India, Part 4

It was a week ago that we arrived back from Riverside School in the Garo Hills of northeast India (the state of Meghalaya).  We flew into Guwahati (also spelled "Gauhati") and drove west, then south toward Tura.  But before we got to Tura, on the map about where the "GH" is in "Meghalaya" on the west side of the state, we arrived at the school.  To the south of us was Bangladesh; just to the north was the state of Assam, and then north of that the kingdom of Bhutan.

The seven states of northeast India are hilltribe states.  While they are part of India, the people there look more Asian than what we typically think of as "Indian."  The Garo hills, where the school is located, are technically in the foothills of the Himalayas, but they are not at an elevated altitude.  There's rainy season and dry season, and it's very hot there.  Very hot.  And humid.

We arrived in the dry season.  I had seen photos of the school before, and those beautiful pictures of the river valley, with a living green covering the fields and hills and the blue-roofed school nestled by the river caught my attention and drew me to volunteer for this project.  But when we drove into the valley, everything was brown and the air was thick and smoggy, raining down the ash from fires that were burning off the fields and hillsides in preparation for the next growing season.

An organization connected to our church built the school just over three years ago to serve as a K-12 boarding school for children from the seven states of northeast India.  All seven states are represented, with children from many tribes attending the school.  The local tribes in Meghalaya state are Garo and Khasi.  Five hundred of the students are boarding students.  Because of all the tribal languages present, the common language of instruction is English, which the children must learn when they come to school.

The best way for me to talk about the school, I think, is to take you on a virtual tour of it.  This (above) is the classroom building.  The half-circle pediment above the entry was erected to prepare for a sign with the school name on it, but it's not yet been completed.  Eight hundred children attend classes in this building every day from 8:00 in the morning until 1:00 in the afternoon.

We'll start inside by visiting a couple of classes.  This one is being taught by Willy, a volunteer who graduated from our university last year with an engineering degree and is spending a year at Riverside school before heading off to a doctoral program this fall.  (The man in the pinkish shirt giving us the tour, is Rimsu, the principal of this school.)

When a teacher enters the room, the students all stand in respect.  Hmmm.  I rather like that custom!

Here's another view of Willy and his class.  Notice that the desks and chairs are basically multi-student benches.  Because the students are still learning English, they like stories best.  Willy was about to tell them a story when we breezed into his room.  (Parenthetical story, as long as we're mentioning stories:  While we were there Willy went for a walk in the hot sun, got dehydrated and got heat stroke.  His temperature was up to 106 one night.  When we left it had come down to 100 and he still had a saline drip going.  He's doing okay now.)

Here's another classroom, this one being first grade.  You'll notice that there's no concept of class size reduction in India; this classroom had about 50 students in it.  The teacher was sick when we dropped in, and the kids, though somewhat squirrely, were working on writing their numbers to one hundred, with no adult in there.  Amazing.  But it makes sense in a place where you consider education to be privilege rather than an obligation.

We'll continue with our tour in the next post.