On Road: Stories by Olivia Toye (3)

DAY 3/4 – NANDURBAR – 9/10th Jan 2010

Although I’ve only moved a six-hour-bus-journey North (three hours had there been better kept, less mountainous roads), my surroundings have changed quite significantly. I’m in Nandurbar, a town with a population of 40,000. On arrival at the bus stop the poverty here is immediately starker than in Aurangabad. I’m greeted by goggle-eyed, barefoot children with dirty but smiling faces as they feast their eyes on their first living white-skinned being!

Again, the primary source of income in the rural areas is agriculture (coconuts, rice, sugar, etc) but in the town, by contrast, there is little work. Unlike Aurangabad, no large multinational has outsourced its production here. And there’s no hope of tourism – Nandurbar does not even feature on the map of my Lonely Planet. Instead, I am told that many people find work in construction in the neighbouring province of Gujarat, just 15km away. This again leads to problems associated with migration as children are constantly uprooted. However, the main problem facing education in the region is the variety of different tribal languages – there are a massive 179 languages spoken across this country of 1.1 billion people. In Nandurbar district, this means that many children start school at the age of 6 (first standard) not knowing either Hindi or Marathi. Evidently these children are at a serious disadvantage where the school syllabus is in Marathi thus leading to high drop-out levels. In January last year, Pratham started a programme called, ‘Boli Bhasha’(‘own mother-tongue’) in order to teach children from different tribes, Marathi language. ‘Boli Bhasha’ is a fast-learning project using activity based learning.

In Nandurbar, I was fortunate to coincide with the monthly State meeting of 25 Pratham employees from across the Maharastra District. It was Saturday evening but that didn’t stop anything – after a splendid sampling of the local food I retired to bed – but Vishvajit, the state head, and his team worked on until 3am. Pratham UK should take note of this phenomenal Indian work ethic! Sunday I woke up early so decided to take a walk around the town with its beautiful collection of handmade kite stalls… but it wasn’t long before one of the Pratham workers spotted me. No time for strolling, the ‘4-wheeler’ had arrived to take us on our visits. In the car I was introduced to Pandit who, little to his knowledge, would become my personal translator for the day. He’d learnt English as part of ‘Operation Mobilisation India’ where he worked for 3 years as a Christian missionary. I would also later learn his family had converted to Christianity after a gentleman from South Korea came to his village in 1962 and built one of the 30 churches in the area.

Nandurbar DRC covers 85,000 children across 1059 villages where Pratham has implemented Marati, Maths and English classes. The first village we visited was Avthipada where, to the whole class’ entertainment, I was taught the Marati alphabet by a 5 year old boy named Sujit. In this village I also met a women’s committee who collectively pooled money in order to provide lunch time food for the children and a pre-school care for 3 to 5 year olds. In MotheKadvan village I met Pryanka who spoke excellent Marati, having come through Pratham ‘Boli Bhasha’ programme. When she started school at 5, she only knew her tribal language ‘Mauchi’. I was extremely impressed to realize that this 10 year old knew more languages than me – Mauchi, Marathi, Hindi and now thanks to Pratham, English! By the time we got to the third village, Nangipada, I was beginning to be weary but the children weren’t – oh no! I arrived as 5 girls were acting out a drama show, written by Pratham in order to teach the numbers 1 to 100 in Marathi and English.

Sitting on the cool floor in Pandit’s clay-walled home eating spicey nut chutney with home-made chapatti, Pandit told me of his vision for the future. He has seen Pratham’s reach double in size over the past 3 years. In the next 3 years he told me he will go ‘door-to-door’ to spread Pratham’s message and set up projects in currently inaccessible locations. I know with the determination I’ve witnessed among Pratham employees and volunteers in only the past 3 days ‘sub kutch miliga’,‘everything is possible’.

Olivia Toye - UK