to fix that?"  She was upset… and the next morning was still upset.

So Gibi and I talked with Girl C, and I actually asked if she had ever hit anyone else, and she had not.  I talked to her about skin color, and untouchables… and interestingly Gibi translated the same word as dark, and untouchable.  We had a long talk.  She seemed to understand.  She was shocked when i told of my daughter’s NY experience.  I let her know this is everywhere, and terrible.. and why, and about worth of human beings… all the stuff we tell our kids when we try to instill our values, and counteract those they get from outside.  I have no idea if it helped, except she knows that hitting Girl B is something that comes with a lot of discussion afterwords.

Girl B: What is her contribution to being hit?  Well, from my perspective, NONE.  She can be difficult, irritable, fight at times, compete as they all do.;.. but there is no behavior that other’s don’t have in some form.  I don’t think she "invites" it.  This is all about believing the consequences for hitting a dark skinned person are less than hitting a light skinned person.  I don’t know if we can make a dent.  But we all try with our kids because it’s too terrible not to even try. When our children are under discriminatory attack in some way, they can at least know, "Mom says that what is happening to me is wrong."  And when our children are the perpetrators, they can at least know that they are going against our moral values and teaching.  Mom says it’s disgusting.

I’m leaving for Tamil Nadu in two hours — still to pack — but this is normal for me no matter how long I plan.  I will be away three days.  We have shown the girls a map of where I’m flying, where I’m taking the train.  But this morning I discovered that some thought I was leaving for America.  They constantly assume they will be left. 

In August we went to Ramkrishnapur for a day to visit my cow.  Everyone went, all staff and children.  We took changes of clothes, especially for the little ones.  We thought we had prepared the girls, but as we walked out the door one of them asked if we would ever be coming back to this house again.

This morning I went online and found a picture of one of the people I will be meeting in Chennai and then traveling with by train.  I’m going to an ASHA-India leadership conference in Vishnupuram.  I found a picture of Lakshmi Suryanarayanan, principal of Olcott Memorial School and a picture of the school, and showed the children I will still be in India, visiting a school, and talking about education of poor children.   Our girls want us to have a very big school one day.  Maybe this will be.  We are full of dreams.

Leaving is hard for me.  I don’t like being away.  I’ve scheduled the trip to be away as little as possible.  I will miss the girls.  I will miss the little ones.  I will miss my home and my children.

Well, I’d better start packing or I won’t make the plane and I am really excited about meeting to talk about education.

I’ve started to put up some photos in an album…

Happy New Year — my resolutions — for the older girls to be speaking English in a year, and for the little ones to be able to say five words in any language they choose.

Leaving is hard for me, always has been — I’m a little like my girls in that way.