Teaching English? No, we're moulding the characters of tomorrow.

Naveen, Saifalli, Prakiresh, Priya, Nezapolli, Ajappa...

You may not recognise these names, but i know i certainly do. Day to day, i'm imprinting my wisdom onto the future characters of rural Karnatakan society.
The morning class I have is especially is brimming with potential.

For example, Naveen. Oh Naveen, what an endearing, young boy. I'm not sure he knows what's happening. Neither myself nor Sarah have any idea what he is thinking at anytime during our class. But one cannot say he's lacking dynamism, but he is lacking a directness and any sort of sense in his approach to have a positive impact on the world.
He's the kind of boy that steals the class pencil sharpener with a fiendish desire. Don't try and get him to relinquish control of that sharpener, for he will not relinquish any stationary he gets his hands on.


Then there's Saifalli, an oddball you may say. Probably the oddest of all the oddballs i've seen in my years.
He really is a strange looking child, i'm not entirely sure he means well either.
A few days ago we gave the children an animal and they had to mimic the animal in front of the rest of the class for the others to guess what animal is was(interactive learning, John Stoer's looking over his shoulder i bet).
Not a difficult task i'd say, yet Saifalli was none too impressed. As he rose from his seated position and looked down at the class about to give his own interpretation of how a tiger acts in it's most natural of surroundings, Saifalli merely inhaled and exhaled very vigorously twice almost like a vicious snore, then sat down.

"Saifalli, what was that?"

No response was given and we knew then that we were dealing with a being made of harder stuff than ourselves. Saifalli had had his way with our classroom game, and that was that.


India doesn't really do romance, boys and girls do not mix in public. In Bollywood films they are not allowed to show two characters kiss for goodness sake. But that does not prevent the chemistry that is held between Priya and Nezapolli.

The Primary school God's would have it no other way that the boy and girl who are comfortably the most attractive in the class should have such chemistry. They're like Brad & Angelina except they're 7 year's old.


I could write more about my students and maybe touch on how i'm moulding them into the roles of future leaders. However, my time's almost up at this internet cafe and i wanted to finish on by saying that despite my 2 classes everyday, Indian life has been getting a little bit uneventful.

This is no slight whatsoever to Nayak's ice cream shop, for that double sundae is the highlight of my day, but there really isn't much in Mundgod and life is quite strict. It doesn't help as well that C-Mac (Catherine MacMillan) texted me from Tanzania saying how wonderful Tanzania is and how busy she is and what a wonderful time she's having.

I think i'm still waiting for the Indian party to get started. In the meanwhile, i'm quite content with scrabble, ice-cream and mini bananas.

Thanks for reading.
Ed x