a day in the life...

Many apologies for the lack of updates recently. As you can probably imagine, things have been hectic, to say the least.

The first three children (Amol, Poonam, Mahesh) arrived on June 21st and had a bit of time to adjust to the arrangement before the others came, which was probably good because they’ve had a challenging time getting used to the home. Then the three oldest boys (Basraj, Akash, and Sanjay) showed up at our doorstep barefoot on Monday night, carrying a torn plastic bag with two pairs of ill-fitting pants, two pairs of shorts, and a shirt between the three of them (imagine if you will that before we could even take them shopping for more clothes, we had to take them (barefoot) to a shoe store to buy them sandals so that they would be permitted to enter the clothing store). And so, the past few weeks have been the beginning of our long-term living-together-as-one-big-happy-family arrangement.

Three days after arriving, we had a nerve-wracking little running away experience with Amol, Mahesh, and Poonam, who, after the honeymoon excitement of the first couple of days had worn off, decided that they didn’t actually like being subject to rules, discipline, or supervision, and didn’t want to go to school or have to do at-home lessons and studying. Its fairly typical of street children to run off, as numerous social workers here have assured us, but this was hardly consolation at the time...thankfully they’re back with us now, and seem to have finally settled in.

Progress has been made on various fronts—teaching the kids to say please, thank you, and excuse me, insisting that they wait for everyone to be served before digging into food and having them wash them their own dishes after meals, explaining that the clothes hamper is only for dirty clothes, creating a schedule of chores with a little checkbox chart...oh yes, its been interesting. There have also been hundreds of learning experiences for the children, some fairly trivial (how to use the hand soap dispenser) and others of the utmost importance (how to use a toilet!) in terms of their adaptation to life in our home.

I’m sure any parents out there (mine included) are going to read this with this "see, this is what WE went through all these years" sort of smirk, but I PROMISE these kids are more challenging than I ever was! They’re GOOD kids but they’ve never had anyone instill in them that school and education and studying are valuable, nor are they used to people telling them what they can and can’t do, or where they’re allowed to go and where they aren’t. They don’t understand that they shouldn’t write all over the (newly-painted) walls in chalk and/or pen, don’t know about the importance of capping markers or flushing toilets, can’t sit still for longer than five minutes, etc. They have all also grown up in a world of violence and early exposure to things like alcohol, tobacco (that’s right, all of our 8 to 11 year-old boys chewed tobacco and a few used to drink alcohol regularly!) and other unsavory elements. It often feels like the only language of discipline they understand is rigorous corporal punishment, which is problematic because we don’t employ physical discipline, and somehow, the threat of "time-out" pales in comparison to that of severe beatings, and they don’t always feel compelled to listen/obey as a result.

I’ve been asked to describe a typical day at the home, and I’ve got to say, that’s a rather challenging undertaking, mainly because we haven’t managed to fall into an entirely foolproof routine yet, and there are still plenty of mini crises that pop up daily. However, the day begins at roughly 8:30 (we’re thanking our lucky stars for that, because for the first two weeks, we had enrolled the kids in an English medium school that BEGAN at 7:00am, which meant getting up no later than 6, every single day...*shudder*), at which point the children harass us awake to make breakfast for them. [We’ve been informed that there is a precise science behind the Indian dietary and ablutionary routine, which I tend to shrug off as superstitious mumbo-jumbo, but the kids seem to prefer their particular order, so we don’t interfere.] Teeth brushing first, then food (generally toast, fruit) with chai, and then showers for the boys (Poonam is the only one who chooses to shower at night). After everyone is clean, fed, and dressed, we head over to the other house for two hours of English learning time—we’ve taken a second house in the same building so as to have ample room for volunteers to stay, as well as extra space for a classroom, playroom, and office for ourselves, so we’re in the process of setting the classroom up with bookshelves and floor mats and a large whiteboard for the wall.

