Kavita ki parhai Part 2

I told Haresh, we should save the money and, I'll home school Kavita for now. I am not interested in spending US $ 5,000 per year for her to learn basics of writing, reading, subtracting and adding. She has picked up a little bit from me from my home school lessons and, from the little exposure she got from Joy of Learning, Kid's Nest and Cachelle. Heck, even cartoons like Umizoomi and Bubble Guppies teach basic logic and counting. And, what was it they're doing in the schools here? Printing worksheets off the Internet, I'll tell you.

As for art and music, she has become a very good artist and, can really express stories and characters through drawing and painting. And, since I came back from Pakistan, I asked Emmanuel to come 3 times a week and, increased his monthly fee ($ 100 per month for 3 times a week - from $ 50 per month for irregular twice a week lessons). 

Emmanuel is a wonderful teacher and extremely patient. The lessons go on for hours and, Kavita has thrown herself into the music. Our NATC office fills up with music. Kavita's fingers and arms started throbbing with pain in the night but Emmanuel said, this is the effect of learning guitar and especially as Kavita is so small.  Kavita is now stuck to her guitar and, is even trying to make up her own songs. She made a really sweet one up called "Waiting for the doctor." She sang it on the spot and I recorded it and uploaded it to my YouTube channel. Kavita is quite amazing, if I may say so. 

I'll be honest, the kind of school fees the private schools want to charge here infuriate me to no end. Some friends of mine had their children's school fees subsidised by their employers. For example, the American School is charging about $ 20,000 per year for a child of Kavita's age. It really made my head reel and once, again be grateful to my parents and their diplomatic lives which paid for mine and my siblings' American school education, all the way from 4th grade to high school graduation. 

If I were not running a business here and instead working for an international organisation, would I just ignore the exorbitant school fees, too much indulged in day to day headaches of a bureaucratic development sector job and be satisfied to have Kavita's school fees subsidised? Would I pay attention to the ridiculous picture at hand? That in a dirt-poor country like Liberia where not only is the quality of education laughable but the numbers of children in school is declining. And, amongst the sea of over-crowded, badly-equipped schools stuffed with poorly-trained and poorly-paid teachers, there exist private schools which charge $ 5,000 a year for a kindergarten. 

My housekeeper has 3 kids and. Two are school-going children but she was only able to afford one child's school fees. I of course asked our company to give her the extra money she needed. So, she only needed $ 100.00 for the semester. She lives on Old Road.

This kind of drastic inequality can't signal anything good.

These last few days since the container story broke out in Liberia, anger and rage has broken out on social media. My Newsfeed is full of posts like this: "I just saw a kid, I spoke to him. Hello, how are you? You didn't go to school today? No. Why? My parents don't have money, I am not in school. I looked at him with a deep pain in my spinal cord, oh! When all Liberians ( children) will be in school? Lord, please intervene. I'm having a hard day.."

How do you reconcile this inequality with your own privileged life? Acts of good deeds by helping less fortunate in offering to pay their children's school fees?

Coming back to the social pressure of putting children in school as early as possible, as I said, I have decided not to put Kavita in school for now. I will save the money for now and, homeschool her myself.  "I can make it at home for nothing!"  I mutter to myself, as the character from Goodness Gracious Me says; she'd rather make it at home than waste money.

In fact, I am even looking for an Urdu teacher to complete her home school routine: Angrezi, Guitar, Arithmetic, Drawing/Painting, Evening Walk, Movie Nights and Urdu. The other day, while watching Bahubali, I dreamed about Kavita learn sword fighting, same as all the princes and princesses would do as part of their education. Why not? Wasn't an all-rounded education considered essential for bringing up a future monarch? 

Unfortunately, having been schooled abroad in the American International School system, I never learned Urdu: reading, writing or literature. I can speak it quite well but I have never studied it. I once wrote a poem when I was very young about how English is a colonial language and, I suppose I always had a colonial hangover. Now, that I have a daughter and, am so eagerly teaching her all I know, I feel amiss. It's so easy to read all the English children's books to Kavita. I have so many books gifted to her by my mother, my brother, friends, and so on. I've even bought so many second-hand books in Islamabad or on the streets in Monrovia.

