Mathru School for the Differently-Abled
Sunday 1/12/14
I've been reading up on honey bees. They are associated with fertility and sexuality, productivity and love, and the honeycomb hexagon is said to represent the heart and the sweetness of Life that is found in the heart and love. The bee is also seen as the representative of royalty and the sun, and the Celts associated bees with hidden wisdom.
And bees symbolize the achievement of the impossible. I remembered accurately about the bee being aerodynamically unfit to fly -- its body is too big for its wings. It's the high speed of the wings beating that gets the bee up in the air and keeps it there.
Analogously, with hard work you can achieve even the impossible.
This is what I see Muktha and her staff and supporters working to do with the Mathru schools. She's already achieved amazing progress since she started out with four children in her own home ten years ago. Today she's running two facilities serving almost two hundred children. She's a true pioneer advocate for disabled children in this country.
India has no Indians with Disabilities Act or Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. So far as I know, nor are there any laws requiring disability access on public transport or public sidewalks or in public buildings. Indeed, the streets and sidewalks are such outrageous obstacle courses that it's overwhelming to even imagine what would need to be done to make them wheelchair-accessible.
India has an impossibly long way to go on accommodating its disabled, but Muktha has made a start, and he's made a huge difference to hundreds of children. I'm honored to be a part of her team.
So my next mosaic project will have bees in it, grin. I'll get started on it tomorrow. I finished the blue spiral mirror yesterday. and I'm pleased with it. So are the teachers and students, and I'm delighted to see that they're already using the ice cream sticks and mirror shards on their own projects. Muktha brought me a bag of glass gems today, so we'll have fun in classtomorrow with them.
We went out shopping again today. She helped me pick out material for more salwar kameez outfits and for two saris. I went along with her to a couple shops where she brought treats and other items for a harvest festival event she is hosting at the school next weekend. Every shop we went into was about as easy to get to as the first lamp store we went to earlier this week. At one stop alone, there was a 12-inch-high curb to step up onto right out of the cab, then a few feet later we had to go down a flight of six steps, all very narrow and steep. Once we got to the bottom, we immediately had to step up three steps. THEN we had to walk across the room and up four flights of stairs.
We walked into six shops and one restaurant, which collectively required navigating two dozen flights of steps and stairs. It would have been more except in one store (the biggest one where I got my sari materials), we were shown to the "lift" to go downstairs after we had made our purchases. Apparently only paying customers get to use the elevator.
Muktha is getting better as a guide, but I sure missed Andy. For one thing, he's bigger and stronger than she is, and I have to admit I feel more secure having some muscle to back me up when my balance is wobbly. As it is, I am glad I have my folding cane, which is heavier and sturdier than the straight cane. Greg at the Society for the Blind will not be pleased to hear this, but the folding cane is coming in a lot moe handy here where I'm dealing with both severely compromised balance and exceptionally challenging obstacle courses.
Anyway, Muktha is getting better. But. A few times she grabbed my cane to point me in a different direction, and each time I simply stopped and said, gently and firmly, "Muktha, please don't touch the cane." At one point she turned abruptly to her left (I was on her right) and went up a step before i could swing my cane around to find it, and she ran me into the step. But as we went along, I think she began to notice how I was using the cane to find steps and curbs and pitfalls myself, which made her job a lot easier. And the folding cane was strong and sturdy enough to help me ride out the wobblies.
And I'm working on breaking her habit of wanting me to go first. I don't know why sighted people do this, but it seems like their first impulse is to grab my elbow and propel me forward. I had to remind Muktha, "You go first, it's safer for me to follow you."
I don't think Muktha or anyone here gets the idea that the cane is SUPPOSED to find the things you don't want to bump into, Muktha often grabbed my cane when I was hitting something in my path that she didn't want me to bump into. When I had to remind her not to touch the cane, I would usually add something like, "the cane helps me figure out where I don't want to go" or "just let me find it, the cane will help me stay on track," Her heart was in the right place, though, and I have to hand it to her, guiding anyone in this city is no picnic.
We must have been quite a sight, this big American woman in black capris and pink tee shirt, wearing mirrored sunglasses and waving a white cane around, hanging onto the arm of a short plump indian woman in traditional sari.
Muktha's pleased and I think also relieved that I'm so interested in getting myself my own salwar kameez and sari outfits. She has asked me to give a little speech and hand out awards at her harvest festival event next weekend, and when I told her Kavitha had finished sewing up one of my salwar kameez outfits, she said "Oh, good, you can wear it next weekend!"
In the whole time I've been here I have yet to see any women wearing anything other than salwar kemeezs or saris. I really stand out in my tee shirts and capris.
But even after I get all my new outfits dean up, I'm still teaching in my tee shirt and capris. I'd rather get glue on them than my new dubs, grin.
