Saturday morning we were up bright and early as we were supposed to leave for Dhadhare at 7:30am. However the restaurant took an age to produce tea and toast so it was 8am by the tiime we left. Dhadhare is about 9km from Wada but the road is such that it takes half an hour to get there. The school has between 150 and 200 pupils. This is one of the schools that will receive science equipment. The children gave us a demonstration of two games played between schools – Khokho which is a complex tag game played by both sexes and Kabaddi which is a contact game played only by the boys. On Sunday night I watched a Maharastra vs Uttar Pradesh Kabaddi match on TV. I have been given the rules for Khokho so I will be trying to get a Wellington School to adopt it. The children also danced for us and presented bouquets of wild flowers.
Returning to Wada we then did a walk into town. We were subject to two welcomes – the first from a group of people at the start of the shopping area and the second in a hall involving the local MP and an official from the Education Department. This involved speeches and more flowers. The science equipment we ordered on Christmas Day and we presented the microscopes to the head teachers of the schools in Dhadhare, Amgaon and Varsale.
We had lunch at Mahesh's Wada house and met his delightful daughter who is studying to be a homeopathic doctor and his wife. Medical students in India on graduating are required to do one years service in a rural area. Then it was off to Nakadpada. This village is very remote. The village is off the end of the road shown by Google Maps. The road is too narrow for a bus and there is no public transport to the village. It is a walk of about 3km to the road where buses run. This school, has only 27 pupils. They are the first generation in this village to be schooled and the parents of the children are mostly illiterate. Three girls at the school had excelled at athletics in the regional competitions in spite of running in bare feet against opponents in runnng shoes. They have asked for shoes but on arriving at the school they mentioned they had no water supply and would like a 1000 litre tank and a water purifier. A neighbouring farmer is willing to pump water to the school from his bore. This has been ordered.
The government have stopped the traditional practices in the tribal areas to preserve the forest. Dhadhare has a large water bottling plant nearby which provides employment but Nakadpada (and some of the other villages) now have little work. There are crops growing around the houses but I think this is mostly subsistence agriculture rather than cropping for sale.
In the afternoon we had press conference. This was much smaller than the one in Mumbai and very few difficult questions. After the press conference samosas were had at the Ambavane house in Wada where Pankaj's father lived before moving to the HAL village at Ozar. There was of course the traditional welcome to the house which I have now come to expect.
On Sunday we visited 2 more schools. The first was Amgaon. This school has made good use of sponsorhip to get a quality toilet block and has a bore water replenishment project where overflow rainwater from the schools water collection system is pumped underground to replenish ground water.
Although it was Sunday the children and their parents arrived to give us a welcome. Unlike the other schools it is close to the main road and has the possibility of internet access. The science equipment we bought was at the school and we presented it again to the head teacher. This school has about 150 pupils. There was singing and dancing and tea. Pankaj bought biscuits on the way that were distributed to the children at the end of the presentation.
Karanjapada is not very far from Amgaon but is down a very rough road. The surprise is the 300m of new concrete road built to the school site. The school has 60 pupils and very imaginative staff. They have managed to install e-learning by downloading material when in an area with internet access and then using it at the school. The children presented a selection of educational cartoons they liked and were able to operate the projector themselves. There was also so low cost but very clever learning aids produced by one of the teachers, There is a tradition of art in this area that tells the life story in a painting. This school has yet to receive anything from us but we still got an enthusiastic welcome from the whole village - children, parents, and lots of older people had gathered.
The school at Versale is about 15km from Wada and too far for us to get to on top of visiting the other two. After this I will become a tourist, but with still perhaps a few special – Mahesh Mhatre will give us a tour of Mumbai on Monday.
I need to report that we have spent about INR151,000 so far on science equipment, benches and cabinets for the science rooms and a water tank and purifier for Nakadpada school. The spending of the rest of the money will be organised in the new year.
No comments:
Post a Comment