Working Days

Our days volunteering at Parijat consist of:

(a) Guessing when (or if) our driver will turn up - as the Indian economy explodes - everybody is spending money on cars, but nobody wants to drive themselves. And who can blame them when the roads already resemble a funfair bumper car ride and drivers are so relatively inexpensive (for the middle classes anyway). Unfortunately demand is much higher than supply meaning that drivers can earn three times more than teachers and some (not ours) have annoying little habits like drinking a bottle of rice wine at lunchtime to take off the edge.

(b) Negotiating the traffic to school - its about 14km from door to door, much of which is spent on the wrong side of the road, running red traffic lights or hurtling down country lanes with cows and children just inches away.

Parijat Dairy

(c) Arriving at school, we bid good morning to the small herd of cows in the shed attached to the school campus, remove Tommy (the stinky, adopted street dog who constantly cleans his nether regions) from the school office and set up our computers

(d) Our working day itself is quite varied:

Often we spend hours basically writing Parijat's strategic plan, interspersed either by a brief research session on the internet, kicking Tommy the street dog out of the office, or by a member of Uttam's family bringing us delicious ginger tea, purees or fantastic locally grown rice, home made pickles and vegetables.

Teacher's Workshop

We will normally receive a guest who has read about Parijat in India Today, on the internet or in a Local
paper:

On our first day it was a local representative of Aide et Action (the French version of Action Aid) who we later went to see in Guwahati and gave us a lot of useful information.

A number of headteachers from (private) schools in the area have dropped by to offer free textbooks and other support.

A group from the Asian Institute of Management dropped by to make a documentary about Uttam and offer him an 'Inspiration' prize in their forthcoming celebration of local social and business innovators

CNN's team dropped in to film the school - one of whom seemed to be some kind of 'fixer' (the type western journalists pick up in foreign climes to help them out). His colleagues assured us that who knows every policeman, celebrity, politician and crook (those last two might be the same thing here) in Assam. He apparently can sort out any problem we have in India's NE (I don't think we want the sort of problem he can fix).

We have also gone to meet people:

One day we went to UNICEF, situated in the UN's  heavily fortified complex next to Guwahati's
passport office. We were a little disappointed to be honest. We only went to ask if we could have a copy of the handbook issued by UNICEF explaining the new 'Right to Education' act. The communications officer who met us only seemed to want to put us off - stating that things change and the booklet (published in June 2010) might be out of date, that the government was doing all it could - she didn't seem to get the point that the 502 children at Parijat proved the government was not doing all it could. It seemed that as soon as she had ascertained that we were not part of larger charity she could not really be bothered with us.It seemed to us that rather than aligning itself with political bodies, UNICEF should be focused on helping organisations at the grassroots level, or sorting out why government schools are not doing their job.

ASEB School

We went to see another school - this time paid for by the Assam State Electricity Board. Here the teachers earn multiples of those that work at Parijat. The school was well run, but like many others here the headteacher assumed that we work for a NGO / charity and that we have buckets of money to hand out - we informed her that even if we did then Parijat would be our first priority. However, we did not leave the school empty handed as one teacher, who on realising that Monali had an equally beautiful and charming (Monali's edit) sister in DC, was keen to give us a marriage proposal for her son! Monali did mention the possibility of being related (same Family names), but the teacher was unfazed!!

We normally end the day by playing our favourite  game of 'Find the Driver' (normally playing cricket, chewing paan or hiding in the children's hostel) and then braving the journey home.

As we finish at 3 or 4 pm - we try and work on our return, but a combination of i/ crappy slow internet, ii/ perpetual relative visiting and iii/ rampant mosquitos makes it quite difficult at times.