“Ma’am le, ma’am le, humko story padho na. Ma’am le, ma’am le, humme English padhao na”[1]
- I was surrounded by screaming kids, ranging from probably 5 to 12. The older kids – the 9th and 10th
standard kids - were more circumspect, but still probably preferred our little
interludes over their regular lessons (as anyone would). Where was this, you ask? This was Voluntouring in Government High
School, Wanla, Ladakh. 125 students with
25 teachers, and 3 of us voluntourists (sometimes 4). We’d tied up with 17000ft.org (look them up)
to work with school kids to improve their English, even as we got to see the
Real Ladakh, doing homestays in the more remote parts of Ladakh, instead of
traipsing around seeing only the touristy bits (which also we did)
The day we first met the Head Master and teachers, some of the teachers
were eagerly welcoming, asking for our help with English grammar and other topics
that they found difficult to explain.
Others were more guarded – don’t disrupt our classes, said one sternly. Ten days later, as we gathered for our
farewell cup of tea, I asked some of the teachers for a comparison of how
they’d felt when they first met us and how they felt as we left. The best response – Last Monday, we felt “yeh
loge kyon aaye hain?” Today, we feel
“yeh loge kyon jaa rahe hain?”[2]
What brought about the shift? We
all really, really enjoyed what we did.
Sometimes, we took classes with the regular teacher sitting in and
observing. A novelty for us – none of us
were trained teachers and none of us had ever taught school kids before. But most of the time, we did impromptu
lessons. Like, when we discovered the
kids had trouble with tenses, I started making up sentences they could relate
to – “I sell rice. Yesterday, I _____
rice”. Now, fill in the blank. And so simple past tenses of some key verbs
were learnt through conversational English.
Sometimes, we’d get into debates.
I was reading a story to some kids of the 7th grade, when we
came across the word “wrestle”. To
explain it, I turned to 2 of the 3 boys in the class and described how they
sometimes fought and rolled in the mud, which we girls (there were some 5-6
girls in the class) never do. This
bright eyed little boy tells me – hum tho baahar se shaitaan hain, lekin andar
se shareef hain. Yeh loge[3]
….. and he strategically trailed off with a far away look in his eyes.
Ladakh has an Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, a
day care facility, which typically operates out of the local school
premises. This means, there are infants
in prams and strollers right alongside the older kids in the school. During assembly, the ICDS kids form the first
row and gaze around silently absorbing the procedures until one fine day, a
uniform is slapped on them and lo, they are in school now! Assembly is conducted by the school
monitors. It includes prayers in English,
Hindi, Ladakhi ….. news of the day, thought for the day, general knowledge or
trivia …..everything that is there in any school. Some kids will take turns to come and perform
a song or a poem ….
The Wanla school was formed by merging
smaller schools of 7 surrounding villages and was therefore a residential
school. The boys lived on the 1st
floor while the girls lived on the ground floor of the residence in some 3-4
dormitories. Each dorm had kids of mixed
ages, and the older kids helped look after the younger ones. Sometimes, you’d find a younger kid go up and
cling to the legs of an older hero worshipped idol between classes, or during
lunch time. Imagine heading to the river
behind the hostel to brush your teeth, wash your face and wet comb your
hair.
The teachers had their own one room -
kitchen-bath residences in the same complex.
Mid day meals were cooked by a cook.
Dinner was cooked by the students, who took it in turn to share kitchen
duty. Every week, one house was on duty
and chores were shared amongst the kids through a nice graphic chore board. Flower beds were irrigated by channeling the
river water towards it and guiding it through makeshift little dams built w
School hours were from 10 am – 4 pm, with an
hour for lunch from 1-2 pm. We’d head
home to our home stay just opposite the school for a welcome break for tea and
relaxation, before heading back to school at 6, for the 6-8 pm Activity
Time. That was when we had our greatest
fun. We started out with story reading,
but then soon went on to make up word games.
We used Flash cards, and with the kids seated in a circle, we’d ask them
to pick a card, any card, in turn and then make a sentence with the word on the
card. The school romeo got the word “chick” – so of course, his sentence was
“there are many chicks in this school”.
