Thursday, December 10, 2015

Organized team work or just fun?



The recent cyclonic rains brought a lot of sand into local creeks from the surrounding hills. As soon as the rains stop, local people line up to “steal” this sand to use for their own construction purposes or sell it, illegally of course. Our landlord jumped into the fray and had a load of sand hauled last week, and got it piled up in front of the house. He had brought a sieve too. A day later his daughter L got interested in the sieve and started scooping the sand and sifting it, all on her own. She worked, with tremendous focus, for several hours.  Mind you this is heavy work.

She is 13, a rich village girl, who goes to an English medium private school.  Usually most of her time is spent at school or tuition classes. Thus I have never seen her “doing” anything in the last two years that we have been here.  




Thanks to the rains, the schools have been closed for a month now.  While L was at work, the other kids at first just hung around and then slowly started joining her one by one until all six were busy. They have been working together for a day now. As I was observing this from my upstairs balcony, these were the words that came to my mind – harmonious, productive, efficient, self-organizing, co-operative and seamless.

Their assembly-line operation had the following steps:

  • Spread the wet sand on the road because dry sand can be sifted more efficiently. Make sure there is a constant supply of dry sand for pick up.
  • Scoop the dried sand with a hoe and dump it into a receptacle
  • Dump the contents of the receptacle onto the sieve. Maximize the sieving efficiency by constantly bringing the non-sieved portion to the top of the inclined sieve with a curved broken tile 
  • Collect the sieved sand and dump into separate pile
I got to hear some snippets of their conversations:
  •  “It will be difficult for them to work without us. We need to get back soon” (during their lunch break)
  • “We can’t afford to take long breaks. We have a lot of work to do.”
  • “It is 2 p.m. now. Can we stop at 6? What do you think?”
  • “Hey, you take up my job now. I will do yours for some time”

They were working independently and also as a team, rotating their jobs, maximizing efficiency, minimizing wastage, planning the next stage, getting good exercise and most important of all having fun. 

Now to contrast this with what I have typically seen here, when the schools are in session:
School lasts for approximately 7 hours, mostly six days a week. Most of the kids have a one hour before-school tuition and one hour after-school tuition class. Evenings are devoted to homework and a bit of TV. Sometimes, on Sundays, the six kids in our street get together to play. Mostly their games would end abruptly, in an unpleasant manner. The reasons being  -- lying, bickering, cheating and hitting.  It was as if they needed more time and continuity to be able to even play amicably.

Had I not seen what happened today, I would have never believed that this set of kids could work together. If our society can offer children the luxury of time, won’t there be more opportunities for them to do meaningful work, participate in and contribute to what is happening around them?

-- Hema