Photo Hunters--Theme: Flexible

For my "FLEXIBLE" photos I am going back into the files I just got transferred off of floppy disks (no longer a very flexible medium to save data, on since most newer computers don't offer a floppy drive). Most of these floppies were photos I took when I went to India in the summer of 2000. I was with a group of teachers from schools operated by the Christian Brothers in the western USA. We spent a month in one of three projects run by the Indian Christian Brothers.

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Three of us were at St. Joseph Boys Village, a home for orphaned or very poor boys from six to 14 in the state of Tamil Nadu in the south of the country. We helped with a construction project--reroofing and painting the small housing unit where the Boys Village cooks live. When the boys were back from schooleach day , we joined them in their recreation and prayers.

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Being fairly near the equator, there is not much difference in the length of day and night from summer to winter. It was already dark by supper time and recreation was after supper. Earlier in the afternoon, after school and chores, the boys would all go across the road to the playfield and play soccer (oops, sorry, it's football in most of the world.) These boys at recreation were very flexible dancing about.

On weekends we did some touristy excursions. In the real evenings we visited some villages and met the common people.

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In thinking of the word "flexible", I usually do not think of the sense of being physically flexible, but rather being able to do things and change to meet the circumstances. One day we did not work on the roof, but were invited to visit the school the boys attended. There we saw how flexible the teachers had to be to teach these children with little in the way of supplies or materials.

Each classroom had a chalkboard and a supply of colored chalk. The older students had desks, which consisted of a table and a bench which was shared with another. One true advantage was the flexibility to take a whole classroom outside when the weather was fine.

On the Monday morning when we visited, Dan (another volunteer) and I took in the morning assembly, where students sang, gave recitations, and were given a pep talk by the principal. When this was over, Brother Lawrence, who had brought us to the school, turned to us and said, "At 10:00 you can give a lesson to the seventh and eight grade." After pointing out where we would gather, Brother Lawrence left us to go to his fourth grade classroom.

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Dan and I just looked at each other dumbfounded. It was 9:40, and this was the first we had heard of our giving a lesson.

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That is the final flexible moment in my post (but no picture as I was rather busy thinking flexibly at the moment.) Twenty minutes later, the entire seventh and eight grades gathered in a large outdoor theater style classroom, where Dan and I presented the history of the United States and related it to the history of India--with a chalk board, a supply of colored chalk, and a lot of flexibility.