Mobile Outreach Program in St. Inez

Full circle moments are often made light of. Nowadays with the pace and tempo of how fast we are driving along our life path, we soon come to full circle moments. But, going back to the old Bookworm location in St. Inez to do a mobile outreach program seems ironic.

For six years we operated out of Bluebelle, 2nd floor and never interacted with the community who live on the margin of that building along the creek. Not from lack of trying, but because the residents of that building had ‘issues’ with the kinds of children who came to Bookworm.

I celebrate the fact that thanks to the unstinting support of Vinni Timblo, we have the gift of independent space where all children can come and read, and thanks to the vision of our MOP program we can go to children who do not come to us.

So, we had our 2nd session at the side of the infamous St. Inez creek on a wet day. I celebrate that Megha Gulati who now leads the program walks tall through the clutter and cluster of bastis, greeting everyone and cheerfully calling the children to read. I celebrate that we all matter of factly, take off our slippers despite the ickyness of the wet soil and put out our mats. I think everything is possible when the vision and purpose is clear.

We began with a bit of book browsing and it was a good time to get a sense of reading levels and linguistic background of the children. This is a strong Kannada speaking community like Tonca and I can go no further than ‘book beku’ . The children were amused and I looked at Megha and said ” we must find someone to teach us Kannada’ and the dear hearts said, ” we will teach you.” That must be the plan, that is what multilingualism is about and if we are disciplined we really might learn Kannada. I know I want to try.

Our story read aloud was ‘What Shall I Make?”. I am afraid I was not my best self, but I made every effort despite the humid cloistered space to allow our imagination to soar. The children do not know my best self yet, so I know they enjoyed the story and had a bit of discussion on it, too. We had a quiet chat about what we shall make and Megha distributed bits of clay for modelling.

The children, many of them manipulating clay for the first time seemed unsure, but a good book never leaves our imagination dry and so like Neeraj we made cats and snakes, mouse and chappati. Then we made a book, a bangle, a jelabi, a slipper, a ball, a toy, an elephant, a rat and more.

Dark clouds gathered above, smiles and see you next Tuesday kept the sun in our hearts as we packed up and completed another life circle.