Teaching at the Rambo Memorial School and Working with the Nursing Students

Mungeli, India update: July 13- July 15

Yesterday was the New Horizons Pluto flyby - SO EXCITING! I told as many folks as I could about it and hope to check into the internet later on to see the news. It's very hard not knowing the play-by-play on this long-awaited and much-anticipated space event, but it'll never lose its cool factor and I'm positive images will be forthcoming from the massive amounts of data for at least one year following the flyby. I wonder if they will choose a Kuiper belt object for after the Pluto adventure!

Monday, I had my first classes at the Rambo Memorial School and things went well! I worked on singing with the 7th graders and we had lots of fun! As it turned out, I ended up teaching third graders through tenth graders in sometimes three and sometimes four classes each day. The littlest ones are SO CUTE and so polite! Each class stands when a teacher enters and except for the "usual suspects", most everyone pays attention and asks questions etc. My classes were offered as an "extra" and mainly for those students interested in learning about music and singing. Each class was absolutely packed. Most of the students liked the singing, but not all of them. This year, I had two classes without a teacher in there with me. I feel like I needed someone in there for the occasional question a child asked, for discipline a few times, and for translation of what I was saying and the instructions bring given to the class!

Everyone wanted to shake my hand and say "Good Morning Ma'am!" :-) A few of them dare each other to come up as I'm walking in the schoolyard and say "Good morning" or "How are you?"...I answer and they smile, giggle, and run.

Each evening, I work with the nursing students on singing technique and the songs they use for daily morning chapel services. I also prayer with them and help them in planning some of the chapels. I was also asked to speak several times which was a huge and wonderful experience for me! Neither the students at the school or the nurses at the hospital are used to singing in their head voices, so that's one of the things I'm re-introducing and trying to get them all to integrate. All of the Hindi folk music that I've heard has been in chest voice with some nasality, but it works well for the language and the songs which may have clapping and instruments going on.

Tuesday I taught three classes at the school. One class of grades 3-5, one of grades 6-7, and one of grades 8-9. The school has almost 200 new students this year, making for a rough total of 950! This is a fantastic trend, but they have almost no room as it is. Some construction is being done, but it appears to be rather slow. It is also very loud and going on all day during classes. They are using both the "new" and the old school buildings. I must add here that the new classrooms are overcrowded, filthy, and without proper ventilation (not to mention air conditioning). The old buildings do not have electricity. The bathrooms are unspeakable and a teacher even recommended that I not go inside. In spite of all these things, they are doing the best they can and providing a much-needed education for hundreds of children! The teachers are good and quite dedicated. It is very clear that they love their kids and get frustrated by the lack of proper facilities as well as the lack of resources in general.
After the school day, I rushed back to take a shower as it was BOILING HOT outside with at least 1,000% humidity and I was a big bowl of sweat. Dr. Anil Henry, the head of the hospital took thus year's group of missionaries to see two temples at the edge of a low mountain range. He had to go to the town of Kawardha first for a court case (a child hurt in a terrible auto accident died after two months in the hospital and he was there with the family to testify against the driver) so we went along for the ride and waited in the ambulance while he was in court. As if an ambulance pulling up to a courthouse wasn't enough, there were nine of us inside and all very different-looking so we periodically drew crowds of folks wanting to have a look at us. I found again this year that we were something of a culture shock to just about everyone. In most cases, people from the surrounding villages of any town or those in small towns seemed to never have seen anyone different from themselves, at least live and in person. After the court case was done, Dr. Henry took us to a very large dam and lake. We got out to stretch our legs a bit and then continued on to the temples (See next blog post).

Mungeli, India Mission Trip, Working at the Rambo Memorial School

Today, I attended the morning chapel at 7:30 and then the nurse’s rounds. After breakfast, I wandered around a bit and headed over to the Rambo MemorialSchool. There are 750 students at the school in grades 1-12 and it is an English Medium School. After meeting with principal Avanash, I went with him and Prashanta to a classroom where they had gathered two classes together or fourth and fifth graders. I taught them a song: “Jubilate Deo” (attr. Michael Praetorius), hoping to get to where we could do it in a canon and then began telling them about the differences between head voice and chest voice and what bel canto singing style is. I talked to them about the differences between some kinds of folk music and what classical styles of music included. Then, I started teaching them some basics about music and notes. I showed them various kinds of notes, the staff, and lines and spaces.

