Sandipani Muni School

On our 4th day we went to the Sandipani Muni School. They title this school "For the Poorest of the Poor." They started in 2002 and now have over 1000 kids. The school goes from preschool to 9th grade and the facilities are amazing. Many of the more promising children who are more likely to stay in school are sponsored by people around the world. Some sponsors pay more money when sponsoring girls to ensure that they stay in school through the age of 18th to prevent child marriage, and at the age of 18 they are giving a pension. Some girls enter marriage at age 12 and get pregnant immediately which makes them very sick, as they are children and don't get any medical care. The school has a computer room, library, classrooms, a play ground, a tennis court, basketball court and 3 ping pong tables. Kids get free breakfast and lunch everyday. The chef has been working there/serving food to the poor for 18 years, cooking 2000 meals every day. The children are overly friendly and affectionate, but all seem fairly well behaved. The head of the sponsor program was telling us how the children come to school knowing krishna is god, but not knowing the earth is round. When she said this, for a moment I thought that his might be a bit more secular than any of the other teachings in the city, but I soon realized that all the teachers, Indian or ex-pats were krishna devotees and the main goal of the students was for them to become practicing devotee themselves. They still teach manners, math, basic facts, and low level education, but mostly religion. She said its hard too keep a lot of the kids in school because the parents put them in, but then take them out after they have been given their uniforms, just so they could get the free clothes. She also told us that most of the kids come into the school with blond hair due to malnutrition, but leave with dark black hair.

The next day we went back and spent the whole day at the school. In the morning we played with the pre-schoolers who were ages 5-9. We played head, shoulders, knees and toes with them, and the hokey pokey as well as with some of the toys that were in the play room. Most of the toys had a ton of gekko poop in the bottom of the bins, which came with a really foul smell. Teaching is a lot of work. By our third and last group of children my energy level was at a 3. The kids don't really know how to share and they hit each other a lot which is not reprimanded by the teachers. It was hard to communicate with them since they don't really speak any english. They all called us Matadee (which i'm sure i'm spoelling wrong) which means "Mother."

After lunch we played sports with them. The day before we had decided to buy Gopi sets, which look just like saris but are comprised of a skirt and a scarf, making it much easier to wear and, wouldn't you know it, being specific to krishna devotees and vrindavan, which we found out after our purchase. So we had to play sports in these get ups, which made everything more difficult. I felt like an Indian version of Laura Ingles Wilder running in 115 degree heat with a basketball being chased by 10 fourteen year old boys. They know what a basketball is, but they don't know how to play it as an organized sport and they don't care to learn, so it was very difficult to keep a game going. If there was one aggressive child, the game was over, because he was the only one who was allowed to touch the basketball. I tried my best to make things fair, but that didn't really fly with the children and the smaller ones got pushed away.

That night we helped give out food to poor children and widows in the multipurpose room of the lower school. We were planning on going to Agra the next day and found out that some of the kids from the school, as well as the school directors were going and we could join them on the bus.

On the bus, which was a school bus, we each sat in a seat with about 4-5 children. Most of them had never been out of Vrindavan before and were very excited about looking out the window. They were very well behaved on the bus which surprised me. We found out that their field trip was to a hotel where the owner lets them use the multipurpose room for games and dancing and them provides lunch in the dining room. Because we came with the school we were given a discount on the hotel. We played with the children all day, learning how to dance with them, picking them up and spinning them around. During lunch we tried to teach them about napkins and forks and not to dip your hands in the water. By the end of the day we were exhausted and smelled very badly, but were sad to see the kids go.