31 August 2009
When Shaheen grows up, she won’t be a street vendor like her mother, selling corn-on-the-cob to poor labourers. She wants to be a doctor.
She has reached this life-changing decision since going to school. Until recently, Shaheen had never attended a single class – but last year she joined the DFID-funded Bus School for 12 months.
Shaheen was first spotted roaming around the nearby slum where she lives by Bus School staff member Malti. It’s Malti’s job to visit families in the community, to reassure and encourage them to take advantage of the scheme.
It took Malti several visits and powers of persuasion to convince Shaheen’s family to let her go to the yellow bus parked near Delhi’s Muslim Walled City, the former capital of the Mughals.
Bursting with a desire to learn, Shaheen was hardly ever absent.
Though only 10, she understood that education was the key to escaping poverty she endures with her widowed mother Mukiman and eight siblings.
“My mother told me years ago that school was out of the question. She was too poor. When the bus came, I told her that if she educated me, I would support her,” says Shaheen, proudly wearing her green school uniform.
Passport to a better life
Confident and articulate, Shaheen’s life has been transformed. Before attending the Bus School, she would help her mother fetch sacks of coal needed for roasting corn cobs and make cones from old newspapers for wrapping them in.
“I used to stand outside my house watching other children go to school. I couldn’t count and I could write only a few words of Hindi,” she says. “Now I do multiplication and division and know some English too.”
Which English words? “‘You are welcome’ and ‘shut up’,” she smiles, adding that the latter is necessary to silence her noisy siblings.
Malti is thrilled with the way Shaheen’s personality has blossomed. But experience has taught Malti that, for Mukiman, educating Shaheen could merely be a means to securing a better marriage proposal later.
“It doesn’t matter to me if her mother’s motives are mixed,” says Malti. “As long as Shaheen gets an education and skills, that’s all that matters,” she explains.
What happened next?
Shaheen transferred to the local Guru Nanak School a few weeks ago and describes her move to a Grade IV classroom as smooth.
“The bus prepared me. I adapted easily. On my first day I made friends with the whole class and I’m now the monitor,” she says.
During her year at the Bus School, her family benefited from the knowledge she brought home about hygiene. Shaheen taught them the importance of washing hands before cooking or eating, and covering food at all times to keep out the flies. Her mother can now write her name.
Shaheen’s own habits changed too. Her pride in her own appearance grew after attending the Bus School and she began encouraging her younger siblings to make an effort too, despite the lack of running water.
Before leaving the Bus School, she persuaded a 10-year-old friend and neighbour, Bano, to attend. Bano wants to become a policewoman.
As a ‘proper’ schoolgirl now in uniform with a monitor’s responsibilities, Shaheen’s self-respect has been restored. She says she would have felt very embarrassed if her school-going friends had come round and started speaking English.
“I would have hung my head in shame at not understanding them. But now I know I’ll be able to talk in English too, soon,” she says.
Surrounded by labourers waiting for roadside snacks, Mukiman says: “Shaheen can study as long as she wants to. I don’t want her life to be like mine.”