Sponsorship

Gram Vikas

Gram Vikas is a rural development organisation, working with poor and marginalised communities of Orissa, India.

Carla Whitely spent a month in India teaching the recorder to 30 students in an Orissa school.

Read Carla's amazing story as she copes with her new surrounds and experiences joy as the students thrive on their new class.

Suno [Listen]
Dekho [Look]
Bangkaro [Stop]
Dhire [Slowly]
Adjiro Class Sorigola [Today’s class is over ]
Eke, Dui, Tini, Charie [One, Two, Three, Four]

Like a survival kit one takes on long journeys I had to learn some of the local lingo fast if I was going to make a difference and do any worthwhile teaching.

You may well ask where, what and whom I was teaching and how I got there in the first place.

It all began at the end of 1998 when one of our daughters, Natasha, decided to go to India with Australian Volunteers International. Her first placement was at Sambhav, several hours west of Bhubanashwar, the capital city of Orissa and the poorest state in India; about nine hours south of Kolkato by train. She was there for six months after which, she was moved to Gram Vikas in the south of the state; about 30 minutes west of Berhampur.

Gram Vikas translated means Tribal Village Development. It is a non government organisation (NGO) established and run by Indian nationals working amongst the poor and marginalised tribal villages of the state. At present, they work amongst 560 villages in the area enabling infrastructure, livelihood and food security, self governing people’s institutions and education and health.

Five residential schools have been established with an average of 300 to 400 students. Teachers and students live at the schools for 11 months of the year with a four week break and several festival day holidays. The schools all have their own vegetable gardens with which the diet is supplemented. These are tended by the staff and students. Teaching is in the local language but Hindi, English and Sanskrit are also taught.

Being good parents we decided at the end of 1999 to pay Natasha a visit and connect with the environment she had chosen to work in. Orissa had just experienced the worst cyclone in 100 years and Natasha had been working on cyclone relief work with Gram Vikas We spent some time with the organisation seeing first hand the devastation that had been wreaked by the cyclone. We also spent some time at one of their schools and subsequently promised that we would return and do some work there.

Natasha returned to Australia at the end of 2001 and although it took some time Andrew, my husband, and I decided that the end of 2006 seemed like a great time to return to India and fulfil our promise.

Being a flute and recorder teacher, Gram Vikas suggested I teach the flute. I felt this to be too difficult so I approached Yamaha who kindly donated 30 recorders. We planned to spend a few days in Kolkota, prior to travelling south by night train to Berhampur, where we would be met by the people of the organisation. I felt it would be prudent to post the instruments and my teaching supplies ahead rather than carry them around India on public transport. This proved to be almost a disaster as the officials in the international parcel section of the Kolkota Post Office would not release the recorders and other supplies unless I could prove that I was not about to set up a music business but was genuinely going to work at an NGO. Fortunately, we had a friend who was able to do the official work for us and after a payment of 300 rupees the parcel arrived at its destination just 24 hours before we did.

How do you teach in a concrete room with only a blackboard and a piece of chalk?
No aids to speak of, no photocopier, no text books, no overhead projector, no CD player and the teacher, me, speaking a little Hindi and no Oriya, the local language. But hey, this is music we are talking about, the universal language.

Discipline was not a problem. The children were eager to learn and incredibly polite even standing when the teacher entered the room. But gosh where to start?

I soon discovered it paid to have been trained as a teacher before we had the luxury of all the mod cons, just a piece of chalk, a blackboard and a spirit duplicator if we were lucky. I had been told back at base camp that the tribal children from the villages were very musical and when I was introduced to the classes they would often sing for me. In return I was expected to sing an Australian song. The Australian national anthem was especially popular.

So how did I approach my teaching, what was my methodology?
I figured that as the children enjoyed singing this would be a great place to start. As mentioned, I did learn a few basic Oriyan words and that supplemented with the little English they understood, I felt we would do just fine.

Star Light Star Bright was my starting point, using C and A. One of the teachers had been assigned to help me so he wrote the words on the board and away we went.

First we sang it. I then placed the letter name of the notes above each word and we sang the name of the notes clapping the rhythm as we sang. When the children were confident with it, we learnt the notes on the recorder. A lot of this was done by means of echo playing and suno and dekho (listen and look) and I also resorted to the Kodaly Method of signing the notes with hand signals.

Notation was my next challenge. I commenced by writing the words of the simple songs on the board and writing the letter names of the notes above the words, C being written at a higher level than A in order to reinforce the different sounds of the two notes learnt.

As the western style of learning music is done via a music stave I felt there was no harm in introducing this as well. I laboriously drew my music stave and neatly wrote in the notes, initially using letter names only on the stave, capital letter for the taas and lowercase for the tee-tees. I later placed notes on the stave.

I soon discovered that I had a major, time consuming problem on my hands. Each time I taught a new song I had to re-draw the music stave. I decided this was not a good idea so I went in search of some garden twine preferably the sort that has thin wire in the middle and a plastic casing. With the aid of gaffa tape which I never leave behind when I travel, the twine and my trusty penknife, I made a permanent music stave that stayed in place for the full month I was at the school.

Being at the school for a short time meant that the teaching had to be very intensive. I was given a room in the mornings for the duration of my stay (the afternoons were taken up with a year 10 English class). I had the 30 recorder students daily for 60 minutes for the duration of the month. The children were all very motivated and those that were unable to be in the class would often stand in the doorway or hang through the windows. By the end of my stay the children were familiar with the fingering of low D through to high D and F#.

The highlight of the teaching experience was a performance that took place on the Cultural Evening that was part of the end of year program. There was one year 10 boy who was part of the music group that performed during the evening. He had adapted the music of a tribal song and played it along with the harmonium and tabla (the Indian double headed drum). A small group had managed to learn to play Star Light, Jingle Bells, Au Claire De La Lune and Old McDonald Had a Farm quite well. These were also performed on the evening.

Teaching the recorder to an enthusiastic group of students was a most satisfying experience and I am grateful to the generosity of Yamaha in donating the recorders and thus giving these children a new and unique experience.

I have left the recorders at the school with the tutors along with instructions and have promised to return in four years. It will be interesting to see the progress in the playing of the recorders. I also hope in four years time to go to some of the other residential schools that Gram Vikas runs hopefully taking with me more recorders and inspiring further budding musicians.

Carla Whitley – Gram Vikas

Visit the Gram Vikas website : www.gramvikas.org