Girl Power: My
Trip to the Mukti Mission
By: Rutha Chivate
Mukti means freedom, a prospect still
unthinkable for countless women and girls across the world. As a global
community, we have advanced so far, but the restraint on our women is still a
pressing problem. The Mukti Mission, headquartered in Kedgaon, India, is the
result of the hard work and dedication of one marvelous woman.
Pandita
Ramabai, born in 1858, was an extremely intelligent woman, a trait noticeable
from a young age. At age 12, she had memorized eighteen thousand Hindi shlokas (poems). A vertically challenged
woman just barely five feet tall, she liked her furniture to be low to the ground
and easily accessible. She came from a higher caste Brahmin family, but married
into a lower caste family, showing that these labels of society had no
influence on her. Pandita Ramabai (the prefix Pandit/Pandita is given to a
highly educated person) began the Mukti Mission in 1889. In 1899 she was the
architect and engineer of the project of building a church on the grounds with
wood imported from Burma that is still operational today. Pandita Ramabai also
translated the Bible from its original Hebrew to Marathi, the language of
Maharashtra-the first woman in the world to do so. Other doings she was
accredited to include being the first woman in India to receive the Kaiser-e-Hind
award, a huge honor, the first woman to encourage the education of women
doctors in India, and the first woman to invent Marathi/Braille typeset. Today,
Mukti Mission has planted seventeen projects in seven states and has offices
all over the world, including New Jersey. A couple more recent projects were a
girl’s junior college (11th and 12th grade) and two new
daycares. Many of their projects focus on educating kids that are still victims
of child labor, so that they can grow up with knowledge and get better jobs to
support their families. They have rescued thousands of children from the
horrors of child labor and put them in preparatory schools, which can then
bridge them to enroll in regular schools. The Mukti Mission has many volunteers
from around the world, a couple of which we were able to meet. Calvin and
Darren, from Canada, had come to India for a month to help teach the children
in the schools. When asked what their inspiration for coming was, Calvin said,
“I’ve just wanted to go on a mission trip to a poor country for two years, and
when my church told us about this, I knew I had to come.” Darren, who found out
through his school, replied by saying, “I’ve wanted to come to India for eight
years to help stop the sex-slave industry, and when I heard about this, I
figured helping these young girls would be a good place to start.”
The
Kedgaon Mukti Mission has seven schools: kindergarten, primary school, high
school, junior college, an English medium school, blind school, and a special needs
school-all the schools are only for girls. We were able to visit a few of these
schools and hand out plenty of cookies to bring smiles to lots of faces. Before
we visited the blind school, however, we were able to watch the blind women.
Every afternoon they sit and weave baskets to sell. They sang a lovely song all
together like a choir, their voices in perfect unison. These women are taught
to weave baskets, sew, and even cook (fires and all), without the use of their
vision. At the blind school, right next door, we saw the blind girls being
taught by blind teachers. There were only one or two girls per grade, and they
each sat across from their teacher on the floor, in their respective
classrooms. All their books were in Braille; we saw one girl writing in Braille
with the use of an interesting tool with slots, and a poker to create the
raised dots. We also saw young blind children, about three to five years old,
having nap time under their beds (so they wouldn’t fall off), we didn’t get to
meet them, but we left them lots of cookies!
Afterwards,
we visited the hospital, a fair-sized, fully functional medical facility servicing
many women. My aunt, the manager of the hospital, gave my cousins and me a
thorough tour of the place. I got to see the bench where many years ago my
great-grandfather would sit and hand out spectacles, right next to the
dentist’s office. Further inside, there was a pharmacy, an operation theater, a
delivery room, an x-ray/E.C.G. room, an injection room, and several wards for
patients. In the back there was a home for older women whose families couldn’t
take care of them anymore. In one of the wards, we got to see the most adorable
baby with the saddest story. Baby Joseph was born with a cleft lip and cleft
palette; his mother, thinking this to be bad luck and not wanting to be
ridiculed by neighbors and family, brought him to Mukti Mission when he was
just two days old. He was also found to have several neurological issues that
would require numerous surgeries until he is twelve years old. His caretaker
was feeding him formula milk, and we could see that he was in very good hands.
When we moved on, we saw a woman who couldn’t speak; she performed an ‘action
song’ for us and a very entertaining patient who sang two songs for us. It was
truly a fantastic place!
In
conclusion, I’d just like to say that amazing things are happening at this
mission for freedom, and anyone can take an initiative to make a difference,
just as Pandita Ramabai did. These girls are learning so much and will grow up
and be able to help support their family. Best of all, they can pass on the
candle of education to the next generation, for it is only through this light
that our world is run.
