Day 4 - Gond school visit and art workshops
- Joanne Short
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Today we visited our second school. This time the school was quite a bit bigger, with children ranging from primary age to 15. Part of the school is a boarding school for the older children who live outside the area and live too far to walk or cycle safely across the forest to get there. This is just to help stop the older children having to walk long distances in what can obviously at times be dangerous conditions and most families have no form of transport or, at most, a motorbike. It means that they are safe and sound at the school and are able to continue with atheir education. The younger children don’t need to board because there is a Primary school in every village. The use of a motorbike is very common around here and we have seen up to four or even five people, whole families in fact, all in a row on one motorcycle!
The school has been set up by the government especially for the local tribal children. Therefore all the children at this school who we worked with today were from the Gond tribe.
Just like the last school we went to, the children were so excited to see us and were waving and jumping around, running to greet us. The older ones were slightly more reserved at first, but by the time we left they were all asking to have their photographs taken with us. They do love a selfie! Even young people from the Gond tribe have Instagram and are ready to start to follow Last Chance to Paint!
We had a fabulous introduction to the Headteacher and all his staff with lots of photographs taken! This was followed by an assembly to introduce us and to talk about what we were there to do and all about the project Last Chance to Paint. We were presented with beautiful flower bouquets put together by the children with local flowers picked in the village. Again we worked with 20 children - 10 boys and 10 girls, but this time a lot of the other children stayed to watch over the shoulders of their friends who were painting. I could see that many of their friends were dying to join in and in fact one boy did actually start to help his friend!
John did a demonstration to them all showing them how to paint using the poster paint and brushes that they have been given. He showed them how to put on a background of blended colours and how to add other elements on top of that. The children were encouraged to cover the full page with their work. John added some trees and he painted a tiger with birds in the sky and some very loose shapes of grasses in the foreground. It was a simple painting and the children soon learnt what they needed to do.
At first it looked like the children were going to really struggle because they started slowly. But we let them get started in their own time and they soon sprang to life with a bit of encouragement. Once they had lost their inhibitions they really got going and most of the children did some very lovely work. We even had at least three tigers and an elephant in the paintings and one boy did a beautiful painting of his house in the landscape. He did a lovely piece of work and it looked like he had really enjoyed doing it. We were told that the children get to use crayons and coloured pencils but they never get to paint. This could possibly be one of the first times that they’ve tried to do this and they certainly did a good job.
The atmosphere was so lovely and the children seemed so happy. None of the children at this school spoke very much english, but it was easy to communicate with them and let them know how well they were doing. It was so lovely to see how much they were enjoying doing it.
A young man who works alongside our host Mandar at The Satpuda Foundation showed us his house nearby. He is a very polite and intelligent young man who has come from a Gond village himself. He is proof that the schools here may be different from ours, but they certainly have successful outcomes. He told us that he and his girlfriend were out on his motorcycle driving back to the village the other day when a tiger strolled across the road right in front of them at 3 o’clock in the afternoon! And only this morning on his way to work he drove past a sloth bear right by the side of the road. He said “I didn’t stop to photograph it because it was very close and I was on a motorcycle!” This is proof that living on the edge of a forest is a dangerous place and all these families risk their own lives and the loss of their livestock every day.
Mandar and The Satpuda Foundation have a mission to educate the local communities how to live side by side with the wildlife, protecting both themselves and the wild animals. They have put into place several projects to help with employment in the local area and by running wildlife clubs in many of the schools they work with. The list of good things Mandar and the Foundation do for the Gond community is endless and they have made such a difference to so many people.
We had an exciting end to the day when we got back to our accommodation. The monkeys were going crazy; they were at the top of the trees making a cacophony of noise. Mandar said immediately that they were sending out an alarm call because there must be a tiger in the vicinity! At that point I was very happy to see that the hotel complex is completely surrounded by a very high metal fence! We tried to see it from the high terrace but the grass was very tall in the farmland next door, perfect for a tiger to hide in, so there was no chance of spotting it.
Every day we have been here we have heard stories or seen signs of tigers being close by. I was even a bit scared today!
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