Coolies’ Visit to India 2009–10

Late last year, 17 Year 12 boys travelled to India to take part in the annual “Coolies” program. From Melbourne to Chennai, via Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, the large group of excited but weary boys and teachers arrived in India late on Saturday night to be met by Brother Thambi, who escorted us to the Hotel Masa. The following morning, we bade farewell as the group separated. Sean Corcoran, Dean Dragonetti, Santiago Ferreyra-Bas, Owen Luby, Carlos Saliba, Barry Tjhardji and Alex Trebse headed west to Keesara, located approximately 40km west of Vijayawada, Andra Pradesh with Mr Evans and Ms Runci. Another nine boys, Patrick Cross, James Fagan, Michael James, James Joo, Andrew Pattinson, Haimish Rix, Roger Madafferi and Daniel Stow ventured into Tamil Nadu and stayed at Keelamudiman with Mr DiCiccio, Mr Conti, and exstaff member Mr Grafen for four weeks. At BJT College, Keesera, our first day was spent touring and greeting each class in the primary and secondary school. It felt as if we had been transported back forty years. Bikes were lined up neatly against the trees, stacks of books held by the back spring of the bikes. Little people with big brown eyes tumbled excitedly off the yellow rickety school buses and ran towards us, struggling with their oblong backpacks and plastic lunch baskets. ‘Hello Miss, what is your name?’ They said as they touched the sides of their heads with their fingertips. After a reading from the Bible and the Koran, we were introduced to the school population. Our group was greeted with cheers and claps. The concrete floors of the classrooms looked unforgiving, and the walls, concrete as well, were bleak. The children sat cross-legged on the floor in rows with their books and a small slate blackboard to copy work from the board. Their school day begins a lot earlier than ours and is definitely more rigorous. Even the kindergarten grades learn English, Hindi and Telegu (the language of the Andra Pradesh region). The grades are called Standards and school goes from Standard 1 which is about Grade 1 up until Standard 10. After that, they go to Standard +1 and Standard +2 which is considered College. Seeing the Degree building, which the 2008 Coolies worked on, was definitely uplifting. Once completed, many more students would be able to attend the school to further their education beyond Standard (Year 10). For many Indian students this is all the education they will receive. The tour of the worksite was confronting. The immensity of the task ahead suddenly became all the more real once we stood in front of it. Once finished, it will consist of 24 classrooms, two computer laboratories and a library. Br Tom walked us through the site and explained that this building was not built when the 2008 Coolies were here. The completion of this building will free up the existing secondary school building to expand the Degree component of the College. Equipped with steel capped boots, working gloves, sunscreen and tropical strength insect repellent, we set to work. Our day began at 8 am so that we could have breakfast and be ‘booted up’, as Mr Evans would say, by 8.55 am. The day was broken up into three shifts of an hour and a half. It may not seem like much, but working in 35+ degree heat and using muscles that were hitherto taken for granted was tiring. The work was certainly physical but who could complain with an endlessly blue sky, palm trees and cotton fields as far as the eye could see! The lack of equipment meant that the labour was manual, in the truest sense of the word. There was not a wheelbarrow on site and concrete was mixed by hand. New technology was scarce. Sand was carried up flights of stairs in canvas sacks. Two people would pack the sacks, one would ferry them to the stairs, whereupon two people on the stairs shifted them to the top. From there it was passed along the corridor to the room. Bricks were carried on circular metal trays. The workers would laugh at us and poke their tongues out because we could not carry more than four bricks at a time and