I make friends with my camera

Whenever I go into the field area and take out my camera to take a picture, kids who were following me always gasp in amazement. So the other day I turned to them and told them to smile and took a picture of them.


Later on, one of the girls who were following me ran to the day care center in the area, gathered up all the kids in the center, and ordered them to sit on the stairs nicely. While I was busy doing interviews, she kept on stealing glances this way, saying “picture!” and pointed at the crowd of kids who were sitting beside her, eagerly waiting for me. The person responsible for the day care center came out to see what all the fuss was about. My translator explained to her that I wanted to take a picture of the kids. Her tense expression ease down a bit and a smile appeared on her face. She told us a picture is fine, but to take it inside. The children ran inside, situated themselves nicely again. Since I’m not a great photographer, I couldn’t really capture their natural state when they were laughing and teasing with each other, and some of the children were a little nervous when ordered to pose like that. But, I tried my best! After I took the picture, I showed it to the kids. They took over my camera saying “deko deko!” (look! look!) and were very eager to point out where they were in the picture to me. Thanks to this modern invention, I got to be friends with these cute little kids☺

I don’t know how a blog should start but this is the way my blog is going to start. I thought about blogging while I’m in India but, 1) I’m a shy person and I don’t feel comfortable sharing my thoughts with such a huge audience and 2) I’m really not a great story teller. My friend was in fact appalled by the idea of me starting a blog, putting it in a very non-offensive way that when worse comes to worse, he’ll be my one and only reader.

What made me go ahead and start a blog is 1) I want to prove him wrong. and 2) a more legit reason of wanting to influence people through my blogs. I’m not saying that my life is inspirational in any way; let me expand on this thought a bit. I am currently reading Blue Sweater, a autobiography by Jacqueline Novogratz, the founder and CEO of Acumen Fund. Reading about her early works in Africa and the daily happenings in her life made me reflect back on my stay here in India so far. Somehow the book just started this whole thought process and new questions and ideas just keep on popping up every second. Her observations and thoughts might not have mattered much to her at that point, it might not matter to other people who read the book. But it did to me. So, I’ve decided I will share my work and my daily lives with whoever wants to read them, hoping that words and pictures will make people think about trivial stuff in their lives, or give them ideas that will lead them somewhere, somehow, even if it’s just one person, that’s still a progress isn’t it?

And now, story time. When I just started my internship, I was assigned to clean up the data for a project called Childline. The idea of Childline is to have a free phone line that children can use to report domestic abuse cases throughout India. I was assigned to correct the grammar and content of their monthly report that consisted of details of cases that Childline handled during the month. One thing that really grabbed my attention is that there is an outreach component to the Childline program, where the workers at Childline will go out to the community and talk to street children to help them out. Most of these cases were to my surprise, about convincing children to go to school. At first I was very dismayed by the idea because this seemed like a complete waste of resource. Nagging kids to go to school should not be the responsibility of an NGO but the parents of the children and the children themselves! Right, well that’s where the problem is. Most of the adults in these poor areas are migratory workers who go to cities during the day and come back in the evening. Maybe some of them do want their children to pursue their studies so that they would not have to become labor workers in the future, but the reality is, the majority of them don’t care. They themselves were not educated and they have found a job so why should their children take education seriously? In addition to that, if the parents are busy earning money to sustain the livelihood of the family, they don’t have the time and energy to make sure that their children are going to school. When we were little, we left the house saying bye to our parents or were drop-off at the school directly by our parents. After school reaching home, there would be someone, either mom, dad or a babysitter waiting for us to share who we made friends with or what we had for lunch that day. These kids don’t. They can wander on the street on their way to school and back, miss the whole day of school and no one will ever care what they did. Improving education is not just about bettering the quality of schools or financially supporting the children's schooling. It’s also about letting the parents and the children realize the value of education.

I am not justfying whether convincing the children to go to school this way is an effecitve way of imporoving their education level; however, it hit me that growing up in a developed country, I completely took this value for granted till this point.