We Walked Through a Jungle

We began this site in January 2011 and have gone through endless strife and jubilation in finding a balance. We are not there yet, but the path is getting clearer.

Saturday 27^th October, Term 1 of Chimbel season ( June  2012 – March 2013) ended. The team is slimmer now that the NSS volunteers are not available. So Megha, Edy and I decided to tell a story through a  puppet  show .

We had fun planning and prepping for it, Edy crafted props, Megha scripted, I sang songs as we decided to work on Walking Through The Jungle, Julie Lacome’s imaginatively rich book as our basis  for the show.

Tiger walked through the jungle, meeting a fish and frog. He watched a snail creep up a tree and through out this play, Tiger sang with the children, interacted with them and talked to them about the jungle. It was good!

After meeting a giraffe, a Zebra, watching an elephant get stuck in a plastic bag and even befriend a butterfly, Tiger spotted a mountain. Up he went and met with a …. bear! The bear chased tiger to squeals and shrieks from Tiger and the children and the puppet play ended.

From our inability to get any listening done we have climbed a mountain. No bears in sight yet, although if I reflect on the past 39 sessions, since June there have been scares.  The children attended to the puppet play with all the grace and attention that a story can muster and they interacted with the characters, calling out responses in English, understanding most of the commentary in English and laughing and singing at all the right moments.

We walked through the Jungle, Chimbel where the press only reports crime and violence, where the children say ‘ Chimbel mein bahoot jagdha hote hein’ and where childhood as we know it is a fictional word !

While we compile attendance and book lending stats and work on our plan and proposal for the next sessions, I continue to learn from my walk in the jungle and my learning is more profound because I learn with Arati, Bettty, Edy and Megha.