More Rain, Please!

The rainy season is now in full swing. Women wearing brightly patterned saris with blue pieces of tarp tied around their heads for protection trudge off barefoot into the rice field for a day of hard labor. My van flies by students racing determined through the downpour to the school still too far into the distance; their skinny legs pedaling fast down the crowded street. Life doesn’t slow down when the rains come – this isn’t like D.C. in a snow flurry where no one drives, busses stop running and people fly into paranoia and buy every food item they think they might need for a 10 day shut in. This is like Buffalo, NY in the winter! People don’t just suck it up and make it through, they thrive! I must get asked at least twice a day if I enjoy the atmosphere (which translates to, do you like the weather?). I hate to tell them it’s not that fun being wet all day and the mud between my toes is slightly disturbing and the mold is growing like ivy on a brick wall (only much faster) because it’s so damp so, I smile and say, “Everything is so green! (yes…the mold is green) It is very beautiful!” They take this to mean that I love the rainy season that is securing their financial future for the year as much as they do.

Nothing really prepared me for this experience in a way that I would know how to respond to some of the things that I see and hear so often here. Yesterday, I was teaching my 11th Standard class of Commerce Stream students. These kids have started coming to Madhi from rural schools and their English is far below what I expected from this age group. There is a rather confusing way that schools are made up here. Madhi is a government high school but, not all the kids have gone there from k-12. Some transfer in to the school in 8th Standard coming from schools where there may not be a teacher even present every day. Others come in 11th like this class because they want to take Commerce courses so that they can get in to College. These students won’t be studying anything but Commerce after graduation. Their life is decided for them in 10th grade when they take their board exams. One student told me yesterday that his dream was to be an engineer and I thought that was great but his bench-mate said that it was only a dream because the only thing he could do was b-com. His future is in running a shop or working for an airport. The sad thing wasn’t the hopeless sound of his voice. It wasn’t the look of resolution on his face. The sad thing was the smile that said, “This is my life, might as well wear a smile doing it.”

Is teaching them English really going to change their lives? I am looking for signs that it has given them tools to pick their way through the refuse piles that litter gutters. I am looking for excitement in my classrooms not because the novelty is here to do a half hour side show routine but, because I am teaching them something valuable. One of my co-teachers asked me to read an essay that a student was presenting the other day. It was about the role of the teacher and what they mean to society. It ended with a line that went something like, “Teachers are changing societies by bringing knowledge to the community”. I look at the men and women working at my school in Madhi and I think of the relationships that I am building with them daily here and think that they really are giving something of value to these kid’s lives even if it means that they will be doing a B-comm job the rest of their lives. Maybe I can be the inspiration giver. Maybe my 11th Standard student really CAN make it as an engineer.