Two days ago I went to my first girls’ school:\u00a0 Kavaspur.\u00a0 Kavaspur is located about 30 minutes by motorbike from Forbesgunge, and it is an entirely different world.\u00a0 Fields of rice and jute as far as the eye can see, small settlements of mostly thatched-roofed and -sided huts, small naked children running around with livestock.\u00a0 Women, knee deep in water,\u00a0bend over and harvest or plant for 12 hours a day in the heat,\u00a0in addition to taking care of the house.\u00a0 I will never complain about work again.\u00a0 It has been one thing for me to see this on TV or in National Geographic; it is totally different to see it face to face.\u00a0 Such an impact seeing backbreaking work like that.<\/p>\n
The school is a cluster of one and two room buildings with no electricity, so not even a fan to help eleviate heat.\u00a0 I arrived with Dheeraj, my driver\/escort\/translator-cum-bad guy late; the monsoon rain which had cancelled class the day before washed out part of the one lane dirt road that is one of the only access points to this village.\u00a0 I had to get off the motorbike, roll up my pants, take off my shoes, and wade through a calf deep muddy river for about 30 feet.\u00a0 I got pics.\u00a0 Anyway, all the girls had gone home by the time we arrived at the school.\u00a0 So, we sat around and waited for them to be rounded up and sent back.\u00a0 While I was waiting, I surveyed the area to see where I would be teaching class.\u00a0 The estwhile schoolyard was under water; even without water, it was unsuitable, which says a lot since my standards of ‘unsuitable’ have come down several pegs here in Bihar.\u00a0 The classroom was too small and cramped with desks.\u00a0 I settled on the three and a half foot wide gangway that ran the length of the classroom building.\u00a0 I then waited.<\/p>\n
Seventeen girls\u00a0showed…and about half of all the boys in the village along with some adults.\u00a0 Time for class.\u00a0 But there was a problem.\u00a0 I started doing some drills on the gangway (concrete) and about half the girls did not want to participate all of sudden.\u00a0 ?????\u00a0 Dheeraj quietly and meekly came to me and said that the girls would like to do karate in their cramped classroom (apparently, they did not want to do karate in front of the boys who were looking on).\u00a0\u00a0 Okay, fine.\u00a0 Move the desks and benchseats, sweep the floor.\u00a0 Ready?\u00a0 Not quite.\u00a0 The few windows and doors available allowed pesky boys to watch and catcall.\u00a0 Okay, close metal shutters over the windows and the metal doors, so no light or breeze.\u00a0 Fine, can we begin now?\u00a0 Well, yes and no.\u00a0 The boys outside took it into their minds to pound on the metal shutters.\u00a0 Oh, how pleasant.\u00a0 And now I know what it is like to teach karate from inside of a tin can that is being used in a kickball game on a hot summer day.\u00a0 Oy.<\/p>\n
I say this now, but at the time, I was swept up in trying to teach, so just rolled with it.\u00a0 And the girls’ enthusiasm was terrific.\u00a0 I had them doing jumping jacks and changing directions on them, had them doing push ups, stretching.\u00a0 We went over basic karate punches, and I had them hit me in the stomach.\u00a0 Let me tell you, these girls really wanted to hit something.\u00a0 They all had strong punches, if not particularly good technique wise.\u00a0 Not much of a surprise given the type of work that they have probably been doing since they could stand.\u00a0 After learning some basic wrist grab escapes, it was time to go.\u00a0\u00a0Tin Can Class\u00a0had\u00a0finally ended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two days ago I went to my first girls’ school:\u00a0 Kavaspur.\u00a0 Kavaspur is located about 30 minutes by motorbike from Forbesgunge, and it is an entirely different world.\u00a0 Fields of rice and jute as far as the eye can see, small settlements of mostly thatched-roofed and -sided huts, small naked children running around with livestock.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.greentaraproject.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}