Another Study in Contrasts

You will find Deb's experience at the Independence Day celebration at one of the Novartis-sponsored government schools in one of the earlier blogs. Deb and I went with the Rainbow Volunteers from Novartis to the Sri Vinayaka Nagar Government School on Saturday to deliver message of health and hygiene (the OTHER Novartis-sponsored school went to the planetarium) and to help with story-telling with messages of honesty, loyalty,and hard work. Be advised that the Rainbow Volunteers in Hyderabad have NO association with any American organization that has Rainbow in their name or Log Cabin or LGBT or Cave Bear, etc. Are we clear? All the stories and the presentations were in Telugu, so Deb would smile and appear to be listening intently so the kids would get the hint. That’s a pretty big task as each classroom has about 50 students – no desks, a few books, scraps of paper, bits of chalk. But the kids are pretty good to work with.
I had gone to Big Bazaar on Friday to pick up 100 toothbrushes and 100 personal-sized hand sanitizers. It must have set off a silent alarm. A department manager came over asking me why I was buying all the products. I explained about the volunteering, but they still accused me of buying them for resale. When I finally convinced the departmental people I was buying these for charity, the people at the register were freaked out counting and recounting 100 little bottles and 50 2-packs of toothbrushes. Of course, those people queuing up behind me were not amused.

The hygiene presentation was like the ones your gym teachers would give. At least at my high school, the male gym teachers had to take the male “health” classes which consisted of “wash your hands and brush your teeth.” Looking back, I think the football coach probably would have told us more, but anything about STDs would have brought the wrath of god down. Our women’s sports coach was suspected of being a founding member of local Sappho society along with one English teacher and a vocal teacher. However, Coach Coach’s health instructions to the girls were “wash your hands, and brush your teeth”. Again, anything else would not go down well. But we did have a PowerPoint presentation that was played on an 11-inch laptop so the 50 kids were scrunched very close together. However, as you can see, with the size of these kids, you can tight-pack them into a fairly condensed cluster. I was tasked with giving out rewards for participation. I really couldn’t tell if these were the kids that were actively watching, but we gave them the box of pencils just the same. We did have to watch giving out the hand sanitizers because – NOBODY has ever seen hand sanitizers. We gave them out to the older kids with specific instructions NOT to drink the sanitizers. One little kid who wandered into the room was given toothbrushes and then was bugging me for hand sanitizers. I could tell from his tenacity and skill at working through the bigger kids and continuing to tap on my leg that he has experience on the street begging.
All the girls wanted pictures with Deb. Eventually many of the boys did as well. Here’s the rest of the sights in the school.


And here’s where the school is located. Yes,that IS raw sewage running in the streets. Ashraf, Deb’s driver, was getting worried as we drove to the school. He kept saying: “This is a dangerous area. I would not go here at night.” Deb told him to “man up” and follow the Ambassador which was leading the way. We also learned that the meal that the kids got at the school was probably the only meal they get each day. Their parents have to decide to send them to the school and risk losing income or consider that it’s one less mouth to feed.

So wash your hands and be damned thankful for what you have. I've got the Chowmahalla Palace and Fort Golconda for my next blog. See you then!