Dandi-Walk

Just after returning from the competition a French couple had arrive in Navsari walking all the way from Shabarmati Ashram (Ahmedabad) to Dandi, the way Gandhi walked when he broke the salt law.
To have some company from Europe I stayed with them for the last two days of their walk and joined latter. It was really nice to be out and walk a lot and all the people we met on the way were very friendly and some even invited us to their home or welcomed and honored us with flowers.
Besides walking we saw many places where Gandhi had stayed, slept, done talks etc.
Unfortunately I couldn’t talk much with the French, because they only new little English, but the walk was s a nice interruption and break in my daily routine, but unfortunately made me stay away form the kids for most the two days.

Competition

On February 7th and 8th an art and fashion competition was held in Vinadhjagar. More than 300 deaf students from all over Gujarat came to participate in general knowledge, drawing, henna, hairstyling and mascara, wedding dressings, catwalk and rangoli.
I was so lucky to get the chance to go there with many boys and girls from the school to see all these traditional Indian arts and styling.
In all ways it was a great experience and a lot of fun and with 15 winners our school was very successful. – Apart from some inconveniences according the traveling in the train and the accommodation (all girls and ladies slept together in one big hall, I shared a mattress with two others, and all of us had to take bath in 2 small and dirty bathrooms), I felt very comfortable among all the deaf people. Only few staff could hear and thus nearly everybody was signing. Being the only “white person”, many people took interest in me and this I’ve made many contacts and new friends and could practice my signlanguage. It was a great atmosphere there, everybody was so happy and friendly (and very respectful to me) that we al felt very sad to leave again; but this trip will definitely stay in my mind as one of the greatest experiences and gatherings with deaf.

Working with the deaf

The time after Christmas in the deaf school was dominated by preparations and practices for a competition (chapter ) and “interrupted” by a few events like a kite festival on january14th. Still I managed to bring in a new element into my classes: a unicycle. The kids were really excited and loved seeing me riding it, because they’d probably never seen it before. Theoretically all of them wanted to have a go, but in the end most of them were too scared to actually try it; very often the older students more then the younger ones. The problem was that it was really hard to explain anything to them while riding, because I had to hold but talk with my hands at the same time. In addition to that some of the students didn’t even know how to ride a bicycle and unfortunately I’ve only got one unicycle which makes practicing really hard.
After coming back from the blind school I was confronted with a strange type of boredom and demotivation. Although the students really liked being with me and play with me, they very of the just sat down or started a conversation instead of practicing juggling, Diabolo, etc... Fortunately I finally managed to get their full attention again by introducing new games with everybody playing together.

"Farithi" Dang

After a few days I returned to the blind school to stay there for two weeks. Again it was totally different and I made many new experiences.
Beside music lessons I did also many games and circus activities and a bit of art and crafts with the students. This change helped me to motivate the kids and work against the boredom that had occurred after a few days. But on the other hand it also led to less enthusiasm for music and thus I had to find new ways and methods to make it attractive. Again recordings and English film music helped me, although I never managed to really teach them latter.
Starting new things were not always easy, because often they had never done or seen it before and sometimes just found my practices funny. Especially with the younger kids I started some body percussion. They really liked it, but never managed to really explain it to each other. Thus I had to show it nearly everybody separately (because my Gujarati is still not good enough for big explanations) and this took a long time.

This time I was again confronted with planning problems and sometimes there were no classes available for me, which is obvious when having six classes (standard 1 and 2 and standard 3 and 4 combined) and eight people who do all at least a little bit of teaching. In the end I had an average of 6-7 periods a day, which was absolutely fine and enough. Because other teachers had to give me their classes it happened in the end (especially in the second week) that I had some classes very often and others hardly ever and it made it for me even harder, because I was again and again confronted with all the young students, big classes and sometimes very little concentration and discipline. Especially standard 1-4 had some problems to understand the small differences in melody and words and to remember the text of the songs.

It was very interesting to see how blind students managed to learn juggling. All of them acted very differently and had more or less problems, according to their blindness. Some partially blind children manage to learn the first steps very very fast, while some, who where totally blind even had problems in simply throwing a ball. Fortunately some of the students were very cooperative and helped me explaining. Still I had to make sure that everybody was involved and participated and nobody was left out due to their grade of disability.

Afterwards I have to say that I have had a very good time in Dang in the blind school. I have made good connections and relationships with the people up there and my Gujarati has improved a lot.
Due to lucky circumstances I’ve got my own coconut tree now which will help them to remember me and I’m really looking forward to see all of the kids and staff again. Although it was and will be hard sometimes, the joy of everybody while having me there and their eagerness to play, sing or talk with me has a good effect on me.