Getting cultured at the neighbours

My neighbours house - getting cultured

Village life - playing after school

Chai at the neighbours

(the family mentioned in article below)

Their washing line 

 My beautiful neighbour/student

Pretti, Vishal (brother ans sister) and Ojashvi

 The wife washing

Getting cultured - 3/03/13

Winta my volunteer partner and i hit the jack pot after receiving a lovely well off Indian host family, that live on a large British colonial style farm. Our neighbours however are not well off at all and we spend most days after school playing with their children or drinking chai with the parents. Yesterday we went for chai at one of our students houses. This particular family have two children, Vishal (6) and Preeti (4). They all live together in one room (as shown in photographs above) They have no beds, however they have one TV to watch the cricket! Ishval (the father) welcomed us with Chai tea and proudly showed us his son's school grades as well as his daughters new school uniform as her first day of school was today. They cannot afford to pay for their children's education, thus my host parents (the owners of the school) have allowed the children to attend on the basis that they pay for the school uniform and at least 100 rupees ($2) a month worth of school fees. 

It is a rather incredible set up here, the farm which i am staying at is surrounded by plots of tiny houses, home to some of the children that attend the school i am teaching at. Teaching some of my neighbours makes life easier, as we know names and faces at school and we walk to and from school together. All the staff that work here also live somewhere on the farm, it is like a small community within itself, which is very cool as we feel safe due to the fact that we know everyone within the 30 acres or we know that the person we don't know is related to the person we know well. 

The fact that everyone is related in some way even if not literally is another factor that has been hard to wrap my head around. Everyone working on the farm is either married or sisters in law, brothers in law, cousins and so on. Yet even those who aren't related at all refer to each other as family. "This is my brother but not really" is a common phrase so we are battling to figure out which kids are actually related. The younger girls at school call the older boys "Bhaiya" (brother) as a sign or friendship/respect. Every name has a meaning here which is good for our Hindi and amazing in general. For example one of my youngest students, her name is Khushi which means Happiness and one of my fellow teachers her name is Aasha, which means hope. We have been trying to learn as much Hindi as possible especially as our staff at the farm speak no english. The children at school however are encouraged to speak only english so we are not really meant to speak Hindi with them. The main words we use at school are however are vital, especially for younger students who don't listen.

Key Hindi words/ phrases learnt so far 

sooniyeh - Listen

chalo - let's go

teekay - okay

bahut aacha - very good
itarow - come here 

ha - yes

niye - no
yeh - this
k'ya - what

up ka naam k'ya hai - what is your name

meera naam Tess hai - my name is tess

up keseh hai - how are you

meh tikhu - i'm okay

meh aacha/achii (girl) hu - i'm good
meh bahut tuk gai hu - i'm very tired

paani - water
zayada - more
khana - eating
garum - hot
tanda - cold
snack - mitaya
doste - friend

(english spelling translation was guessed)