Rainbow Primary School

This is the article I wrote for an expat group here in Hyderabad. It is long, but comprehensive! Naga’s little toddler head bob bob bobs along when he runs on his thin, dusty legs. He is two and a half feet tall with a crew cut and wide, wild, intelligent eyes. Naga was my first friend in the Mastan Nagar slum. He is independent, climbs like a monkey, and runs fast. I spend too much time chasing him. His mother, Nagama, is always working. Her head is down, over the cooking or over the wash. She never knows where Naga has run to, yet he keeps to an imaginary a fifteen-foot boundary that stretches between his hut, his school, and the flat space in the dirt road in front of the school where his two older brothers play cricket. I know Naga and three hundred of his fellow slum children through my work with the Rainbow Primary School. This is how our friendship began. This little bit of our story here ends with some lessons learned and ways others can help. In September 2005, a re...