(article written for Divya Deepas newsletter and blog)At the time I am writing this four weeks has passed since i left India for the travel back to Sweden. It rather feels like a year. The distance and differences between these two places on planet earth makes it hard to understand it´s only a little more than a month since me and Shrinath left Kaliyuva Mane on that Friday morning, waving hands through the car window. Where India was hot and dry, Sweden is cold and wet. Where India is vibrant, crowded, noisy and full of activity Sweden is calm, silent and empty.
Winter is coming to an end where I´m staying now, a city called Örnsköldsvik far up in northern Sweden. A week ago the ice on the sea outside melted and now boats can go over the water again. The birds are coming back again, they fly to warmer places during the winters. In a couple of weeks the snow will be gone and all the trees, bushes and flowers will come to life again after hiding underneath the snow and ice during the long cold winter.
A big difference to the Indian winter we experienced when we came to India in the middle of January. I came in a group of eight Swedish participants in a culture exchange project, arranged by CIU, the Swedish center for international exchange and the Indian counterpart ICDE, Inter-Cultural Dialogue and Exchange. Together with another eight Indian participants we´re spending 6 months together in India and Sweden, working at social projects. Me and my pairmate Shrinath were from January to the end of March living and working beside the children, staff and volunteers at Kaliyuva Mane. During our stay we´ve tried to put our shoulder to the wheel and help the cause of Divya Deepa in different ways. We´ve been organizing and indexing school resources, helping with office work, gardening, teaching and more.
Me and Shrinath spent most of our days in the company of the kids, from the knocks on the door in the morning to the evening meals and TV-watching afterwards. I found them a great group of children, playful and curious. I was struck by how happy the children of the school seem to be. Many of them have gone through terrrible things and come from families with big problems, but with many of them it´s not possible to tell if you dont know it from the start. This is maybe Divya Deepas biggest success, providing a caring, loving home for the children, to give them a stable environment. It´s propably only then it´s possible to provide education that will do any good.
The level of their English varied a lot. Many of them learned much during our stay over discussions on the world, Sweden, India, cricket and more. I am very happy to have been able to contribute to this, and hopefully they have gained confidence in speaking English. Fortunately, the difficulties of language does not apply to a smiling face, a helping hand or for that matter a bucket of colour during Holi! Language is an obstangle, but not for the things that really matter: love, care, empathy. People, no matter of what religion, language or country, fortunately have more similarities than differences.
During my lessons with the children I was constantly bombarded with questions about myself, my family, Sweden, Europe, the world and more! The urge to know more, the curiosity is something that children all over the world share. The objective of the schools should be to use this curiosity, to promote it, to make the children capable of finding out things on their own. Teaching children to search for information by themselves should be of first priority. With all of the worlds knowledge one computer away on the internet, the childrens own curiosity will take care of the rest.
I think that perhaps the bigggest contribution I made to Divya Deepa was to give the children a window to the rest of the world, someone to ask all those questions to. Letting them get to know a foreigner (who gets such an enormous importance in India) and get accustumed to talk English. Hopefully fuelling the urge to get out there and learn more about it, beyond the borders of Mysore, Karnataka or India.
I wish the best of luck to all of you who work on to make it possible for schools like Kaliyuva Mane to continue working. Giving opportunities to the underprivelaged and promoting a different kind of school than the one provided by the government. Without teachers teaching with their fist, were teaching is driven by positive things like love and curiosity rather than fear and punishment. Were children are thought to think by themselves. Slowly you are making the world a better place.
På hembyggdsgården finns det många fina saker, bland annat en tapet från 1700-talet (se bild).
När kommer indierna till Övik? Alla frågar och jag har inget svar. Snart! Men vad är snart? En vecka, två veckor? Makten ligger i byråkraters händer inte i våra. Det är jobbigt att vänta på något som man inte på något sätt kan på skynda. Den långa väntan får mig att tänka på hur orättvis världen är. Varför att det så lätt för vissa nationaliteter att få pass och visum att resa vart de vill medan det är så mycket svårare för andra? Varför är vissa nationaliteter välkomna världen över medan andra möts med misstänksamhet? Varje dag dör människor för de inte på "lagligt" sätt kan passera gränser. Jag längtar efter en gränslös värld där människor får resa vart de vill. Det skulle rädda människoliv (och även underlätta för internationella ungdomsutbyten).
