I met a man who told me that he taught in a night school in a small village outside Auroville. The school itself was just a roughly thatched cottage with a concrete floor and a strip bulb, about the size of my bedroom at home. Every evening 50 children crammed in for help with their homework and lessons in English and Maths. There were only two teachers and children aged between four and perhaps 14, so things were rather chaotic inside. The children were so excited to see us, chorusing 'Hello! Vanakam!'. The extent of their excitement over small things- balloons, glitter, biscuits, was humbling and touching.
We visited at the weekends to play games and sing songs which got in as many English words as possible. On Christmas eve we made lanterns with empty plastic bottles. As we began cutting the tops off them the children looked worried. They'd borrowed the bottles from people around the village, but had promised to take them back. I realised the difference in the boundaries of what was considered waste- plastic bottles are a valuable and useful commodity to the people in the village.
We took paper and paints, glitter and cotton wool for snowmen, all of which the children excitedly transformed into a collection of pictures that covered the road outside. They were beautiful; houses, butterflies, christmas trees, snowmen (which they knew all about from the television). Local women gathered to examine them and eye us suspiciously. I wondered how they felt about what we were doing with the children and was aware of the huge gap in cultural understanding between us. Did they mind that some of the children went home with paint on their clothes? In a community where so much energy is focussed on making a living, doing creative things just for the sake of it isn't necessarily considered valuable.
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