Families
BabaBaba and his family are Ahiwars. This name identifies them as very low caste Hindus who come from farming families. Baba and his wife have three children: An eight-year old girl, Resma or Milli; a five-year old boy, Krishna; and a three-year old son, Haman. If Baba is to be believed, all three were born on October 25. TIG provides scholarship funds for Milli and Krishna to attend Sacred Heart Convent School. Baba wanted his children to attend this school because the public schools provide such a poor education. Schooling costs approximately $350 a year per child for tuition, transportation, books, uniforms, and tutoring. Since Baba and his wife, Ramakuiyan, are illiterate (Ramakuiyan also cannot count), they cannot help the children with their schoolwork, so TIG is also paying for a tutor.
Before he married, Baba made a good living “running the tourists” and selling drugs to them. The goal with “running the tourists” is to get them to buy from a shop; the “runner” is given a small percentage of what they pay. His real money came from selling drugs, but when he married at seventeen (12 years ago), he realized that his drug life was too dangerous for a family man. Having given up the relatively lucrative income that came from selling drugs, Baba now lives very much on the edge. Baba and his extended family grow enough wheat, mustard seed, and lentils to sustain themselves, but not enough to sell even if there is a good monsoon. If there is not, they must buy the staples of wheat and lentils, making their financial situation even more precarious. |
JagjeetJagjeet, age fifteen, is in the 9th grade at Sacred Heart Convent School. When he was going into the seventh grade, he approached one of the TIG members and asked if we would fund his going to Sacred Heart, an English-medium school; we agreed to. He had been attending a Hindi-medium school. He wanted to go to an English-medium, private school because such schools are generally better than the Hindi-medium, public schools he had been attending.
His spoken English is very good, but he does not write well in English. He is struggling at his new school because his former education was so inferior to the one offered at the Convent School and, we suspect, he doesn’t work as hard as he should. The school warned us when we wanted to enroll him that the transition to an English school at his age would be difficult and they were right. We continue to debate whether supporting him is the best use of our limited funds, but his grades are improving. In light of this improvement, the principal asked that we let him continue for at least one more year. His father, an excellent tailor, contributes to our work by making the school uniforms for the TIG scholarship students in Khajuraho. |
SamSam, age seven, is in the 4th grade at Sacred Heart. His family is very atypical for our program: Sam’s father is a Christian minister in a Hindu community. There are only two children in the family, Sam and a younger brother, Zion. Sam is an excellent student and his parents well educated by comparison. Indeed, his mother is trying to start a private school of her own, but she lacks financial resources. We pay for Sam’s schooling in exchange for his mother’s tutoring the other students and serving as TIG’s liaison to the school. She understands the complicated Indian school system and reports to us on the work of the children. She also attends parent-teacher meetings with the other TIG families. We find that it is necessary to have someone “on the ground” since none of the other parents can read or write or have attended school.
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