India, Part 11

The guest house where we stayed with the visiting team.  It's bigger than it looks!

In this last picture post from our India trip--I will be doing one more post with videos--I'd like to simply share a few bits and pieces that I haven't covered in my posts, about some of the good folk we met at the school.

The headmaster and his wife, the Hauzels, are a talented, kind and friendly people.  They sorely miss the school where they used to work and from which they come, in the hill country of Mizoram, next to Myanmar (Burma). They showed me pictures of their home town, built on the steep sides of a mountain ridge.  But as with other faculty we listened to, they felt called to work in this place, and work here despite their homesickness.  They are an important part of the program since they both have experience and teaching credentials.  As far as I could tell, Mrs. Hauzel was the only person on campus who could play the electric piano they have in the assembly hall.

Jemima actually works and lives in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya state, a few hours' drive from Riverside school. She was visiting a friend at the school and helped with the cooking of our meals.  Did I mention that they fed us like royalty three times a day?

Jemima started off somewhat shyly, telling us about the people of the area while we ate.  Then we discovered she has a degree in sociology, and we got more assertive in asking her questions and taking in everything we could find out from her. Jemima is an impressive, intelligent woman. She explained about the social problems that are a challenge in this region:  drug addiction, marriage at very young ages (12 and older), teen pregnancy, drug abuse, a high suicide rate, and family violence. Her information and suggestions helped us greatly in ascertaining what our faculty and students could do to be of help to this region as we build more support for this school.

This is the dean for the small girls' hostel. I grew particularly fond of her for two reasons.  One is that she reminded me a bit of my amah when I was the age of the girls she's caring for.  Here's my amah's picture:

But more than that, I appreciated her caring spirit.  I had developed a terrible cough on my way to India from a cold that never reached the runny-nose stage.  The dean noticed, though, and brought me some lozenges.  Then at the end of our visit she slipped a farewell gift into my hand:

It may look like just a little roll of mints to you, but you have to see in in context.  These teachers are paid something between $200-300 a month.  They have so little, that a roll of mints is a significant gift!

And then there was the small boys' hostel dean (doesn't she look stunning in blue?). She heard me play the electric piano in the assembly hall, and ooh and aahed about it. "Please, please, come here and teach us music," she pled.  "I would love to learn to play the piano."  I realized that my piano lessons as a child were taken for granted, while for her and many, many of the children at Riverside school, piano lessons would be a marvelous privilege.