Our project is situated in the suburb Gurgaon, one of the most expensive cities in India, thanks to its industries and enormous shopping malls. Nevertheless the Academy is located in a remote area near several slums in Surat Nagar, an area quite far from all the crowd and the noise of the city, and area full of moors -with green or black stinky water, in which the pigs, are taking their baths freely und undisturbed- and buildings which seem to be either on the way to be finished or to be demolished.We live 30m from Main Centre, in a guest house where there are living 6 other teachers from the project and because we are working together, we have almost the same schedule, with the exception of their early mornings habits(mornings which start at 5 am with loud television).
The guest house looks as typical house in the poor area. We are here with one more family which lives on the first floor. Eight of us have rooms upstairs only Alina has a room at the first floor. Upstairs we have four rooms, dining room, kitchen and one toilet with shower. The two of us are together in one room. There is a little disadvantage to be upstairs because now when the weather gets hot, the rooms are as hot as ovens while in the first floor it is colder. Water is very salty and as we found out no company accepted to filter it. It is impossible to drink it and after shower every part of the body is itching. So for drinking and cooking we have to bring always water from the Main Centre where we have filtered water. Nevertheless, the living conditions are far better than whatever we expected, but we can observe everyday that goes by how all our concepts (such as clean, sharing, privacy, respect) are completely different than the Indian ones... Altogether, it is enjoyable and amusing to bump everyday in some of this society’s customs and habits, a society way too lost in the past and far too comfortable in its own misery.The Academy is another kind of school which is trying to identify the children who are not going to school- rather they are picking bottles, or selling chai (tea), pulling charts with garbage, even begging, dirty with no decent clothes, forced by conditions of their families to bring money and food in their homes., reduced to only surviving from to day to day. Most of their families are immigrants from different states of India with no documents or ID, which cuts all the chances to a governmental education, but also to a governmental economical support which they could receive(food and day to day products). At any time, the academy enrols children from around and is trying to make them ready to go to governmental schools.
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Last update 5.10.2015
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