I have tried to make a list of things I have done so far but
it does not seem to be working. Not
because I am not capable of making lists but because here every nuance becomes
a complete chaos or adventure in a second. For example on the very first day
they tried to cheat us by making us pay the fare on a bus that did not even go
in the direction of our destination.
Bangalore like India itself is a place where nothing is for
sure. It is a place of contradictions
where poverty and richness, traditional and modern things live together in a
strange symbiosis without the seemingly necessary balance between them. We are
only here for couple of days to buy the
computers, and the necessary things and also we are sorting out the transport
to the village. It is not at all easy but we have arranged a van for Monday at 2pm.
Last Saturday we finally got out of Bangalore and visited
the village which is 330km north to the city. We started the journey in the
Indian way….almost departing an hour after the “official” timetable. The driver
decided to catch up on time by driving in a way which the “bored Europeans”
would not call a life insurance. I don’t understand why it is not clear for them that
in case of a head -on crash with a truck both them and the passengers would die
on the bus. Maybe they think about their
next lives or they just don’t care at all. Well, it did not take us long to see
such a terrible head -on crash between two trucks.
I think in India everything is based on your karma, so we
arrived safe and sound at our destination- a town called Kudligi. It is in
backward India where people can hardly afford to even have shoes. Not much
after getting off the bus all the curious eyes focused on us at the main square
of the town. The bus left with leaving dustclouds behind and we were left with
the curious gaze of the dark brown eyes of the autorikshaw drivers. Some old
people kept stealing furtive glances at us and sent their grandchildren to say “Hello”
to the newcomers. The cloud of dust does not but that of the shyness disappeared soon and we soon found ourselves
surrounded by people asking “Which country you are?” and why we were there.
Prabu, our contact person from the village explained them our project which
resulted in a smile on the enthusiastic
faces of the people around us.
Entering the village was like entering another world I could
only read about in tales. The only people with brick houses and cars are the
mayor and some of the council members. The narrow streets are full of
barefooted children wearing only a small rectangular material around the waist.
First we went to see
the high school building and then the primary school. The first was a small
building with only 3 classrooms for its 120 students. The primary school is much bigger given the fact that it is the
only school for the 500 students of the nearby villages. We saw two empty
classrooms thinking that they had prepared it for us- we actually found out
later that the students don’t have benches and desk at all, they sit on the
floor while they are on the class.
Later we were invited to the mayor’s house where all the
important decisions of the village are taken by all the important members of the community ( and in the presence of the
not so much important people, the dozens of children hanging on the terrace
handrails to see the newcomers)
They asked me to decide where we want the computer room (
the primary or the secondary school) but I wanted themselves to choose from the
2 options. I told them my ideas on the
advantages and disadvantages of each place ( the secondary school has less
space and electricity, the primary school is more spacious but there is no electricity).
At the end they decided on the primary
school and the mayor promised to install electricity as soon as possible.
We said good bye until Monday when we will come back with
the computers and the necessary material.
So that’s all for this week. I hope I can show you more photos and tell you more
stories soon about the project and our village life.
If you want to take a look at the rest of the photos you can do it with a click here : Picasa Green Education
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