They were SO EXCITED! After this, we sang Jubilate Deoagain and I went on to another classroom with two classes combined. After the same lesson, I helped one of the teachers with some phonetics and followed that with another class period of combined classes and then another! Whew! It was super fun, but intense. I wanted to make sure that I was not going too quickly for them as I was teaching in English. There were several teachers there in each class in case anything needed to be explained in Hindi. I thought about it in the third and fourth classes and had them take a fun selfie with me! There is one above and here is the other! 

After 7:30 chapel, followed by morning rounds with the nurses and doctors, I will be teaching three classes per day at the school and then will have sometimes have free time in the afternoons. In the evenings, I will work with the nurses and nursing students. I hope to give them some “new” songs, teach them a bit about reading music so that they can have the tools to continue learning on their own if they wish, and to have them learn the differences between singing chest / throat singing and using the head voice more. This is a huge HUGE concept to practice. In the midst of all this, I want them to laugh and have some fun :-) They are fantastic students!!

The school itself is partially new and there are construction plans ongoing. As far as I know, they do not have any instruments including a drum or a keyboard. Music is not a normal part of the curriculum either and everything I am teaching them is brand new for them. During the year, I am planning to try and get some people together to send some instruments that they can use and some basic music instruction books. If you would like to help me, please let me know at choralmusicrules@hotmail.com

Mungeli, India Journal: Day 2

Today, I attended the morning chapel, currently being held in the hospital library because of the heavy rains. There was a fair amount of good singing going on and some prayers and then during one of the songs, a GIGANTIC clap of thunder sounded and the roof began to wobble down toward us and back. Then, I was told that it was a tin roof and that wasn’t thunder…..it was the giant monkeys jumping on the roof!!! These guys are rather large…

                   

At the end of chapel, we were introduced to everyone and then everyone dispersed. I attended the nurses’ rounds. Today was not a very busy morning so I went back to have some breakfast and afterwards Kahala showed me around the hospital.

We attended the doctors’ rounds and I got to see each patient in the men’s and women’s wards as well as a private room patient. There was an encephalitis patient, one with a back cast, one with splenomegaly as a secondary to what he came in for. I also saw two newborn babies in their incubators. They were in a quiet room by themselves. (Since Tuesday when this was written, there have been ten more babies born and two of them have died). The hospital does a ton of C sections here for two reasons: Malnourishment is high so bone structure demands C section and many women give at a birth very, VERY young age.

After these rounds and exploring the other hospital rooms, someone picked us up to go to the Rambo School. As I was walking across the schoolyard, tons of little kids came running up saying “hello, how are you” and extending their hands! SO CUTE!!! The older ones seemed more shy, but still said hello as I passed by.  I went in to meet with the principal, Avanash, for a while and we talked about what kinds of things the students knew and might not now about various subjects. After our chat, he took me around to each classroom and I got to meet each teacher and say hello to each class. As with my Bulgarian teaching experience, the students immediately stood up when they saw me and said “Goooood morning ma’am” They are being taught in both Hindi and English and the school has grown from 600 to about 750 students. Indeed, their classrooms are extremely packed and they not only need space, but better conditions in general. There is some construction going on at the school, but it is slow.

Tomorrow, I will begin teaching three or four classes (not sure yet) and then I may ride the school bus as it takes them home around various outlying villages. I’ve heard riding the bus is fun and I can see some of the countryside and smaller villages this way. I also met with someone who puts together the weekly Sunday evening service and I will be helping with that as well as meeting with the hospital nurses every evening for music (and English texts) time etc. So excited! Things are shaping up for me to do!

Mungeli is not as hot as Delhi, but it is hot. It’s also high monsoon season and rained almost all day today. I love it!! I tried walking to one part of the village to go to the market, but I was wearing sandals and they were slippery so I will try another day. I did manage to drop off some cloth I bought in Delhi to a woman living near the hospital who is a good seamstress and she will make me a sari “suit style” outfit from the material! To ask her to do this and another errand, we were invited into her house. It had a hardened mud/concrete mixed floor, partially no roofing, but the covered rooms have electricity, ceiling fans, cooking stuff etc. Items like toothbrush and toothpaste, hairbrushes etc. were kept outside between roof tiles. 

looking out from someone's house into the road

Interesting to be in someone’s house. 

The internet has been out here for some time in the town so I am writing daily, but will post all at once when I get the chance! I’ve taken lots of good pictures, but many were from a moving car and not the best. I plan on taking some time for photography in between breaks and monsoon rains!