His next word was “charming” – so he goes – “I charm all the chicks in
the school”. Would you wonder at the
howls and jeers that went up at each of his compositions?
Another game that we evolved over the days
was with a word grid. We formed the kids
into teams of 4-5 each (as many as 7-8 teams).
Each team had to send 1 kid at a time in turn, to spot a word in the
word grid. The team gets as many points
as the letters in the word. Next, each
team had to find the word in their dictionary.
The first team to do so, got 5 points.
Now, each team had to form a valid sentence with the word to win another
5 points. The ____ is very beautiful,
substituting the required word into the sentence, was the most popular
sentence. Which we found ourselves also
doing all the time – the sunrise is very beautiful, the moon is very beautiful,
the mountains are very beautiful – Ladakh is like that, can we blame the kids
for making those sentences? So with a
lot of “ma’am le, sir le” to gain our attention, the games went on until we
hardly knew where the 2 hours passed and we were done for the day
Wanla was literally a one street village,
with 25 homes and the usual gompa on the mountain behind the village. Before school and between 8 pm and dinner,
there was nothing to do, but admire the view (which we could do and discuss
endlessly) and go for walks. Dinner was
cooked by our hostess Mrs Sonam Dolma – a great chef, we waited in great
anticipation for her meals. Her husband,
Mr Rinchen Dorje, was a master craftsman, employing about 5-6 people and
turning out beautiful carved furniture.
We’d sit around low tables, mopping up dal with Tingmu or Ladakhi skeu
or thukpa with great relish, as we learnt about the oracle of Wanla, the snow
leopard of Hanupata, the farming practices of Ladakh, or that never failing
fallback – the weather. “Mumbai ka
fashion aur Ladakh ka mausam – badalta rahta hai”[4],
as the locals never failed to remind us.
We were never without our little backpacks with extra layers of warm
clothing, muffler, woolen cap, wind cheater – and believe me, one day or
another, each and every item was used
A week into our Wanla stint, one of the
teachers invited us to her home village of Hanupata for an archery
festival. Funsuk, our 17000ft
facilitator went for a walk and returned having fixed up our ride next morning. And so, Wednesday morning, we excused
ourselves from school duties and set off for Hanupata. People had gathered from many surrounding
areas and the festivities went thus – a round of chhang (local barley homebrew)
or other drinks, followed by a round of live music, singing and dancing (high
altitude dancing), followed by a round of archery. And then the cycle begins all over
again. The dancing got more inspired as
the drinks flowed. Our host from Wanla
was foremost in imbibing, distracting us from the festivities at hand, as we
wondered about how we would get back home on the narrow winding Himlayan
roads. As it turned out, Funsuk just
commandeered his vehicle and drove us all home, leaving our host to find
himself a ride the next morning!
From Wanla, we visited the Dha’Hanu villages
of Garkun and Darchik. These are 2 of
the Brokpa (or Drukpa) Aryan villages, considered to be founded by remnants of
Alexander’s army and the last of the pure Aryans. They consider themselves unique, though we
felt that while they were distinctly different from the Ladakhis, their looks
were not unlike many Punjabis, Saraswats, CKPs or even Iyengars. At any rate, their head gear, featuring a
bright orange flower that we were amazed to discover was not artificial despite
its unlikely colouring, was certainly unique.
Their dialect, traditional attire, festivities, songs etc are considered
to be distinct from the Ladakhis as well.
They do not typically inter marry with the Ladakhis, saying they find it
difficult to adjust with them.
From Garkun, it was back to Leh, and then
some tourist highlights visiting Pangong and crossing Khardungla to have lunch
at North Pullu. And before I knew it, it
was time for me to return to Mumbai and ground zero (literally and
figuratively!). But some things are for
sure – I will be back (17000ft has 22 schools in Nubra Valley, so that’s where
I’d like to head next time round); I will stay in touch with the Head Master,
teachers and students of Wanla; and I have made 3 new friends – my 2
co-voluntourists Delnaz and Shubham (I was so very lucky to find like minded
people on my team) and Sandeep Sahu, my “bad boy” school classmate co-founder of 17000ft
[1] Ma’am, Ma’am, please read us a story; ma’am, please teach us
English”
[2] Why have these people come?
Why are these people leaving?
