Day 2

10.30 am
A visit to the kindergarten. I spent two hours in the kindergarten talking with the teachers and observing a very active lesson in which the children chanted rhymes with movements and watched the children have lunch. The lesson was taken by one teacher with the other two assisting, which made it easy for them to talk with me. The atmosphere is very relaxed and the teachers are well in control. The kindergarten is not a central focus for the study but is an important part of the village and I wanted the teachers to know who I was and what I was doing.

The teachers explained that Indian education is very competitive and that exams were of great importance. In kindergarten the children learn to write letters, words and short sentences in English and also in the local language. The write numbers as well as having the chance to use computers.

1.30 pm
Over lunch I asked Victor about the village as a community and particularly about the family structure of mothers and children but no fathers. He understood the problem but said that it would create too many difficulties for married couples to run the houses. First there would be the problem for the parents of treating the children equally. He felt it was inevitable that they would favour their own children, even if only in small ways and that this would be a source of jealousy. He thought too that having men in the Village would lead to other problems, they would have to be found work, or would work outside which would lead to income differentials between houses and when they returned they would want to get together and perhaps to drink and that this could be a source of problems.
All in all, while it might be ideal to have house fathers and house mothers he felt that the structure that had evolved worked.

I asked about role models for the boys and he said it was the Village director and the other men, particularly the Educator, who filled this role and there were also the older brothers, who from fifteen lived away from the Village in the Youth House but who were still in regular contact with their families and who provided a role model for the young boys.

2 pm
Shobha came up to the Community House and I showed her the camera and the laptop and she practiced taking a few photos which we then viewed on the screen. I am still not fully familiar with the software but Shobha is quicker than I am to pick it up (but she does have a degree in computer science). When she left I told her to take the camera and keep practicing with it. Later she showed me the pictures she had taken of the office staff.

3.30 pm
I met with some of the Office staff in Mr Lokesh’s office. They included the project director from the Youth House, the accounts clerk, and the two women who manage sponsorship, local and international. I wanted to explain the project to them so that they would know what we were doing and why. They had been asking Mr Lokesh questions about the project and were curious to know more. I explained how the project had come about and how Barbara wanted to make this project an SOS response to the UN program on Violence Against Children.

I explained that there were three of us involved in the project and said a little about what Peter and Gerhild had been doing. I said we were chosen partly because we were each of us independent of SOS and so would not be seen to be acting only in the interests of the organisation. I said we came from different backgrounds, that I was a university teacher, Peter worked a lot with children and young people in Austria and that Gerhild was a psychologist, and that this mix was intentional so that we might see what we each could contribute.

As often happens, they found it hard to believe that they had been chosen for the project and that I was not going to other villages in India or elsewhere. But I explained that this was something of an experiment and that if it was successful then it may be possible next year to extend the project to other villages.

I said how it was important for the children to participate as fully as possible and how I hoped too that it would be fun, interesting and educative for them. They asked me why I was using cameras and I explained that this was a quick way to get them involved, that talking to them was also important but would be more abstract, especially as they would have to speak to me in English and would inevitably see me as an outsider, as older, white, male etc. Giving them the cameras to use was I hoped a way of involving them very directly and giving them something immediate and concrete to talk about.

They asked me about the emphasis of the project on ‘violence’ and asked how that would come into it. I said we were not going to ask them about this directly. We knew that they came from poor, deprived and sometimes abusive backgrounds but this was not what we wanted to investigate. Rather we wanted to be positive and to look at the things they valued about their life in the Village. The idea was to try and look at what the opposite of violence was, and we knew that this was very difficult and very abstract to talk about but we believed that the pictures would be a way to start doing this.

6 pm
Shobha and I met with the children in the Activity Hall. The children were waiting for us and so were many others who wanted to be part of the event so we had to close the door in an attempt to keep things a little calmer. We began by explaining that it was important to keep hold of the camera and not to drop it or to fight over it. We said too to keep their fingers away from the lens and to avoid taking the camera anywhere where it might get wet. Then we showed them the basic operations, How to switch it on, looking at the screen and pressing the shutter. We said to try and avoid pointing the camera at the mirror – the Activity hall is also used as a dance studio and has a mirror covering the back wall. Today we used only one camera to try to focus attention on it and to keep the event under some control.