A few of my favourite's are Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight Moon, The Hungry Caterpillar, The Grumpalump, Zog, any Dr Seuss, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and The Gruffalo's Child. These are pretty famous books, classic titles, that one keeps coming across. The genius of these books is timeless and astounding! I love delving into these stories over and over again with Kavita. Another book I found by accident by a book pedlar literally at my doorstep on Randall Street is Friday Night at Hodges' Cafe. Like all the other books I bought, it was for 50 LD only. It is so funny and hilarious.

Together with all the excellent English programming that is available on children's cartoon channels like Nickelodeon and CBeebies, it is extremely easy to learn English and English language mannerisms from TV channels and books.

What about Urdu? The first few things I thought of playing to Kavita were Sohail Rana's children's songs on YouTube like "Daak Babu" and "Dosti Aisa Nata." Even before that, I played Kavita the most beautiful children's song: "Lakri ki kathi" from Masoom. I even captured the first time she heard it on video. There are some Hindi and Urdu cartoons on YouTube but the graphics are poor quality and, Kavita is never really attracted to it. She would rather would the cartoons on Nickelodeon with better graphics, American accents, and simple but engaging story lines which are precisely targeted for her age group. As for easy Urdu children's books, I have rummaged through bookshops in Islamabad and found nothing. Somehow my Karachi cousin found some nice simple ones but I have only 3 or 4. Even if I try to teach Urdu to Kavita myself - the basics - I am rather stumped because I literally have no foundation in writing and reading Urdu.

I converse with Kavita in Urdu. I play Pakistani music (pop, filmi, ghazals, qawwali, etc). I play Indian filmi music. We watched Indian films and Pakistani dramas at home. She has been to Pakistan every year. So, she has exposure to Urdu and South Asian culture. But I can't teach her how to read and write in Urdu. It's frustrating. In fact, hardly a year ago, Kavita blurted, " Urdu is not my language. English is my language. " I had to give Kavita a lengthy lecture on how and why we speak English and, that it is not the language of our parents, grandparents and our heart and soul. Now a days, she has started to enjoy practicing Urdu and has started to say, "Urdu is my mother tongue."

I never felt this sense of alienation from my own language and culture until a few years ago. I have a master's degree from London. I read a lot and, have started reading a lot of Pakistani and Indian English fiction. I keep up with the news from South Asia more and more. So, I'm an educated person, no? I take a deep interest in news, politics, literature, films, art, and so on. Does that make me wholly educated? When it came to teaching Kavita Urdu, I felt inadequate and, wonder what does it mean to actually have an international education if one doesn't even know how to read and write in one's mother tongue? I should also say a this point that Urdu is technically not even my mother tongue - that is the official Pakistani language. My real mother tongue is Punjabi as both my parents are. In fact, they did not bother speaking in Punjabi to my siblings and I. So, I understand Punjabi because my parents spoke in Punjabi to others, mostly their own family members but I can't speak it. Yes, that also makes me feel unrooted.

I remember my first sense of colonial rage when my father told me how he saw "For Indians and Dogs" signs on railway platforms as a child in Pre-Partition India. Watching the Indian televised play "Tipu Sultan" also enraged me and, I can still remember the feelings it invoked in me: India invaded by the British. I chuckle thinking about it now, because one's sense of anger and loss is too often diluted with the 'sacrifice and struggle for the creation of Pakistan.' But, I have had this colonial rage tucked into me all these years.

The push and pressure to start early with toddlers' educational careers is very real. Middle and upper middle class parents are shoving their nappy-wearing kiddies into day cares and fancy pre-schools. Even arts-oriented pre-schools like Cachelle snare you by saying that one's brilliant child needs to flourish in their school, their hidden talents and creativity brought out lest it fall into a permanent coma otherwise. Wanting to focus on Urdu is a dead-end, it seems. I haven't heard from anyone that teaching one's own language has a value in itself.

My middle-age crisis also has another realisation: having had an American international schooling has completely deprived me of a fine understanding of South Asian culture and heritage. I have never studied Urdu or any other South-Asian literature and history. I feel a deep sense of loss. I studied French throughout this system but can only order taxis or food at a restaurant. What was the point? And, still today, learning French is considered a cultural achievement. I suspect friends and family would applaud me if I started looking for a part-time French teacher for Kavita.

One colonial language is enough.

I would like Kavita to take pride in her cultural, linguistic and historical heritage. Watching a film or listening to a beautiful ghazal can't be enough. We would like to be able to read texts and, engage with them. But you know what this means, no? I need to learn Urdu, too.