On Monday, July 24, we began our third week of volunteer teaching in Faizabad. As in the previous two weeks, we spent the first three days at the campuses in town.

Jingle Bell School and Academy, Faizabad

In addition to his English classes, Dennis led the drama group in another meeting; and again it was challenging because of the limited time and space, and the number of students involved. But the session still made some progress.

In one of the 8th grade English classes, there was a boy who might be regarded as the Class Clown. He wasn’t disruptive, and in fact was rather well-mannered. But he treated everything like a joke, and it was hard to get him to participate in activities. He would not even pick up a pen during written exercises. But when he did contribute something — either orally or by writing on the board — he displayed excellent comprehension and creativity. So it occurred to Dennis that he might benefit from, and make a valuable contribution to, the drama group. Encountering the boy in the hallway between classes, he asked him if he’d considered joining the group.

“No, not really”, he replied, rather surprised.

“Maybe you should”, Dennis told him, “I think you’d be good at it.”

“Really”, he asked, both astonished and flattered.

“Yes. I really think so.”

“Well..”, he replied, “I’ll think about it.”

Unfortunately, it turned out that there would be only one more session of the drama group (it had to be curtailed for logistical reasons), and he wasn’t there. A pity, because it could be the perfect outlet for his evident talents. One hopes he’ll pursue it later.

At her campus, Kimberly received a (temporary) henna hand “tattoo” from one of the older students. This kind of dyed design on the hands and feet, called mehndi, is a traditional decoration in India (as well as elsewhere in Asia and Africa), spanning several religious and folk cultures, that is meant to bring good luck and reduce tension. It’s especially been used on brides, supposedly to help prevent them from becoming a basket case over the wedding ceremony.

Yash Vidya Mandir, Sarethi

And on Thursday and Friday we again returned to the rural campus, Yash Vidya Mandir, where students presented their performances at school-wide assemblies for English Week. Some of the older students performed a couple of skits: Aladdin, and a contemporary morality tale about the risks of becoming too engrossed in Internet usage. The main character was a teenage girl, and some of the other characters were personifications of the social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to which she became addicted. It was a clever little piece, with the moral that while social media can be a useful tool, it’s best enjoyed in moderation.

Both of these performances were impressively done, and on the one hand, we wished that we’d been able to work with the student performers, since that’s right up our alley. (We’d been asked to do so, but it just couldn’t be coordinated satisfactorily with the limitations of our schedule). But on the other hand, it’s hard to see how we could have improved it much.

By the end of the week, our schedule had been shuffled and rescheduled to accommodate more classes. It seems that some of the teachers had objected to the original plan to limit our classroom visits to a few classes that we went to repeatedly, and they demanded their own piece of the pie. So we found ourselves hitting classes we hadn’t been to before, including, in Dennis’ case, upper grades all the way through the 12th. All of which necessitated our rethinking our lesson plans, sometimes at the last minute as we were being escorted to the classroom. Nothing like being challenged to think on the fly.

Kanwa Yatra Pilgrims

Commuting to and from school, we passed hundreds of Hindu pilgrims clad in orange, making a long annual trek called the Kanwar Yatra, which entails collecting water from the Ganges River and delivering it to a shrine. These devotees carried metal pots, often suspended from the ends of poles, to collect the water in. (Kanwar yatra means “pole journey”.) It’s a trek that can take several days — they don’t call them devotees for nothing. Oh and did we mention they do it barefoot?

In our off time, we soaked in more local color by continuing to take little excursions through town. And as usual, the locals were constantly stopping us to take photos with us. One pair of teenage boys stopped Kimberly when she was out solo, and it turned out that they were students in one of Dennis’ classes. They mentioned that they had complimented him on his wardrobe, and he had replied hat his wife wasn’t particularly impressed with his attire in general. (Ironically, our more recently acquired garments, including those they praised, were made in India.) And as usual, the cows and the monkeys all over town were competing for the distinction of being the ruling class.

Back at home, several men had begun installing solar panels on the roof, probably to take up the slack caused by the frequent power outages (common all over the country). In the places we’ve stayed, there were usually solar panels, which might not operate heavy-duty appliances like an air conditioner, but could at least keep the ceiling fans churning during a blackout and providing a bit of merciful relief. Poking around in a closet in the hallway outside our door one day, we found a stash of enormous batteries, all set to be called into service when needed.

These workers accessed the roof via our front and rear balconies, laboring in the morning, taking the afternoon off to avoid the heat, then coming back in the evening until 9:00 or so. They would leave behind metal scaffolding and gigantic metal ladders, both of which the monkeys made into their gym. One morning at about 5:00, the little beasts created quite a racket jumping around on them, and we had to chase them away. Well, one of us did — the other one of us grabbed her camera and aimed her lens at them.

One evening, Dennis went, as he sometimes did, to the director’s pool, to swim with a few other guests. But he’d forgotten that the director was out of town that day, and so there were no other guests. At least no human guests. But there were about a dozen of those furry simians, reveling in their own little tropical vacation. Some of them would even climb up onto the poolside awning, hang from the edge, and drop into the water about 10 feet below. They were a veritable circus act; and it was one of those occasions when you kick yourself for not having a phone handy to record the proceedings for posterity.

July 24-29, 2022