Thirty-seven Street Kids

By Jerry Mintz,

(From Ed Rev)

 

 

My time in India was something like being in a dream. It was such a different reality.

 

On the trip from the airport through Bombay, when we drove by the slums, I saw kids run up to the car. They pointed to their mouths. They wanted food and money. People had warned me not to respond to them. But I looked at them, looked into their eyes, and saw that they did not look beaten down or blank, but on the contrary, their eyes looked alive. They looked confident, even proud of themselves. And where there was a group of kids, they seemed to help and support each other, not fight. I wanted to know more

 

When we talk about freedom, unschooling and non-coercion, how does that relate to street kids? I wanted to know.

 

On the last day, after the conference, they said I could go where I wished. They would provide a car and driver. First they brought me to another school in New Bombay, Airoli DAV. I got there for the afternoon session, when there were mostly younger students. Although it was another big school, with over 2000 students, the children seemed quite happy and interested, and the teachers were engaging. I'm impressed with how DAV operates big schools, particularly the architecture. They are very open, with big center courtyards which are well manicured. There is not a closed-in feeling.

 

They brought lunch, which I had with the principal, Ms.Gayatri, and some teachers. Then they provided me with a driver and a guide, who was a bright young woman who did the administration for the school. I asked them to take me to see Usha Nayar, who works with two NGOs, one called TATA, and another called TASH (Technology And Social Health Foundation), which works with people in slums, and handicapped people. I had met her at the alternative education conference.

 

Her office is located in a nice wooded complex in Bombay itself. Usha was going to have some social workers bring me to a slum, but I had other ideas.

 

Ever since I met Rita Paniker of the Butterflies organization, in Delhi, at the Japan IDEC, I have wanted to understand more about the street children of India. Butterflies has a democratic program through which street children and working children can get schooling. At that IDEC, Rite had brought with her a 15 year old boy named Amin, who still lived at the Delhi train station. He was a speaker at the IDEC, and talked about how he had organized a union of working children and was fighting to get recognition from the Indian government as a union. The government said they were too young, to which he countered that they were not too young to work. I taught Amin how to play table tennis in Japan. Later he sent me an e mail from the Butterfly office, expressing wonder that he, a street kid in India, and I, from New York, had become friends in Japan. Still later he e mailed me that he had passed a test and was going on to higher education, and that he had connected with his parents for the first time since leaving them at 11 year old.

 

Coincidentally, it turns out that Usha trained Rita Paniker. I asked Usha if it would be possible to meet some working and street children. She didn't know if it could be set up so quickly, but she called two of her social workers, women who usually worked with handicapped people in the slums, and we arranged to pick them up and go to the Bombay train station.

 

We drove over to the station, which was a beehive of activity. Usha had warned us that it was not likely we would meet any street kids, as they wanted to be invisible. When we first arrived, it certainly seemed to be a hopeless task. But the social workers knew where to go. They bought us platform tickets so we would not get into trouble with the officials there. We went up a big set of stairs and down another. Then from the platform, the social workers motioned to a group of kids who were hanging out between the tracks. Some of them came over to us. They only spoke Hindi, so the social workers translated our communications. I shook hands with them and noticed a white powder on my hands. It was an opiate that many of the street children inhaled.

 

The platform we were on was very crowded, so the workers decided that we should cross the tracks to the quieter side. It must have looked strange: The administrator, the young woman from the DAV school, and the two social workers, in their beautiful saris, myself, and a half dozen street kids, all crossing the tracks. I'm sure the young DAV woman must have been wondering what she had got herself into, but she was a very good sport about it.

 

We talked on the quiet platform for almost an hour. Many other homeless people of all ages joined the circle. As previously instructed, I kept my hand firmly in the pocket which had my wallet, as pickpocketing is a common occurrence here.

 

A woman came over who was living in the station with her four children. She said she couldn't even live in a slum, as the slum-dwellers actually paid rent, and some of those cardboard and metal shacks even had electricity! Nevertheless she sent three of her children off to school every day! One of the most startling sights was when her daughter came back from school, wearing her neat and clean school uniform, her big book bag on her back, only to sleep on the ground at the train station!

 

We met some brothers who had run away from a home which could not afford to have them live there. One brother, 15, bought combs and sold them to people at the station, making about 200 rupees a day, about $5. But half of that went to buy the opiate. And some he sent home to his parents! He said he wanted to get off the drugs.

 

The people who lived there used all kinds of innovative ways to survive, sometimes riding a train to the next station and another one back, just to be able to wash up, or to sell things on the train. Many of them picked rags and plastic to sell for recycling. The people I met were not emaciated, and did not seem downtrodden. The kids played and danced but did not fight with each other. Two girls hit a shuttlecock back and forth with two racquets. Another girl, who looked like a young teenager, took care of her baby. The mother said she sometimes worked cleaning houses. She said that if someone needed medical help they would pool their money and bring them to a doctor.

 

I asked if people did anything to discourage young children from using the opiate. They laughed. The answer was no. But a 12-year-old boy who lived there said he refused to use drugs. He seemed very bright. He also went to school every day and came back to stay at the train station.

 

I quietly arranged for one of the social workers to get some food for the group. She was accompanied by the 15-year-old. They went over to a far end of the station to buy something. I was told to be careful not to take out any money myself, but was to pay her back after we left.

 

We continued talking on the platform until it began to get dark. I then noticed small swarms of mosquitoes buzzing over everyone's head, and I suddenly realized that I had come unprotected to the station, with ashort-sleeved shirt on and no insect repellant. Since I didn't want to get malaria, I decided that we had better leave, and we said our good byes just as the food arrived for the group, with a flurry of excitement. They yelled a farewell and thanks again as we left, and we waved back.

 

One of the social workers, Chitra, said she would follow up with some of the kids we had met. I gave her some extra money for that purpose. She said she would try to get the boy who wanted to quit drugs some help in a program to do that. And she said she'd try to find resources for the other kids.

 

In an e mail she sent me two weeks later she said,

 

The boy who is going to school and not on drugs is Vikram Mandavkar. He is studying in IV std. We saw his school books and note books. Writes very neatly but is not able to say what he wants to do - sports, read books etc." She said she will try to get him a library card at the local library and see if she can get him into a sports program.

 

She continued: "The other boy, Umesh, who is around 15 and sells combs in the local trains appears to be a nice boy. We are working out an arrangement with Kripa Foundation, an organization which works for de-addiction, and I will find out the program schedule from them. Some of the other boys were unavailable the day we went. More in my next mail.

 

I also had an e mail chat with Usha, who intends to come to the IDEC. I asked her if it was possible to set up a program in Bombay (Mumbai) similar to Butterflies.

 

So it seems our connection will continue.

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