After these
sessions were over I would be dropped back home or to Hartman's office
whichever was nearer. After the first few schools went off well and I
became accustomed to the routine I found myself enjoying these classes.
I was even more pleased to learn that I would be paid Rs.100 per
workshop plus my travel costs.
For the talk I would start by telling the students about my sabbatical,
how the idea came up, the various places I had visited and the various
things I had done so far. After that I would speak about two
topics-vermiculture and snakes-because I thought that these would be of
most use to the students. Vermiculture because they could practise this
at home to process the garbage into compost and snakes because people
have so many fears about them.
When I talked about vermiculture, particularly about mixing cowdung
with soil, sometimes the girls and boys would find it distasteful and
would make jokes about it or laugh at the idea and I would think that
these are city kids and they don't know anything about cowdung. But
still I would continue to explain how a vermipit can be set up in their
homes.
On snakes, I would first give general information about poisonous and
non-poisonous snakes, and how to identify the poisonous ones. Then I
would tell them what should be done if someone got a snake bite.
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