Everyone then got to take one picture, which we looked at on the laptop. Most were OK but one problem was that in using the flash there was a delay between pressing the shutter and the picture being taken. This meant that if the camera was moved too quickly the picture was blurred or even cut of the heads of the subjects. The lesson to be learnt (for me) is that more practice with the camera is a good idea! And not just the obvious things! Nevertheless most pictures were OK, just a couple where the camera moved resulting in a fuzzy image or a head cut off.

Then we put the children in pairs and had them photograph one another. This time they were a little less excited and the pictures were better. We ended by taking some group photos and they quickly took control and organised each other (and us). Shobha and I both had to be in the group and to have our portraits taken holding a small chair shaped like a monkey. I hadn’t expected to be a photo-subject and it felt a little strange but I think it is a good sign that they are quick to organise photo-opportunities and to direct the scene.

Tomorrow we decided to try using three cameras, giving the groups more control and taking the cameras to other locations in the Village. Knowing now the degree of excitement this is likely to create we will stay with them in the hope that by the weekend everyone will be more familiar with the cameras being around and hopefully even a little bored by it!

Inside and outside
The emphasis of the project is on the lives of the children, children who here because they have experienced loss, trauma and deprivation. The question we are asking is how they see their lives now, and perhaps how they see their futures, it is not about their past and how it might have affected them. The Village provides the site in which to ask these questions. The purpose of the study is not to evaluate the Village idea, or to assess the work of those who live here, it is simply the place in which the study is to be conducted.

This is the rationale of the study but in practice it is difficult to sustain, at least in so far as first impressions go (I have been here less than twenty four hours). It is difficult because the Village provides more than a context for the study. The way the Village is clearly shapes the lives of the children, and perhaps the adults too. I think I have to try to see it more clearly in order to understand the lives of the children, even though, in the final analysis that is what should count.

First, there is a strong sense of the Village as a small world. Just outside my window is the boundary fence. On this side there are trees and flowers and the paths between the stone built houses are quiet and shaded. The plants attract a variety of birds and butterflies. You might here the occasional child cry (or more often laughing) but mostly it is quiet and peaceful. I understand why Shobha told me she just loves to come here to work. On the other side of the fence there is an area of wasteland, piles of rubbish inhabited by warring packs of feral dogs, and beyond that concrete houses, large gum trees (but few shrubs) and the mix of streets and dirt roads that mark an area in transition from rural to urban as the growing city overtakes its surroundings.

This sense of the Village as a haven, oasis or enclave does not take into account that the children (at least the older ones) move between the inside and the outside. This is where they live, but out there is where they go to school, go to the shops or visit the temple.

It is also a gendered environment. There are more girls than boys in the Village, since boys over 15 leave to live in the Youth House. The sixteen house mothers are the core of the community, along with the aunties – the women who assist them and cover for them if they are ill or away from the Village for any reason, the kindergarten teachers and the office staff. The only men I have encountered are Mr Lokesh, the Director, the Educator and three men who have offices here, Victor, ? the accounts clerk and ? the man who runs the youth house in the city, which provides transitional accommodation for 39 boys who are old enough to be at work or at college.

This gives the Village a domesticity and an ethos. Much of the time seems to be spent cooking, cleaning and shopping; these are the activities that set a tempo to life and they are mostly accomplished quietly and calmly. (Though it is hard to imagine remaining calm while caring for ten children and managing a large household alone). To the visitor this aspect of life in the Village is not immediately visible, and though it is not strictly the focus of the study, I think I need to understand the families better if I am to understand the children. The mothers have all been here since the Village was established thirteen or fourteen years ago. They are all single, some are widows, some unmarried and some are separated from their husbands. They are paid very little but are provided with accommodation and given a budget with which to feed and clothe the children. When I met them they were polite, reserved and respectful. Perhaps when the children take their photographs the lives of the mothers will become a more integral part of the story.

Comments

[Portraits from photos]

Hi there,

I know it has been a while, but is this India project still going in some form or another?

I'm heading to India at the end of this year, and am very interested in participating.

Thank you,
John