Hi from India Everyone! Thanks for following our travels!
This is my first attempt at blogging, so please bear with me if it's a bit rough around the edges. In her post, Linda mentioned our trip to the Brickfields, and I'm going to talk about one of the stories from that adventure.
During our tour of the Brickfield schools we were able to observe multiple classes. In one area, children were seated on blankets, outside, under the trees, watching some of their peers write out and solve addition and subtraction problems on a chalk board. It was here that we really noticed how foreign and out of place we were. Some of the children started sobbing because they were so scared of us, never having seen people of our skin color, so different from their own. We quickly moved on as our presence was clearly disrupting the lessons and followed our guides down the dirt road to observe the brickfields themselves. It was here that we were able to observe other students during their lessons. For one class it appeared to be recess and they were playing musical...yup you guessed it, bricks.
Musical bricks, with a small cell phone held by their teacher who stood in the middle quietly projecting the music. When we first appeared the students and their families who were taking their break from working peered at us with wide, hesitant, and in some cases, untrusting eyes, and a few of the students who had been playing ran to their parents, once again afraid of us. But the game continued and eventually I asked our guides if I could play. They were very surprised, but laughed and said yes. When they announced that I was going to participate, there was a shift in the dynamic between our two groups. The parents and other workers laughed and two more of the students ran away from the game, but it seemed as though my joining the game changed how the community viewed us and how we viewed them. Around and around we went, running in the circle while listening to the lilting tune playing from the phone. I was able to make it to the final three, but then, before I knew what was happening, the music had stopped and the young boy and girl I was up against were seated on the two remaining bricks laughing along with the other brickfield families and the others from SMC at my loud exclamation of, "Wait, what?!". In that moment all of our group from Saint Mike's, our guides, and the brickfield families and workers were united through laughter. While we became less scary and more relateable to the workers and the children, we all felt more at ease in their community and less like intruders, and the interactions between our two groups became less formal and more comfortable.
The game and the laughter shared between our two very different groups was able to connect us, allowing us to breach the language and cultural barriers that had stood between us, separating us from one another, and in that moment we were connected.
Thanks for reading!
Amanda Kaulins
This is my first attempt at blogging, so please bear with me if it's a bit rough around the edges. In her post, Linda mentioned our trip to the Brickfields, and I'm going to talk about one of the stories from that adventure.
During our tour of the Brickfield schools we were able to observe multiple classes. In one area, children were seated on blankets, outside, under the trees, watching some of their peers write out and solve addition and subtraction problems on a chalk board. It was here that we really noticed how foreign and out of place we were. Some of the children started sobbing because they were so scared of us, never having seen people of our skin color, so different from their own. We quickly moved on as our presence was clearly disrupting the lessons and followed our guides down the dirt road to observe the brickfields themselves. It was here that we were able to observe other students during their lessons. For one class it appeared to be recess and they were playing musical...yup you guessed it, bricks.
Musical bricks, with a small cell phone held by their teacher who stood in the middle quietly projecting the music. When we first appeared the students and their families who were taking their break from working peered at us with wide, hesitant, and in some cases, untrusting eyes, and a few of the students who had been playing ran to their parents, once again afraid of us. But the game continued and eventually I asked our guides if I could play. They were very surprised, but laughed and said yes. When they announced that I was going to participate, there was a shift in the dynamic between our two groups. The parents and other workers laughed and two more of the students ran away from the game, but it seemed as though my joining the game changed how the community viewed us and how we viewed them. Around and around we went, running in the circle while listening to the lilting tune playing from the phone. I was able to make it to the final three, but then, before I knew what was happening, the music had stopped and the young boy and girl I was up against were seated on the two remaining bricks laughing along with the other brickfield families and the others from SMC at my loud exclamation of, "Wait, what?!". In that moment all of our group from Saint Mike's, our guides, and the brickfield families and workers were united through laughter. While we became less scary and more relateable to the workers and the children, we all felt more at ease in their community and less like intruders, and the interactions between our two groups became less formal and more comfortable.
The game and the laughter shared between our two very different groups was able to connect us, allowing us to breach the language and cultural barriers that had stood between us, separating us from one another, and in that moment we were connected.
Thanks for reading!
Amanda Kaulins
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