Dear Mr Mason,
I am writing to you to give you an update on my time in India so far. In case you’ve forgotten, my name is Jack Morgan, and in 2018 you very generously gave me money towards my fundraising for Project Trust. Because of your donation I was able to complete my fundraising of £6200 and in turn departed for India in September of last year.
As I am writing this I have now been teaching at my project in India for 9 months. I live in a small town called Maheshwar in central India (Madhya Pradesh) at the Ahilya Bal Jyoti School. The school was founded in 1989 by an NGO called Rehwa Society. What started as a batch of 60 students and 2 teachers, turned to double the numbers in 1995, and today the Ahilya School educates 240 students, from nursery to Class VIII through the Montessori System. There are 16 well trained teachers who provide their service to the school along with a well-balanced curriculum (rigorously preparing students for the government entrance exam at Class VII, and also emphasising on creative thinking, sports and of course, handloom weaving).
My main job at the school is to teach spoken English to pupils from KG II – 8th Class (age 4 – 14) but I also help out in various other areas of daily school life. These other duties involve keeping in touch with school donors, doing sports lessons, delivering English lessons to the teachers and recently I have written, typed and invigilated all of the English exams at school. I really enjoy my work and find it so rewarding when the pupils understand what I am teaching them.
My day to day life is as follows: Every morning, I walk down to the market to get breakfast: usually I have Poha and Kachori. Poha is a flattened rice dish cooked in various spices and Kachoris are similar to Samosas but circular shaped and filled with a spicy lentil mixture.
They are both delicious and a great way to start the day. A 9 o’clock I have my first lesson of the day: the teacher. This is by far the most difficult class I have as they all have such varied English abilities, and it has taken me slightly longer to figure out what they need to be taught but now I think I’m pretty much there!
On a Wednesday and Saturday, instead of teaching the teachers for 30 mins, one of the teachers, Salma Ma’am teaches me Hindi. It was very difficult at first however I can now understand a huge amount of conversational Hindi and can also read and write the script which was something I didn’t expect to pick up so fast.
At 9:30 all the pupils and staff go out into the playground to pray and then at 9:40 lessons start for the pupils. I teach 3 classes a day, Monday – Saturday. School finishes at 3 o’clock and afterwards I usually rest until the evening and then play with the kids who live near us.
I eat lunch and dinner with a local family who live a 5 minute walk from my house. They have been a great support while I’ve been here and feed us excellent Indian food! I have become quite good friends with the son and daughter Vasu and Taniya and we often go on trips to places slightly further out of town. Recently we went swimming at a place called Sahastradhara which is a place with stunning waterfalls and lakes. I will definitely miss them a lot when we return home in July.
As much as it was difficult to adjust to life here at first, within a month or two I was fully settled and now consider Maheshwar a second home. In the next few months I have some time to travel around India which I am very excited about. I will be going down south to Kerela and Goa in April and then when school is shit for the summer holidays in May, I will go to Rajastan and up further north to avoid the summer heat for a month!
I hope you enjoyed getting a little insight into my life here and would like to take the opportunity once again to thank you for your kind donation last year which has allowed me to be here now. I have attached some photos aswell which I hope you like!
Kind Regards,
Jack Morgan
