Morning Mass at St Anne's (I am now a regular) and coffee afterwards at the convent where I chat with two nuns who teach English in the Secondary level of the Convent High School. Manju and Lalli. We find a great deal to talk about concerning the curriculum. Their school is a government-aided school for the poorest socio-economic group. When it was first founded by the ICM (Immaculate Heart of Mary) sisters from Belgium, they ran it and funded and controlled it. The school had an excellent reputation and even wealthy people wanted their children to be schooled there.
But since then, the supp]y of Belgian sisters dried up and the Kerala government took the school over. With the sisters no longer teaching there the level went down. Roughly twenty years ago, a few Keralan born ICM sisters came to teach there and they have been trying to get the level back up again, but it is an uphill struggle.
It is an English-medium school, which means that everyone is supposed to be trying to speak English all the time, but the reality is that most of the poorer children only want to speak Malayalam. This is particularly so in the playground. Anyway these two teachers are certainly putting in the hours to raise the standards again.
I catch Sr. Mercy as she returns from her visit to the Self Helf Groups. These are women's micro-credit and social needs groups and they have multiplied in recent years. We chat about the meeting yesterday, which was quite a disappointment. The opposition is entrenched in their demands and even the mediators now see how unreasonable their position is. They were impressed at how prepared Sr. Mercy was, with the typed settlement conditions documents we had worked over. I gain hope from that. The upshot is that the priest-mediators are going to prepare a compromise to satisfy both parties. GOOD LUCK is what I say! This could take some time.
[Pic is of St. Anne's graveyard. Notice the Portuguese names.]
After a convivial lunch with the sisters, I return home ready for a restorative nap only to find six people overhauling the back garden. Willing church-going friends of Babu's have set to, hoeing and collecting dead burnable matter. There is a large fire going and I am delighted. All of a sudden I feel full of energy.
There are 4 children hanging around so I grab the baby on my hip and urge the other 3 to help me collect all the tiny (and not so tiny) bits of waste plastic, broken glass, crisp packets, toothpaste tubes, broken pens, discarded sandals and bits of cloth that litter the whole space into a carrier bag. The girls get the hang of it and help most efficiently. They shyly start to speak a little English with me and seem to understand a LOT. The little boy Gaius is a monkey and runs about not understanding the point at all. I get him to put stiff on the fire: old leaves, waste paper etc.. He wants the carrier though and when we are not looking he tips the whole lot in the fire! Sheesh! So we start again. And I don?t let him out of my sight! The baby who has been tetchy up till now is riveted by all the action and smiling. After about 45 minutes in the heat, we stop and the result is amazingly impressive. More work to be done of course, but what a good start!
I have plans for this garden. Just gathering ideas of what is possible at the moment. Some of you will not find this in the LEAST surprising! Afternoon and evening melt away in a restful, air conditioned, catch up in my room. So many emails to attend to and I even read my book - Alexander McCall Smith's 'Friends, Lovers and Chocolate'. Time flies and it's time to turn in. My second week of work starts tomorrow!
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