Portraits of Students

And so we came to the end of our volunteering gig in Bodh Gaya; and it was time to see some test results. No, not the results of students’ tests. There weren’t any. The results from the blood tests we’d taken the previous week. So we walked back to the medical lab, and at first we were told that the results wouldn’t be ready for a couple of days more. But then they pushed some secret buttons and pulled some secret levers, and the medical elves delivered the reports after a delay of only 20 minutes or so. And they were the most detailed records we’d ever seen. Best of all, the news was good — no new unpleasant developments for either of us.

Getting back to the school, we had a few more days of teaching yoga, tai chi, kung fu — just about anything except the English we actually came to teach. We also toyed with gymnastics a bit; and some of the kids were already quite versed in it. In fact, they showed us a thing or two.

Our final day of teaching was Sept. 5. Which was rather fitting, because that was Teacher Appreciation Day in India. The occasion was established on the birthday of the first Vice President of India, who also later became President, and was a distinguished scholar.

Last Day – International Teacher’s Day

It was a festive event, and some of the students sported vibrant traditional attire rather than the drab crimson and blue uniforms they normally wore. There was a wait of a couple of hours, during which the heat built up along with the anticipation. But once things got underway, there were refreshments, music and dancing and special presentations.

The director of the school brought a cake, and he shared it with us by dipping his fingers into it and then transporting it directly to our mouths. We were a bit taken aback, as this is not the mode of food delivery we generally prefer. But we were on the spot, so we played along — after all, we’d just gotten a clean bill of health from the medical lab, so we could take a few risks for at least another year.

We also received a couple of going-away presents. One was a little gold-colored Buddha about 6 inches high, to keep company with the pewter sculpture of Shiva that we were presented with at a school down in the Hindu part of the country. The other was a painting rendered by the young female teacher, especially for Kimberly. It’s an eerily suitable complement to the painting that was done especially for Dennis by a teacher at yet another school we volunteered at in India. While one painting is heavily dominated by red and the other by blue, both depict scenes at a lake.

Our cache of gifts and tokens of esteem keeps growing, giving us increasing packing headaches. These gifts spend most of their lives crammed into our backpacks, and when we got back to the States we’d leave them in a suitable home. Meanwhile, we unpacked them whenever we had space to showcase them, and let them surround us and remind us that in several corners of the world, people appreciate our efforts.

The only thing that really marred the merriment was that the director, who was also our host, mentioned to us, for the second time, that he would like for us to pay 2500 rupees (about 30 dollars) for electricity, since we’d chosen the bedroom with air conditioning. True, we had indeed used the air conditioner, though very sparingly. And 30 dollars was probably not an unreasonable fee — it certainly wouldn’t have been in America.

But we’d never agreed to such an arrangement, nor heard about it until just before the end of the road. Indeed, we’d chosen this location through Workaway, in part because it had stated that no fees were involved And we already were a bit miffed because we’d had the unexpected expense upon arrival of 2000 rupees for cooking fuel, which we felt obliged to pay, or else we would not have been able to cook our meals — while the school’s Workaway listing had stated that volunteers would have kitchen facilities, we arrived to find there was no such thing.

This time, at least he added that if we felt uncomfortable with it, he’d understand if we didn’t pay it. Which is a good thing in terms of maintaining amiable relations. Because we did, and we didn’t.

Already, we’d had the unexpected (though small and probably unavoidable) expense of buying drinking water. Normally we’d obtain our water from the filtered dispenser in the hall downstairs. But shortly before our departure it broke, forcing us to haul bottled water from a store — more costly and wasteful than those big 20-liter jugs, but also much easier to lug around.

After finishing up at school, we said goodbye to the kids we’d come to love, and walked home where we finished packing (finding space somehow for our newest mementos) and caught a tuk-tuk to our next adventure. This time, we were not going to teach or even volunteer. We were going to do something we’d never done before.