FORGET ME, FORGET ME NOT

I am invited to the Director's home. The up-and-coming area is located outside of Delhi. Many young families move here. The apartments are brand new and affordable.

Many construction workers have never worked in construction before. They are farmers from villages across India. They are forced to abandon their homes when they can't survive on the land anymore. They come to Delhi for work, any work. They end up as day laborers, unable to decline miserable working conditions. They set up their homes next to the buildings they work on. The slum is therefore within, wall to wall with brand new apartments. When a portion of the area's apartment buildings are complete, many workers take on jobs as domestic workers and gardeners. Eventually there won't be space left for them in the neighborhood and they have to move their homes further away. A slum has been created.

Children live here too. Lots of children. But there's no school.

That's why the Director has taken the initiative to start a school here. Volunteers test the children. Each and every child. Can they read? Can they recognize numbers? Some of the children went to school back in the village.

A young woman makes chapatti (Indian bread).

The ladies' room.

Cooling off in the mud.

Parents are interviewed. How many children do you have? Are they in school?

This boy can write. Notice the realty sign in the background, used as part of an outside wall.

An illegal water pipe. People come here to shower and to get drinking water.

Women carry water home. The new supermarket is spotted in the background.

The school has two rooms on the ground floor of a building without walls. Construction is going on upstairs. Some parents wait outside, excited and hopeful. And proud.

A week into classes, the teachers notice that children show up with combed hair, clean hands and wearing their best clothes.

These brothers finish assignments faster than anyone else in class. Many of the children are extremely bright; they might not have had a lot of schooling but they are experienced. They can't recognize numbers, but they know how to give exact change for five bananas. They are survivors, fighters, at least for a moment not forgotten about.