Changes

The school year in Kerala has come to an end (April and May are the summer vacation months here), and I now find myself in a very different work and living situation. Yesterday, all my hostelmates left for home. Those who completed their first year will return in mid-May for a special camp, and the secon-year students will return in June for their model and board examinations, but until then I will be living alone. Yesterday was also the last day for exams at Buchanan Higher Secondary School, so I no longer have any classes to teach and no fellow teachers to chat with in the staff room. Part of me is extremely glad that I don’t have to prepare any lesson plans for the next two months, but the other part of me will miss being with the students every day.

Although I don’t have any more teaching responsibilities for a while, I am still very busy! I have started volunteering with two different organizations in the Kottayam area: Saanthwanam and Asha Bhavan. Saanthwanam is a women’s and children’s shelter tucked away in one of Kottayam’s many neighborhoods. One of my BIGHS hostelmates (a very bright girl named Sharinya) lives there with her mother during school holidays. Sharinya and her mother came to Saanthwanam a little less than a year ago. Sharinya’s father is an alcoholic and was abusive towards his wife and children. There are many women here in Kerala who are in this position (alcoholism rates in the state are high, as are rates of domestic abuse), but many do not seek help from outside. Thankfully, a family friend referred the family to Saanthwanam. Sharinya was granted a place in Buchanan Higher Secondary and her mother received vocational training in book-binding. Like all the residents of the shelter, Sharinya and her mother received professional counseling. Now that Sharinya has completed the 10^th standard and her mother is now a skilled laborer, they are ready to start their life fresh.

This is just one Saanthwanam story, all of the women and children have similar backgrounds of severe poverty and abuse. However, they are finally in a place that is safe and part of a community made up of caring people. The residents of Saanthwanam do all the cooking and cleaning as well as study a vocation (tailoring and book binding are common, although one resident just completed her Masters of Philosophy!). Unfortunately, during the summer months the children have very little in the way of entertainment and their mothers don’t have the time to play with them. That’s where I come in. For three days a week, the children and I play games, sing songs and do arts and crafts. They’ve already taught me a Kerala version of hopscotch (akka—really tough!) and a few Malayalam and Tamil pop songs. They enjoy decorating their home with the crafts we make, and are already more comfortable trying to communicate in English. I absolutely love going to Saanthwanam, and find that the work rejuvenates rather than tires me.

Asha Bhavan is my other commitment during the summer months. This home is run by the Church of South India Women’s Fellowship and is a daycare center for women with special needs. All of the women are over the age of 18 and all have very different ways of experiencing the world. Most of the women are autistic (falling in very different places on the spectrum), one has Down’s Syndrome, and all are very enjoyable. Our day starts with prayer, then gardening: watering plants and picking up leaves. One of the women and I compete to see how many leaves each one of us can gather, I have yet to win. After gardening, some of the higher functioning women go to a restaurant or a tailoring shop owned by the CSI Women’s Fellowship. These women chop vegetables or do simple sewing and draw a monthly salary. The remaining women do low impact aerobics and then the fun really begins! We do crafts and the women take turns at the sewing machine—they are all learning how to do some work. We then have lunch and play a game outside. After we are all hot and sweaty, we come back inside for more crafts. The women love creating and making artwork, and the smiles on their faces after a good game of “catch” could light up the world! Although the linguistic barriers between these women and myself are even more formidable than with other Keralites, we understand each other pretty well. We love to laugh and sing together, and what more do you need to bond with people than that?

So although I find myself without my hostel and teacher friends, I am still surrounded by loved ones. My community in Kerala is growing ever larger. I will miss my hostelmates, and I will be very glad when they return in May and June, but until then I am overjoyed to spend more time with these new friends.

I want to take some time to thank you for your thoughts, prayers, and financial donations over this past 6 months. My faith has grown and changed in ways that I never thought possible. Event though I teach English classes and volunteer at different organizations for my mission work, I often feel that I am the one learning the most from this experience. You can continue to support me by praying for me and for all the people of my community here in South India, following my experience through my blog, and by donating to my mission. give online at http://www.pcusa.org/yav/support.htm#international (click on Sarah Lynn Jones). Right now, I am just $2500 short of the $9000 needed to finance my mission here in India. Thank you all again for making this amazing mission and experience possible!

Small Goodbyes

In Kerala, the school year ends in March, meaning that I only have one more month to enjoy my hostelmates’ company before they leave for summer vacation or for the next step in their education. Classes have stopped at Buchanan Girls’ Higher Secondary School while the students study for and then take their exams throughout the month of March. Needless to say, this has led to quite a change of mood for me. I am sad because soon I will have to say goodbye to many of my hostel friends and happy that I get to spend more time with my teacher peers—the staff room has become quite a playground for us!

Last Friday, I had to say farewell to my aniyati (little sister), Shanu. Shanu is studying in 7th standard and completed all her exams last week, so her mother came Friday morning to take her home for the summer months (April and May). Shanu was one of the first BIGHS students to welcome me to the hostel life. While most of the other girls were, at first, shy and deferential to me, Shanu would talk to me every day, beg me for exercise classes (of which she was the only student with perfect attendance), show me around the school, teach me Kerala children’s games and encouraged the other girls to do the same. With the other HS student boarders, it was a hard fought battle to get them to call me “Sarah Chechi” (big sister) instead of “Sarah Ma’am,” but Shanu immediately adopted the new form address and delighted in greeting me every day with “Good morning Sarah Chechi!”

Shanu has been my constant companion and teacher these past few months, Under her tutorship, I have learned how to wash my clothes by hand, how to tell biting ants from more harmless (if not less annoying) ants, how to catch falling leaves from the “lucky tree” (every leaf you catch guarantees you 10 rupees!) and how to look at life through rose-colored glasses. Shanu doesn’t live far away from BIGHS like her hostelmates, but she has to live here because her parents cannot give her the attention she needs at home. Shanu has a brother and sister, both with severe medical problems that require constant attention. Her brother cannot attend school and her sister can only attend part-time. Shanu’s brother needs kidney surgery, but has to wait until he is older and stronger for it to be a safe procedure. Shanu’s sister has trouble breathing (I believe it’s severe asthma), for which the Kerala climate (hot and dusty) is not exactly helpful. Shanu’s mother has to work and take care of her two sick children, and her father’s job as a truck driver keeps him from home a lot. Shanu herself is not perfectly healthy; she has a small heart defect.

Despite all of this, Shanu has the most cheerful spirit of all the BIGHS boarders. Whenever I was feeling down—having had a bad day or being a little homesick—Shanu could always make me smile again. One day, my classes were very rowdy and I was missing my friends and when Shanu asked me if we were having exercise class I told her that I was too tired. I was sitting in my room later reading, when I heard someone tap on my window. It was Shanu, with a bouquet of fresh flowers she had picked for me. She told me the name of each flower and showed me how to arrange them so that they were the most aesthetically pleasing. She banished my bad mood with a simple act of kindness. Whenever we talked about her family or her home, she would get a little said because she missed her family, but then she would smile at me and say that she was glad she was in the hostel because she could play with me.

I know Shanu has been looking forward to going home, and I’m glad that she will get to spend more time with her family during the summer holidays, but I will miss her terribly. Thankfully, she will return in June with her smile and her feistiness.