Overwhelmed by Fabindia

It is said that every new beginning is hard, but starting as a volunteer in a small school like Fabindia in a small town somewhere far away in the state of Rajasthan in India seems to me to be more than just hard. It is the most challenging and exhausting thing I have ever done.
Sanna, Airiin and I have been here a little week and during that time we have all had ups and downs. The ups are times where I believe that this will be a very good experience with time. When I can see that as soon as we settle in, adjust and get to know the people and the place, we will start enjoying the children and ourselves much more. The downs are the times when I feel incredibly homesick and more than anything just feel like packing my things and going home. It is also when I can only lie down because of a very bad stomachache caused by the change of food and water here. We have all fallen sick and are still not fully recovered. There are so many things to deal with in one time and it drains my energy hence even a small thing seems hard to conquer at times.
Despite of this and the fact that we did not have an easy first week of our time here, I am optimistic. After all, the main reason why I am here is to be with the children and they are the absolute best thing. They are smiley, happy, very talkative and eager to ask us questions and tell us about their own lives. There is a very big difference between these children and Danish children. Instead of waiting for us to approach them, they greet us with loud voices and fight for our attention. In the mornings, we take the school bus with all the children to the school and the moment we step into the bus, kids from all sides yell at us for attention and want us to sit with them and talk to them. They all talk in the same time and touch and grab us. It can be exhausting trying to pay them all attention and listen to all of them, but it is also comforting that they are so interested in us and it makes it easier to get to know them.
When the bus reaches the school, everyone gathers for morning assembly. Here the children sing the national anthem, pray to God and pledge their devotion and love for their country. Announcements are made and then it’s time for class. The school has a library, office, staff room, computer room and science room besides a play ground and class rooms in relatively good condition although some of the black boards are cracked and almost impossible to write on.

My job will be to assist the English teacher in class 5 and class 6. I am happy with this, because the children in these classes already know a lot of English and that means that I can do creative writing with them and challenge them in a way that will also be challenging for me. Airiin is having class 1 and 2, so she will focus much more on simple vocabulary and I think she will be better at that than I will. I like talking to the small children, but in the long run I probably do not have the patience required. Sanna has class 3 and 4 and this suits her well. Besides English classes, we will all have an Environmental Studies class once a week. In this class, we will be responsible for doing different activities with the children so that they understand the theory better. For some reason I am assigned the computer classes and will be assisting the computer teacher. The computer room contains five very old and dusty computers of which only one has colour screen. None of them have internet access of course, although we are suppose to teach them about the uses of the internet, but that will be done on the theoretical plan, I suppose.
We still have not started in any of the classes other than observing, so I am not sure of how it will all develop. Often, I feel slightly lost and unprepared, but I hope that it will be clearer once I get a better picture of the children and the teaching methods.
Sanna, Airiin and I all live in quite a big house, shared with the principal, a woman named Parineeta Pranpal, who lives on the first floor. We have a bed room, kitchen, living room, dining room and a room for our clothes. It is a good house and food is cooked for us everyday. In the evenings we walk to a nearby children’s hostel, which hosts 35 children, almost entirely students from Fabindia. We will be helping them with homework, but also just playing around with them and talking to them. They all live far away from their parents and so they truly enjoy and need the attention we can give to them.

We have bought local clothes and try to act in the same respectable way as the teachers when at school, but it is evident that we will never become ‘part of the locals’. This is not meant in a bad way, more as a fact. As an example, the children at Fabindia school are all middleclass children, because their parents have to pay 200 rupees (28 Dkr or 4 €)
for boys and 100 rupees (14 Dkr or 2 €) for girls per month for them to attend the school. This means that it is far from all children in the town of Bali who can afford to go there. The first time I called home I spent 280 rupees (40 Dkr or 5,6 €) on a 25 minutes phone call. It is a very small amount of money for me to call my family for so long, but for them it is almost 3 months school fees for a girl. Even the middle class families have a very small amount of money at their disposal every month.

Although it has been a tough start and I have felt very homesick I am optimistic about the half a year ahead of me. I am sure that I will encounter more obstacles and frustrations, but I also think that it will gradually become lighter and more enjoyable. On top of this, it helps me a great deal to have both Airiin and Sanna around and I do not feel alone. We try to support each other, listen and comfort each other when things just become too much for one of us.

Unfortunately, we do not have easy access to the internet and the few places, where some form of slow connection is available, charge very high fees for the use. This means that it will be hard for me to keep up with mails, but please do not stop writing me for this reason. Merely have some patience with me when my reply arrives much later than under normal circumstances. And of course there is the good old fashion way of sending real post letters 