Visiting Houses
Part of the work of the teachers in Providence School is to visit the homes of the students, find out what their living conditions are and see if they have any immediate needs, rice being the main one. As the three of us were still struggling to put a sentence together in Khasi, our visit turned out to be more about head nodding and smiling in the houses with parents were home, and dancing to Hindi music in the houses without adults. Most of the students live in wooden homes, usually with one room and sometimes a small kitchen off the back.
We took off one Saturday morning to Pynthor, with two students, Wadborlang and Marius as our guides. They’d been warned not to have us walking in circles so they had a perfect plan of the neighborhood made. When we got to the houses it was; polite hellos, vain attempt at communicating and then photo time. We were all far too shy to ask for a photo but our little recruits aren’t burdened with such things as shyness. They grabbed the three cameras and whatever phones had cameras on them and started snapping, getting the parents and children in the homes to move to different positions to get the perfect shot. One little guy, Smit, had my camera and in one house said “Can’t take Miss, too much light”. I didn’t know what he was on about and told him to just take the photo. After begrudgingly taking it he came up to me, very smugly, and showed that indeed, the bulb over my head had ruined the photo. Smart kids!
After the photo session was over we were quickly ushered out of the houses by our guides, they were eager for us to fit in every house in the time we had. They really like us going to their houses. One student, Monaliza, tried to coax me to her house one day. “You want to see baby? I have baby, real small baby. I’ll show you!” I hope to get to her house soon to check out this baby.
Back in Pynthor, Marius and Watborlang led us all over their ‘hood, taking photos of everything they thought we’d like, getting lots of photos we would never have taken. Ones of women cutting grass with a blade, little kids collecting water, and a boy with a plank of wood over his shoulders and two big containers of water hanging from each side. We even ended up with a photo of Marius’ uncle who was sick in bed!
Photos will be up the minute I find them…..
Tags: India, Khasi, Meghalaya, Shillong, Volunteering
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