The Night School
Having just visited the Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, we headed to Endulen to catch some sleep. It had been a dream of a day. Lions within their pride; giraffes galloping across the plains; hyenas giving chase and hippos silently watching us from he watering hole. The setting sun was golden as it sunk below the Savanna horizon. The six of us (all school friends) sat in silence in the back of the Land Rover Defender contemplating quite possibly the best day of our lives. I even remember the song I was listening to through my iPod mini: Milburn - What you could’ve won. It was one of those moments. Complete and utter wilderness. Complete and utter bliss.
On the way back we stopped off at an American’s residence - Ned. I say he was American - but he could have been Dutch, or Canadian. The truth is I don’t know but when we entered his front room within the primitive shack we sat in candlelight. He spoke about how one of the Masai women had been to bury their child earlier in the day. They had passed due to kidney failure. The mother was now in the back hut crouched over a dry wood fire burning the contents of a large cauldron pot. As Ned handed us all a bottle of Fanta we heard a loud commotion from the adjacent room within the hut - heightened by intermittent screams. It was haunting. Haunting enough to be able to vividly remember a whole 14 years on. Ned was undisturbed, “She fits, we think she may have epilepsy.’ As we left we stepped through the mud hut and there laying next to the grieving mother and the cauldron pot was a young girl, no older than seven or eight, violently fitting.
Sat back in the Land Rover, the shift in mood was stark. The sun had completely gone down and we made our way back to Endulen in complete darkness. No words were spoken between us. No words were needed. I left with a distinct feeling of, ‘We are so bloody fortunate. Don’t forget it.’
Here in India, Fridays have tended to be the day we look at some of the community projects where groups of people set up self-help groups to raise funds for themselves and their families. These range from shops to piggerys. You never quite know what you’re going to turn up to. Last Friday we visited the mushroom group. Half expecting an illegal rave and a consistent drum beat I was slightly disappointed when we turned up at a school with a conference table set up for myself and Tom to address the mushroom entrepreneurs. As the group started to filter in and take their places I couldn’t think of any words to part with beyond, “I hate mushrooms and I can remove even the slightest molecule of one out of any spag bol or curry”. But remembering my audience, I told them it sounded as though they were doing a great job and they should be proud of themselves.
This Friday we headed to the Margaret Barr Hospital and later in the day, the night school. All hospitals are fairly creepy. Having worked in one for a couple of years I never quite got used to them - there’s too much in them to make your mind wander to unnerving places. The Margaret Barr Hospital is situated in Kerrang - up a narrow country road and there it is in front of you. The place was empty apart from a lone man sweeping the steps with a handful of grasses. This man was the caretaker / drug distributor. When a patient arrives, he rings up a doctor in Shillong who then listens to the symptoms and tells the caretaker what to give the patient. Not overly dissimilar to our GP practices in the UK at the moment. They had a nurse up until recently but they essentially sacked her. He seemed reluctant to tell us the reason which made me absolutely certain I wanted to have this piece of information. After looking at the floor for several moments, he cleared his throat and dished out the goss . . .
“She smoked.”
“She what?”
“She smoked cigarettes in the street and in our community, that is not good for the woman. It is not a good look. Maybe for the city woman but not for rural people.” The irony of our taxi driver sat on the steps outside chuffing on a fag didn’t seem to register with him. The caretaker was a fantastic man and to his credit, when the chimney pot nurse was still employed at the hospital he would stay with her all night (unpaid) just so she wasn’t alone. The short story is they now don’t have a nurse and he is now Mr Caretaker and Mr Dispenser.
A further two hours in the car awaited us to get to the night school so we headed off in pursuit of Jowai. I love those moments when you have the car window down, you’ve just seen something incredibly beautiful and you are right in that moment.
As with any car journey here, those moments don’t last. You are always 5cm from death on these roads or at best concussion as your head smashes against the roof of the car when you plough through the endless potholes. Jowai was reached within two or three hours. We pulled up outside the night school one hour after the school was due to close. Not one child had left. They had all chosen to stay and practise a dance in one of the upstairs rooms. As news of our arrival reached them the classrooms began to fill up again. Each classroom had one solitary light which gave just about enough beam to create a shadow. Nothing more.
The children at the night school are all different ages and come from different tribes. There are Khasi, Garo and Jaintia Tribe children here. The children attend the night school because from 5am until 4pm they work. Mainly as house workers: cleaning, cooking, childcare and attending to any other jobs around the house. There are others who work in the fields doing manual work. These children are sent away from home by their families: they bring their biological family money through whatever wages they earn and they are also one less mouth to feed if they are not under mum and dad’s roof. What struck me was how young some of these children appeared. My own Matilda (4) was taller than many of them.
It was gone eight o’clock when one of the teachers thrust a piece of chalk into my hand.
“Teach.”
At this time back home, I would be carrying Matilda up the stairs like an aeroplane (sound effects included) followed by deep negotiations on how long she is going to brush her teeth for, followed by more aeroplane rides, followed by a book, a cuddle, a kiss, a reassurance I won’t close the door, blow a kiss at the door and, “Night, love you.”
The children in front of me were already two hours late going home. Nobody had come to collect them and their mums and dads were miles upon miles away struggling to just get by without any real knowledge of what their child was doing. The children were an absolute dream. They loved the interaction within the maths session and they grinned from ear to ear. More and more children took to the benches and once they filled up they stood congregated at the back. Once the time reached 9 o’clock (three hours after home-time) some of the host families arrived to see where their ‘helping child’ was. I stopped the session and without. fail, every single child came and shook my hand with the biggest of smiles and said, “Thank you Sir”. It was the first time a child addressing me ‘Sir’ made me feel slightly uncomfortable. I imagine they have enough authority to follow and address each and every day.
I made my way up to the meeting which Tom was in. The teachers at the night school showed commitment on a whole different level. Some had jobs in day schools and came to work here straight after. For some, it was all they had. The equivalent of £25 a month. They struggled to make ends meet yet they all still contributed to help pay for the lighting at the end of the meeting. We spoke about different ways to raise funds for the school. Tom and I discussed the possibility of bringing LBQ to the night school. The benefits of LBQ here are endless but we must weigh up logistical issues too. It would be very easy to act on the heart and not the head. We also learnt that the host families had refused to pay for the children’s test entries so they had missed the boat with certain qualifications. Once we finished the obligatory cup of red tea we headed out into the cool Jowai night. The last three hours had been a complete mix of emotions but I was in complete admiration of the teachers and more so of the children.
There are moments you will remember for a lifetime and this was one of them.
No words were spoken between us. No words were needed. I left with a distinct feeling of, ‘We are so bloody fortunate. Don’t forget it.’