Sunday 1/12/14
I've been reading up on honey bees. They are associated with fertility and sexuality, productivity and love, and the honeycomb hexagon is said to represent the heart and the sweetness of Life that is found in the heart and love. The bee is also seen as the representative of royalty and the sun, and the Celts associated bees with hidden wisdom.
And bees symbolize the achievement of the impossible. I remembered accurately about the bee being aerodynamically unfit to fly -- its body is too big for its wings. It's the high speed of the wings beating that gets the bee up in the air and keeps it there.
Analogously, with hard work you can achieve even the impossible.
This is what I see Muktha and her staff and supporters working to do with the Mathru schools. She's already achieved amazing progress since she started out with four children in her own home ten years ago. Today she's running two facilities serving almost two hundred children. She's a true pioneer advocate for disabled children in this country.
India has no Indians with Disabilities Act or Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. So far as I know, nor are there any laws requiring disability access on public transport or public sidewalks or in public buildings. Indeed, the streets and sidewalks are such outrageous obstacle courses that it's overwhelming to even imagine what would need to be done to make them wheelchair-accessible.
India has an impossibly long way to go on accommodating its disabled, but Muktha has made a start, and he's made a huge difference to hundreds of children. I'm honored to be a part of her team.
So my next mosaic project will have bees in it, grin. I'll get started on it tomorrow. I finished the blue spiral mirror yesterday. and I'm pleased with it. So are the teachers and students, and I'm delighted to see that they're already using the ice cream sticks and mirror shards on their own projects. Muktha brought me a bag of glass gems today, so we'll have fun in classtomorrow with them.
We went out shopping again today. She helped me pick out material for more salwar kameez outfits and for two saris. I went along with her to a couple shops where she brought treats and other items for a harvest festival event she is hosting at the school next weekend. Every shop we went into was about as easy to get to as the first lamp store we went to earlier this week. At one stop alone, there was a 12-inch-high curb to step up onto right out of the cab, then a few feet later we had to go down a flight of six steps, all very narrow and steep. Once we got to the bottom, we immediately had to step up three steps. THEN we had to walk across the room and up four flights of stairs.
We walked into six shops and one restaurant, which collectively required navigating two dozen flights of steps and stairs. It would have been more except in one store (the biggest one where I got my sari materials), we were shown to the "lift" to go downstairs after we had made our purchases. Apparently only paying customers get to use the elevator.
Muktha is getting better as a guide, but I sure missed Andy. For one thing, he's bigger and stronger than she is, and I have to admit I feel more secure having some muscle to back me up when my balance is wobbly. As it is, I am glad I have my folding cane, which is heavier and sturdier than the straight cane. Greg at the Society for the Blind will not be pleased to hear this, but the folding cane is coming in a lot moe handy here where I'm dealing with both severely compromised balance and exceptionally challenging obstacle courses.
Anyway, Muktha is getting better. But. A few times she grabbed my cane to point me in a different direction, and each time I simply stopped and said, gently and firmly, "Muktha, please don't touch the cane." At one point she turned abruptly to her left (I was on her right) and went up a step before i could swing my cane around to find it, and she ran me into the step. But as we went along, I think she began to notice how I was using the cane to find steps and curbs and pitfalls myself, which made her job a lot easier. And the folding cane was strong and sturdy enough to help me ride out the wobblies.
And I'm working on breaking her habit of wanting me to go first. I don't know why sighted people do this, but it seems like their first impulse is to grab my elbow and propel me forward. I had to remind Muktha, "You go first, it's safer for me to follow you."
I don't think Muktha or anyone here gets the idea that the cane is SUPPOSED to find the things you don't want to bump into, Muktha often grabbed my cane when I was hitting something in my path that she didn't want me to bump into. When I had to remind her not to touch the cane, I would usually add something like, "the cane helps me figure out where I don't want to go" or "just let me find it, the cane will help me stay on track," Her heart was in the right place, though, and I have to hand it to her, guiding anyone in this city is no picnic.
We must have been quite a sight, this big American woman in black capris and pink tee shirt, wearing mirrored sunglasses and waving a white cane around, hanging onto the arm of a short plump indian woman in traditional sari.
Muktha's pleased and I think also relieved that I'm so interested in getting myself my own salwar kameez and sari outfits. She has asked me to give a little speech and hand out awards at her harvest festival event next weekend, and when I told her Kavitha had finished sewing up one of my salwar kameez outfits, she said "Oh, good, you can wear it next weekend!"
In the whole time I've been here I have yet to see any women wearing anything other than salwar kemeezs or saris. I really stand out in my tee shirts and capris.
But even after I get all my new outfits dean up, I'm still teaching in my tee shirt and capris. I'd rather get glue on them than my new dubs, grin.
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