the taming of the simee

there are three teachers at mobile creches, one for the older kids and two that switch off with the younger kids. of those two that switch off, one is wonderful and loves the kids and keeps them in line. its fun to help her because she loves giving us the floor to lead an activity and she can handle the trouble makers. the other kind of just sits there and doesn't really do anything. thats makes for a challenging day, which i would consider a good thing if only i knew how to discipline 30 pre-schoolers in hindi. its a toss up which teacher will be there, but you can guess who we hope for.

the first two weeks, simee (the teacher for older kids) had us walking on eggshells around her. she sits quietly at the head of the table on the floor (the table is about a foot off the ground, so everyone sits on the floor), messing with her cell phone or doing paperwork, until the kids' chit-chatting spontaneously sets her off like an explosion. she screams at each of the offenders individually and more often than not she beckons them to her to be smacked. sometimes she spends the whole morning chastising them and making them recite their times tables or the alphabet in english. i obviously never feel her wrath, but she still scared me more than any teacher of mine ever did. we quickly learned from talking to other volunteers experiencing the same shock, that hitting kids is just a normal part of the discipline code here. the idea of authority figures hitting kids seems so backwards to me- i was reminded of how when we were kids my dad's mom used to tell dani that if i misbehave she needs to smack me. i used to pray she was joking.

somehow, despite her scary disciplinary tendancies and the steel wall of a language barrier between us, we've become friends with simee. last week she started trying to talk to us and every so often she'll shoot us a smile. we got as far as figuring out that she has been married for 8 years and has a 7 year old son. this past weekend she even invited us over for tea at her place.

she lives maybe half an hour away from us, close to mobile creches, in an average delhi neighborhood. from the second we stepped out of our rickshaw we had a whole group of people surrounding us, some offering us quidance to apartment #208 and some just staring at us, dumbfounded by our presence. we were seated in apartment #230, no simee in sight, confused and a little aprehensive about being there. finally someone led to around two more corners and up four flights of stairs to a tiny two room apartment (each maybe the size of a king-size bed) seperated only by a curtain, where we found simee. we met her husband, her son, her brother-in-law, and her sister-in-law's daughter and drank chai tea. we couldn't really talk which made it kind of awkward but her brother-in-law turned on some music so we all danced. it was a pretty bizarre outing but i absolutely loved it.