One the second day of being in Hyderabad I found out that a group of Microsoft employees have sponsored a local public high school and go there weekly to work with the students. The school is in a poor neighborhood of the city and being a public school, it is lacks some basic infrastructure. Many of the students are pulled out of school by the time they reach grade 10, or even earlier for girls, to work and contribute to their family's income. I wanted to visit place for myself and talk and play with the kids. If I come back I will definitely join this groups and will help out these kids anyway I can.
So on Saturday, Aug 29th, I met up with Gayatri to head out to the school. She had also brought her brother along. Gayatri works at Wipro and her brother has just finished chemical engineering and is looking for a job. They both live with their parents.
We arrived at school at about 11:00 AM. In India schools, some companies and government offices are open for part of Saturday. But fortunately Microsoft and other tech companies close their shops on Saturdays. Just before we arrived at the school the head mistress of the school had left so we could not check in with her. However one of the teachers at school greeted us and accompanied us to the 7th grade class of English medium. Over the course of the day I found out that the schools here have 3 separate language tracks or as they call it medium: English, Urdu, Telugu. Once the students choose one of these tracks then their entire course work is thought to them in that language. However since some of the subject instructors are not fluent in the language of the of that track they end up speaking in Hindi or Telugu with the kids. So the students understanding of English was very limited.
In general their class sizes were very small. Some classes had as few as 10-12 students and some as much as 30.
The schools building itself was quite good. The classes were of adequate size with very tall ceiling. However the rest of the infrastructure of the schools pretty much sucked. The school yard was made of dirt and was full of rocks and construction material. The water fountain was incredibly dirty and the water it dispensed was very likely untreated. The kids had built up immunity to drinking that water but if I had drank it I would have died of a painful death. I was told that the bathrooms were incredibly disgusting so I did not even attempt to go there.
The school super intendments lived in the school itself in a couple of rooms off the school yard. As we passed by I could see some of the women cooking food inside their room.
So we went in seventh grade class. The kids already knew Gayatri and she introduced her brother and I. Once Gayatri kicked out all the extra students that had followed us in the class we were left with fourteen students: one girl and thirteen boys.
We really didn't have an agenda so I just started describing how I got from Seattle to Hyderabad. I wasn't sure of how much they could understand so I looked around to try to find a map to show them my flight path. There was a small map pinned near the ceiling about 10ft off the floor. It was probably there for years without ever being used. So with the help of the kids I took the map down and use it to show them where I live, where my parent live and how I got to Hyderabad.
At this point I realized that the kids had no idea what was the difference between a country and a continent. I asked them to name a few other countries in Asia beside India and they responded by listing the name of continents. When I told them that that wasn't the right answer then they gave me the list of ocean names. Well, at least they are good at memorizing, I thought to myself. I played a couple of games with them to hopefully teach them the difference between a continent and a country and some more things about geography.
After an hour the bell rang and lunchtime hour started. Some kids had brought their own lunch, some had no food, and some were going out of the school to buy food. The only girl in the class offered some of her food to us. I thanked her and politely refused. She had very little food and I was worried about getting sick.
After lunch we went up to the 10th grade class. The class had about 30 students but most of them were absent because of a religious holiday. The kids in the 10th grade were much more disciplined. Every time I asked them a question they would stand up say "Sir", respond, and then sit down. And they were very shy but once we got to know each other they ask more and more questions about where I came from, if I was married, etc.
They pointed out that one of the boys in the class had a girlfriend in the class just below us. And they kept teasing the poor boy. I asked them what it would happen if her parents would find out. They laughed and said "Beatings!".
We talked for another hour and then I offered to take their class picture and then send it to them. I took a few pictures of them and then went to the seventh grade class and took some pictures of them as well. As we're leaving a whole bunch of kids congregated around us and wanted their pictures taken as well. So I took a few group shots of them.
Here are all their pictures. I will print them and send it to them by mail.
As we left the school I thought to myself that I had a pretty incredible experience. My experience of going to India would not have been complete without this.