India, Part 6

Having shown you the academic part of the school, let me take you on a tour of the rest of campus. The building above is the church/assembly hall. On Tuesdays the younger students have assembly in here, and on Thursdays it's the older students' turn. We also got to watch an excellent cultural show in this hall, put on by students representing tribes from the seven states of northeast India. More on that in a later post.

This small but attractive building is the health center or infirmary. There were three students being cared for here while we were visiting the school. I don't recall their diagnoses, but I think at least one of them had malaria. 

Malaria is rampant in this part of the country. There's a blood test they do to find out right away if someone has malaria, and the illness is apparently quite treatable when identified early. However, one can't be totally blithe about it. Last year one of the students didn't tell the employees soon enough that he was sick, and for some reason he didn't get medical attention in time, and died. It was so sad to see his picture tacked up on the school bulletin board with the words "We miss you" hand lettered on it.

We were quite intrigued by the kitchen and cafeteria. Having lived in the United States for so long with all this country's rules about food preparation and food service, I had forgotten what it might be like to cook in a poor part of the world for five hundred students. The kitchen ladies reminded me of the kitchen ladies at my high school in Singapore--helpful, smiley, and not good at all with English. We loved them in Singapore, and I am certain, having met the kitchen ladies at Riverside, that we would love them there, too.

Aren't those huge serving pots intriguing? The meals are rice and curry, which you can eat with your fingers or a spoon. Each student is responsible to provide his or her own plate and eating tools.

Here, on the kitchen floor, were the makings of the next lunch curry. It was an astounding pile of squashes, and I could only imagine the work it took to prepare the food from these.  But when we saw then serving up squash curry a day or so later, it looked so good!

Electricity is iffy on any given day, and you have to keep things simple. Here the principal is showing two of our group members the cooking pots, which are run by steam, I believe. (I know Husband can correct me on this.)

The steam is generated by a wood fire heating a tank of water, right there in the kitchen.

Just outside is the woodpile.  Nobody bothers to chop the wood. You just shove the ends of the trunks into the fire, and scoot them in further as each section burns.  Simple and efficient!

Just outside the kitchen is the washing-up sink. When the children are done eating, they bring their plate (and spoon, if they used one) out to the sink, wash up, and return their plate to their collection of belongings in their hostel.

Speaking of washing, I should mention that a huge need at the school is adequate clean water. They have just one bore well.  If that goes out, they have no water for 500 boarding students, plus teachers who live on campus, plus day students. The lack of water would become a critical situation really fast. They say that the quality of water from the well is "quite good," but we didn't test it by drinking it unboiled. The school needs at least two more wells, plus a water conduit brought in from the river to the gardens next to the school.

The first evening we visited the Big Girls' Hostel. There are four hostels on the campus: Big Boys, Big Girls, Small Boys and Small Girls. I didn't get the counts of students in every hostel, but a good example is the Big Girls' Hostel with a173 students in it, overseen by one dean who also teaches. (I remember having about 30 girls in our dorm in Singapore during high school, with 1.5 full time equivalents in dean coverage. And we kept those deans busy!)

The design of the hostels is very pleasant.  The great room is used for worship and study hall, and is bordered by dorm rooms with bunks three-high.

The dean told us that she doesn't put girls on the top bunks. They are used to sleeping on the floor at home, and she's afraid they might roll out of the top bunks and hurt themselves. The photo above shows one of the rooms bordering the great room. As you can see, there's not much option for storage.  It looked like the girls on the lower two bunks stored their few belongings on the top bunk.

The two big hostels had 12 bathrooms each. That also amazed me. Can you imagine 173 north American girls living long term--peaceably--in quarters with just twelve bathrooms? Do the math!

The deans are wonderful people. Again, it's the people--the staff and students--that make this school sneak into your heart and take root there. In the picture above are the Small Girls' Hostel dean on the left, and the Small Boys' Hostel dean on the right. These women look after children in the primary grades who have been sent by their families to live in this place and get a good education. And they are so good with the children!

The dean on the left invited us one evening to a birthday party for one of her girls. The birthday girl's friends performed some dances to celebrate her birthday while she sat and watched with a solemn look on her face. And then the dean gave the girl a bowl of hard candy.  The birthday girl went to each of her fellow hostel-mates and carefully doled out one candy per girl. When she was done with that, there was still some candy left.  She cut loose at that point and threw candy out into the group of children and guests attending her party. That must have felt so luxurious!

On the last day, Husband and I sat down and had a good visit with June Joylyn, the Big Girls' Hostel dean.  The day before that, we had watched her teaching reading to a class of 64 third graders. She has no teacher education degree, but she was a natural in my opinion. She shared with us a curiosity about teaching and about deaning, wanting to learn all she could. Our conversation was about discipline.

"They advised me to use the stick," she told us, "but I told them no. I told them I can control the children with my big voice!" She wanted to know what we approaches would advise, in terms of wise discipline methods.  It was important to her as the mother of three, as well as for her work. She listened carefully and joined into discussion with intelligence and insight. I would love to live near June Joylyn and have many more good conversations like that. There is much to learn--in both directions.