Working with Street Kids in Jaipur

Elephants announced our arrival in Jaipur, a city of 3 million people southwest of Dehli. My nephew, Justin, and I are volunteering with an organization called Sankelp, meaning "take the pledge". We're teaching street kids English and Math from 10 to 1 each day. Justin has the youngest kids, and I've never seen him smiling so much. His eyes twinkle as he goes through the alphabet with them, helps them with their numbers and plays with them during recess. They love to climb on his back, hang on his amrs as he hold them straight out, and play cricket with him, though they have to run into the next lot to get the balls he hits. They applaud as he catches their hits one-handed.

I joined Leah, another volunteer, to teach the next older kids. They know the alphabet and many words, can do addition, subtraction, some mulitplication tables. It's funny to watch them add and subtract. They use hash marks for each number then start counting them from one for addition. For subtraction they'll do hash marks for the higher number, then slash through them for the lower number, then count what's remaining. Two digit numbers are even harder to add or subtract but at least I think I got them to do it more simply rather than doing 22 hash marks and adding or subtracting eleven. Now they'll do two and one, and two and one. Carrying is another matter.

In the afternoons we tour Jaipur. Yesterday we climbed a minaret to see the layout of the well-planned city. It's surrounded on three sides by hills, making it an ideal place to see an approaching army. There are numerous forts in the hills. We saw Amber Fort, much like other forts, meaning we're getting overdosed on seeing forts. Yesterday we climbed to the sun temple amids dozens of monkeys which are fed apples and bananas by the locals. The day before we went to the cinema to see a ballywood movie, complete with assigned seats and intermission, and popcorn for a mere 10 cents. Afterwards, believe it or not, we went to Pizza Hut. Today we intended to see one more fort, and have chai as we viewed the sunset, but by the time we got out of the textile shop where I commissioned an Indian tunic and pants, and Justin almost had a summer suit made, it was too late to get to the Tiger Fort, plus, the sun continues to be obscured much of the time by what the locals call "fog", and we call smog.

Viewing everyday life in India is still intriguing. Sitting in the back of the auto rickshaw on the way home today gave me a better idea of the maze the rickshaws, bikes, motorcycles, cars and buses negoiate on these crowded and inadequate roads. Yet it was fun to wave back at the smiling people in the approaching traffic as there aren't as many Caucasians here as I might have expected. Nor would I have expected to meet a Brazilian woman at the textile shop today. She's looking for a "pray" experience here to change her life as in "Eat, Pray, Love". Maybe I'll find that yet while I'm here. My real hope is that this will be a profound experience for Justin.