survivor girl ukulele band

bringing restoration and hope to survivors of human trafficking through the healing power of music and love

Archive for the month “April, 2013”

28 Apr 2013
3 Comments

the sound of music and give me some sunshine

some days i feel like i’m fräuline maria in the sound of music.

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oh, there are those minor differences: she was in salzburg and i am pune; she wore a dirndl and i wear a salwar kameez; she had a guitar and i have a ukulele; she had a handsome sea captain, and i have a — hey, wait a minute!

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anyway, the the joy in task is the same!!!

i now have 26 students in four different classes. they are all learning anthony raj’s “tu pyaar ka saagar”, which i’ve transposed into the key of c major so it’s easier to play. its a song they love, so they are willing to play it over and over. we start with chords and strumming and counting. we then add singing. and then we move into the c major scale — complete with naming the notes on the fretboard as they play, and from there they learn how to play the melody in fingerstyle.

here’s a 39 second video of batches 2 and 5 playing “tu pyaar ka saagar.” (i know these videos take a while to load, but if you watch this one to the end, you will be rewarded with a view of one of the dear kitchen girls hanging in there despite difficulties 🙂 )

one day toward the end of my batch 1 class, nandita* was struggling to keep up with the other girls in learning the c scale. soon there was a frown on her face as she complained in bangladshi about all the english letters in the c scale and how it was too difficult to learn. the next class i took her and another girl aside to give them special attention on the c scale. within minutes she had it. and what was so cool about her success was how eager she was to share with the other girl and teach her how to do it, too. she could hardly contain herself in her eagerness to help the other girl. yay!!

and here’s a 12 second video of yet another girl, anika, and her 3rd batch classmates working that c scale.

i wish you could see the smile of achievement and delight in her face as she finishes off with a flourish. they love learning ukulele!!

and here is alisha* who, along with laksha*, bravely learned how to change ukulele strings.

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what would fräuline maria do? create contests and give prizes? i think she would!

here are the prizes from last week’s contests. the addition of little plastic rings and nail polish has upped the ante.

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two happy winners in batch 3!

when you know the chords to play, you can play most an-y-thing.

recently one of the girls started jamming on her uke and singing, “give me some sunshine,” the catchy and yet poignant song from the much-loved bollywood movie 3 idiots, starring aamir khan.

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the girls all chimed in on the song, and that evening when i looked up the chords and lyrics, it struck me how relevant the words of the song are to these girls.

here are some of the lyrics from “give me some sunshine” translated from hindi into english (adapted from: http://johnboednew.blogspot.in/2010/08/translation-give-me-some-sunshine-ost-3.html). the chorus is already in english.

we kept living
an incomplete life till now,
let us live fully for a moment now
we have lost our childhood
as well as youth
now let us live fully
for a moment
give me some sunshine
give me some rain
give me another chance
i wanna grow up once again

na na na-na…na na na-na….

i’m hoping that learning to play the ukulele will be part of the survivor girls’s chance to grow up once again.

*names have been changed

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16 Apr 2013
8 Comments

where i live

would y’all like to know a little bit about where i live and who else i hang out with besides the girls at the protective home? ok! well, i’d be happy to tell you all about it.

a man named cini happens to be a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend from my days volunteering at freedom firm. and cini, who knows just about everyone in town, connected me with a place called the maharashtra fellowship for the deaf — otherwise known as the mfd. and the mfd is just down the road from the protective home. still with me?

and the mfd had a couple of rooms in the upstairs of a big house that they weren’t using. and that is where i now live. it really is a blessing, because it is safe, has wifi, and also because it is so close to rescue foundation that i can walk there. i usually catch an auto rickshaw, but it is just a 5 – 10 rupee fair (10 – 20 cents). whee!!

here’s a photo of the big house where i live.

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my rooms are on the second floor behind that staircase that you see on the left side of the building. if you squint, you can see the door to my outer room is slightly ajar. i also have access to the roof, which is a pretty cool place to do exercises in the morning if i can get up before the sun gets too hot.

and here is the room where i spend most of my time when i am home.

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most of the linens from an american family who have been in pune for five years and are now headed back to the states. thank you, dear janet!!

mfd is a boarding school for over 100 boys and girls who are deaf, and one of the cool things about living at mfd is that i never ever ever have to cook. at around 8 pm i just listen for the banging of metal bowls and ladles plates and cups — i thought mfd would be a really quiet place to live, but it isn’t!! —  and then i look out the window and down below to make sure they haven’t started without me, and then i scurry downstairs and outside to the girls’ dining area. and then one of the girls signs to me, asking if i want to have food, and i sign back and say yes, and when the buckets of food are toted over from the huge outdoor kitchen, one or two girls from each table pop up and get the rice and curry, and when it is all doled out, i get a plateful.

here is the dining area where we eat. it looks a little gloomy at night, but it is always fascinating.

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i love it here and am learning some sign language, too. it’s also very handy that i learned the american sign language alphabet years ago.

here’s two of the 10th standard girls who are always so nice.

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and here is a short video of sarubai, who is asking me if i want breakfast. this is the last breakfast of the school year for 9th standard and below.

and that is my post for today. i hope you are having a fabulous week!!

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07 Apr 2013
3 Comments

and the winner is…

shops in pune have been closed for a week due to a bandh, or strike, by merchants against a new tax. this made it difficult to purchase prizes for the friday contests in the survivor girl ukulele band project. but thursday afternoon i found a little shop that sells bangles, bindis — those little decorative dots that indian women put between their eyebrows, and mehndi — known back home as henna.

a faded, dusty, and exotic looking old bedcover shielded the little stall from the afternoon sun, and inside the closet-sized shop the walls were lined with colorful bangles. hanging from the pole in the middle were dusty strips of cellophane sleeves that held packets of bindi that caught my eye.

“kitna hai?” i asked, pointing to the bindi.

“five rupees,” said the shopkeeper, who then got up from the floor. “ten rupees, also,” she said, as she opened a plastic box that held the more upscale bindis. these had rhinestones and gold embellishments. ten rupees is about twenty cents in us dollars, so i splurged on a number of the dazzling packets of ten rupee bindis. meanwhile the shopkeeper opened a box filled with miniature bottles of fingernail polish. “ten rupees,” she said. “yes, please!” i thought to myself as i selected a number of the tiny bottles. “and mehndi?” “quick acting or normal?” she said. “normal. i’ll take five, krupya!” (please)

the next day i displayed the bindi and mehndi on the floor for my beginner ukulele class’s tuning contest.

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the girls’ enthusiasm rose a few notches. “whoever tunes their ukulele the best will get to choose their prize between the bindis and the mehndi,” i said.  “and next week’s contest will include fingernail polish!” as this was being translated, the girls grabbed their ukuleles and their pitch-pipes and scampered off to find a quiet space in which to concentrate. i’ve never seen them so interested in tuning.

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unfortunately, for all that solitude, concentration, and effort the beginner class tuning contest was a bit of a fail, in that no one came even close to getting their ukulele in tune. on the otherhand, they were all very attentive during the post-contest tuning workshop where we went around to every ukulele and tuned it as a team. and later in the day i noticed one of the girls practicing her tuning. next week there will be a winner in that class!

meanwhile, in my more advanced beginner class, two of the girls did extremely well with their c scales, so two prizes were awarded in that class.

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and later in my kitchen-girl class, the girl who recently burned her face very badly in a pressure cooker accident was able to tune two of the four strings on her ukulele and earned herself a prize. she was wearing blue, but she was tickled pink.

and here’s me with three of my first batch advanced beginners. these girls rock!!

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