English time is going pretty well for the kids. Many have fairly short attention spans, so we try to keep the activities varied and interesting, and it also helps that we (directors and volunteers) equal the children in number, so we can teach them one-on-one and tailor everything to their individual strengths and weaknesses (ahem, like Akash, who, after 5 straight days of trying to memorize the names and spellings of the colors, still can’t get them straight...). All in all though, they’ve learned a great deal of English, partly from this academic time, and also from having to speak it with us at home. We’ve thrown in a few English movies too (hallelujah for Disney), although those happen mainly in the evenings.

Geeta, the caretaker and cook, arrives around 10am and begins the lunch preparations in the main house. We bring the kids back over to eat around 11:30, after which, last minute school preparation chaos always takes place (tracking down misplaced pencils, Poonam requiring twenty minutes to braid her hair, putting shoes on, bringing bookbags downstairs, etc) and we’re out the door by 12:15. We go by rickshaw to drop them at school, because their new school is across the river and not within feasible walking distance. We chose this school because it is one of the few public schools in Pune that boys and girls are permitted to attend at the same time. At most schools, girls go to school from 7am to noon, and boys from 12:30 to 5:30; however, this arrangement would require that the entire day be spent shuttling kids back and forth, and as well, we would have very little time to work with all of them together for English tutoring because they would be split up according to gender.

After dropping them off at school, we directors and volunteers have a bit of downtime, although it hasn’t proven very relaxing as of yet. There are always numerous errands to be run—grocery store, bank, MG Road—cleaning to be done, meetings to be had, clothes to be washed, administrative paperwork to be finished, and a long list of overdue emails to write (sorry about that!). Geeta starts dinner preparation around 4:00, and those of us who are home generally help with that in whatever way we can—chopping vegetables, peeling potatoes, etc. Jackie is intent on learning the secret of perfect chapati making, so she has become Geeta’s sidekick in the kitchen, hanging on her every word and trying to remember the correct proportions of ingredients so as to be able to recreate them at home in the US. Two of us leave around 5:15 to pick the children up from school (all 6 kids plus an adult crammed into one rickshaw is rather uncomfortable so we usually take two), returning home around 5:45 with chattering, hyperactive kids in tow. Geeta serves them chai and biscuits at 6, after which we take them outside to play kickball, four square, volleyball, soccer, cricket, jumprope, Frisbee, etc in the dead-end alleyway below. This is technically Jackie’s activity time, but depending on how much energy the rest of us have, we often go out to play with them as well.

Everyone comes in around 7 or 7:15 and the kids play or work on their school work until dinner, which isn’t until 8-ish (a little late for us Americans, but as I said, the kids have this specific routine they like to follow). After dinner, we try with varying success to involve them in clean-up and chores, and they generally run off to play and work on schoolwork afterwards. The bedtime "process" begins around 9:15, at which point they brush their teeth and put pajamas on (although we’ve had some issues with pajamas because they aren’t used to having separate clothes for sleeping in, and don’t understand why they can’t wear the same grubby clothes they ran around in outside to sleep in). The boys go to bed around 9:45 or 10, although they don’t generally fall asleep at that point, and bedtime is undoubtedly one of the most exasperating times of the day for us directors as a result. Poonam (the only girl) has a room to herself currently, because we’re waiting to receive 2 more girls, and since she’s a bit quieter and better behaved than the boys, one of us reads with her before putting her to bed. Hopefully we’ll be able to introduce the same reading-before-bed concept with the boys in the near future as well, but at present we have enough trouble just getting them to lie down long enough to fall asleep that the idea of actually trying to sit and read with them before bed is daunting.

The putting-to-bed process is generally over around 10:30, at which point we all collapse and go to sleep as well, occasionally with minor interruptions from the kids (Mahesh’s bed wetting, Amol’s sleep walking, and Poonam, who often nuzzles her way into one of our beds in the middle of the night because she is scared of the dark and doesn’t like sleeping alone).

AAAAND there you have it--a day in the life of those of us at the AIC home...stay tuned for more updates soon, free time permitting!