Loren Dobkin

Loren Dobkin, who taught English in rural Bihar with Dakshinayan, recounts her experience -  a good read for those going to India !

In May, 1999 I went alone to India to volunteer to teach children English through the Dakshinayan organization. I arrived in New Delhi and met with the coordinator of Dakshinayan, Sidharth Sanyal, who sent me to work in a tribal village in Bihar. It is difficult to sum up my experiences there in one paragraph, as they vastly changed my perception of the world, specifically the developing world. My words cannot do rural India justice, but I will make some attempt here, albeit futile.

I lived with a Canadian couple and our local supervisor, Deena, in a hut, without running water or electricity. I slept on a board, sometimes with mice, and many many bugs. The children we taught were wonderfully enthusiastic and embraced us eagerly.  I admit, though, I don't think we taught them too much.  We devised our own lesson plans, with the aid of a volunteer journal which outlined the various other tactics of teaching english that had been employed by our predecessors. Basic materials were lacking or deteriorating, such as markers, pencils, even notebooks for the children, which was frustrating. Whether or not they learned English seemed of little consequence to their lives, however, as they are farmers and there is no white- collor work for them unless they travel hours upon hours to the nearest city (where English is little spoken anyway!). In the long run, perhaps, as foreigners penetrate the tribal regions with advancing infrastructure, English literacy may be of help to the village, in maintaining their property rights, or empowering them in other ways. This is merely my own speculation.The beauty of my experience was in absorbing what I could of their culture, the beautiful land, and recriprocating the villagers' warm gestures. My most vivid memories are of the children looking up at me adoringly as guided their hands to write the alphabet letters. Especially the slower ones, and the girls, seemed to cherish special individual attention, and a break from hauling younger siblings around. They used to walk me through their village, pointing, teaching me their tribal language.  They were so beautiful. Many were minorly (but constantly) sick, some had disorders and seemed to be suffering, and they were beautiful. I miss them and think of them often.I remember also sitting in our chimeny-less kitchen hut reveling in the way the words rolled off the cooks' and helper-childrens' tongues, as easily and spiritedly as they joked around with eachother.I still can't make heads or tails of my experience there. It remains an array of independent memories, smells, feelings that I cannot fit neatly together, much less into my present life in Canada.  India haunts me now. It seems unreal but so close, like a ghost. It was a difficult and poignant lesson in how little I know about the world. I realize now that the people who live every day in developing areas, rural India particularly, know much more about what they need than I, a pretentious Westerner studying their condition, ever could. I realize also that we are more intimately connected than I originally presumed. Despite the language/cultural barriers the villagers and I shared much: smiles, giggles, greeting bows of respect, and songs. We understood eachother in many small ways.  We were not of two different worlds (the First or Third Worlds), but very much of the same one.

I do have some general advice for those who are thinking of traveling to a similar place for the first time: Rid yourself of as many preconceptions as possible before you go. Let your future in such a place remain open and blank. If people ask you what you expect to happen, reply simply, "I don't know" and you will find that this is truth.I loved India. I loved India immensely.I could not have envisioned the path India would take, seeping into my heart and mind. If I had, I would have been wrong, and blocked its secret entrance-way.

By Loren Dobkin