I returned the second day with a lot of energy, ready to start what was going to be 15 days of fun, joy and learning. I rearranged the plan for the workshop for it to span over the 15 days in June with follow ups over 4 Saturdays in July 2015.

The girls were divided again in the same categories according to age, 6-12 year olds and then 13-18 year olds. I had 3 batches, the third batch was a more advance class which had girls that I had already worked with last summer. I took on more disabled girls this summer increasing the number to 10 vs 6 in the past year.

The aim was to start making all the new girls feel comfortable. Be it comfort in their surroundings, being among the other girls or inner body comfort, being comfortable in their own skin. The whole idea of the program was to help provide the girls with a creative outlet, help create a safe space for them where they feel secure enough to come and let their hair down, where they are content with what they are doing and most importantly content with themselves. Through various dance techniques and activities, we worked on achieving healthy bodies and trust among our fellows. Promoting a healthy and positive body image was very important as several of these girls had been through physical trauma and were somewhere feeling disconnected (or disgusted) with their own bodies. Another thing majorly lacking in these girls was confidence and instilling confidence in them was my prime goal.

Meanwhile, I started more intensely training the advanced batch girls as they were now already comfortable with their bodies. For them it was more about learning how to push themselves, set goals and actually working hard to achieve them. The aim for this summer was to have them understand the feeling of wanting something, setting their heart to it and achieving it! Through several dance exercises on a daily basis we would push ourselves further and further be it physically or mentally. Something as simple as push-ups had the girls working hard. We would set a goal for each class as a group and promise to achieve it. Each day increasing by one push up. These kinds of exercises also fostered a sense of community and teamwork owing to the rule of if one stops, everyone stops and then we all start again. This encouraged the girls to keep boosting each other’s morale. They kept encouraging each other not to quit, not to give up and together we would work through whatever pain we might be feeling to achieve the goals we had set together.

15 days passed way too fast for me to even realize, because last summer the project went on for almost 7-8 weeks. Due to shortage in time this year, we were not able to put up a mini-show for an audience like we did last year but we made sure to have our own private party on the last Saturday that we met where all 50 girls got together and just celebrated. I played different songs and we had dance circles, some girls showing off their newly learnt moves and group dancing. Some were still shy, but most participated. The whole idea was to just have them laugh and enjoy themselves.

All in all, it was a fruitful summer yet again and I would not trade this experience in for anything. I will be heading back over winter break to do a small one week workshop (if permissions come through). The past two summers of work at the Nirmal Chhaya home has left me enriched with so many skills, knowledge and life lessons that will stay with me forever. So thank you, Brandeis India for giving me this opportunity to carry my project out!

Disclaimer: I am not a profound scholar or novelist but I often wish I were. As I attempt to tackle this loaded concept of identity while studying abroad, I must first confess that I am only profoundly knowledgeable of my sole definition of identity and that I am cannot confidently reference literary geniuses or notable scholars who have made it their lives’ work to document the meaning of identity. I make this disclaimer to say that all experiences I will be writing about while in India will be made in the first person, it is not be said that I will not try to gather insight from the sparse population of African and Afro-American individuals residing in India. Furthermore, my goal for these blog posts is not to insinuate that India is a racist country, rather it is to address that, like the United States, racism is inherently apart of their cornerstone code.

I was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. My paternal family lineage has been traced through the soil of Haiti dating back to the nineteenth century. Now how accurate these records are can be left up for debate but as it stands, I am Haitian, my parents are Haitian, my grandparents are Haitian, and my great-grandparents are Haitian. And had it not been for the turbulent reign of Papa Doc and the governmental instability of Jean-Bernard Aristide, my mother would not have fled her home and opt to raise her children within the American borders. Bypassing through all the immigration nightmares my family endeared to secure proper documentation, it seemed as though identity took a backseat in order to protect against possible deportation. Now how realistic were those fears in a nation that seems to only associate undocumented citizens with our neighbors below the border can be left up for debate as well. Yet, the realization is that for ten years, I was warned against detailing my family’s origin and heritage. All sense of inherent Haitian identity was substituted with that of an African-American female, speaking fluent English and from an American household with parents who only may had been taken as Caribbean due to their sun kissed brown skin and mild, incomprehensible dialect of American English.

It was not until my Hindi professor asked me, in front of my classmates, what my mother tongue was that I realized whatever identity I was clinging to, whether it is Haitian or African American, was suddenly berated. I stood there, dressed in traditional Indian attire, a kurtha, leggings, my Vibrams Five-Toe Shoes and my kinky black hair twisted back into a slight up-do, staring at her. I could not even fully comprehend her question before I heard slight gasps and gentle hints of laughter coming from my peers that I realized she was insinuating that I was not raised speaking English. I could not understand how after being informed that I was a student from the United States and hearing me speak several times in class with a mild Southern American accent that she would ask if English was my second language. And as if my muted response was not evident enough that I did not want to entertain her question, she continued on to ask if my mother tongue was Swahili, a language spoken vastly in East Africa; 12,000 kilometers from Haiti and Georgia-my birthplace and my place of residency. I should stop and explain that my Hindi teacher is an elderly woman and that her questioning may not have came with bad intentions but is that enough reasoning to compensate for her questioning. Would the assumption that she simply did not know better allow for her to non-so discreetly claim that my difficulty in learning Hindi was because I was raised speaking Swahili, instead of English like the rest of my classmates, who, coincidently, were also struggling to learn Hindi. At what point will ignorance be unraveled from the shield of lacking knowledge?