Day 10 - Thursday 16th October
 Another early start and a long drive into the countryside of Andhra Pradesh to visit the English Medium School where Rianna’s Fund helped build two new classrooms in 2007. We were hopeful that the five hour estimate for this journey was an exaggeration, but it wasn’t. This driver was a little calmer than some we have experienced which was just as well with the distance we were travelling. Once we’d cleared the city limits of Hyderabad the countryside was beautiful and the main obstacles were farm vehicles, goat herds, cattle and even the occasional monkey, the ones with the red bottoms. As we got closer to Dornakal it was obvious that farming was a major pastime here, with crops of cotton, rice, maize and wheat being the main ones we identified. We were told that this is a tribal area and that 25% of the locals are farmers with the other 75% being day labourers. The wage for a day labourer is 600 rupees per day (about 90p), with the wages increasing to 100 rupees (about £1.20) if they were involved in construction. However, the work is obviously very erratic and these are very poor areas.
We arrived to a fantastic welcome at the compound of Bishop Devamani, with children lined up along the track on both sides. We were shown to the Bishop’s house and enjoyed lunch with him together with his wife Christina and daughter Carol. Carol is 24 and training to be a doctor. She is currently working in the health centre on the compound and with the local children before returning to her studies, and is a delightful young lady.
After a lovely lunch we walked through some of the compound, which is an amazingly beautiful place. It houses the following:
- English Medium School.
- Local primary and secondary school
- College
- School for deaf children
- 8 different hostels which house children from outside the area who live too far away to walk to the schools. They live on site and go home in the holidays.
- Hostels for deaf boys and girls
- Cathedral
- Health Centre for children and locals
- The office of the Diocese of Dornakal
 We were welcomed by the children from the English Medium School. A total of 350 attend, but some had not returned from the recent holiday so there were only some of them present. They made a real fuss of us and hung garlands of flowers round our necks and handed small bunches of flowers from children in each class. One little girl of 3½ found it all too much and burst in to tears when she handed Terry the flowers – well, she’s probably never seen a nose like that before!
All of the children who attend the English Medium School are from the local peasant communities, and some walk as far as 7 – 8 km each day to attend school. Some children live in hostels on site as their villages are too far away for a daily journey. There is a local school on the same premises which teaches in the local language of Telugu, however, if children do not learn English then they cannot go on to any form of further education or to any of the well paid office or government jobs. In very poor rural areas like this the parents often pull children out of school at 12 or 13 as  they need them at home helping with work and do not see the point of schooling them, especially if they are girls who will often be married by the time they are 15 or 16. This area is still very tribal, we were told, but parents of brighter children were beginning to see the benefits of a good education for them. English Medium Schools would normally charge fees but this school if provided free of charge and enables children to break out of the cycle of poverty. We heard stories of children who would certainly have become day labourers like their fathers, but had gone on to University and to work in Government positions. There is a quota in India for OBC’s (Other Backward Castes) which actually means that well educated children from poor families often are given preferential treatment when it comes to Universities and job placements.
We were shown the classrooms that Rianna’s Fund had funded and shown a site where they want to build more classrooms to replace the old ones which are in poor repair and prone to flooding in the rainy season. We were also shown a structure currently being used as a classroom which they want to turn in to a toilet block, currently the school has no toilets and the children have to wander in to the bushes.
 Most of our time with the children will be tomorrow, but we did have a quick look around and met the children from the deaf school who were thrilled to see us and have their picture taken.
We went to look at the Cathedral on the compound, a beautiful but very unusual Christian building. The Bishop explained that it was built in 1912 and wanted to appeal to all religions in the area, so Hindus and Muslims as well as Christians. We bumped in to an Indian film crew who were making a film about historic Church buildings across India and wanted to ask for our comments. We joined the evening service later with 800 children, the sound of singing was deafening but amazing to hear.
 Before we returned to our room we were warned to look out for scorpions and snakes. We were also told to make sure we bolted our door as the monkey colonies in the area could be very dangerous – and there was me thinking the looked cute! We had a wonderful dinner and then retired to bed, exhausted after our long journey. |
