As I write this, my little sister, Muna, is sitting on the ground beside me. And guess what she is doing? WRITING!! A few days ago, she took an interest in learning to write her A, B, Cs – and that’s all she’s been doing the past few days. She is SO into it it’s amazing! At first I thought it might just be a little bid for attention, but she seems to genuinely love it. She wakes up in the morning, and right away she grabs her notebook and pencil. I think she would write all day long if she could. So far, she’s learnt to write all her capital letters and now she is writing words like Bus, Train, Ice-cream… all in capitals of course, because she doesn’t know her little letters.
It’s really nice to watch her come into her own like this, since her 14-year old sister can’t really read or write. I think now that she’s shown so much interest in learning, Mama has decided to enroll her in the new session of school (end of April). She’ll likely go to Social Public School – my school! So that makes me happy.
By the way, after I wrote that last paragraph, Muna finished writing her words with capital letters and has now decided to write words with little letters. So I take back what I said before!
This interest in writing has really brought Muna out of her shell. For the first week, she didn’t utter a word to me, and now all she does is speak! And, she is repeating things I say to her in English. Now she can say, “Very good”, “sister”, “I am fine”, and “Thank you”. And of course, she is saying the letters and words that she is writing. It’s almost too bad that I’m leaving the house now because I think we could make a LOT of progress in her English, seeing as how she is so sponge-like at the moment.
This attitude, however, is not without consequences. I sense quite a bit of jealousy coming from Muna’s older sister, Gita. What I had failed to realize before is that Gita and Muna hardly know one another. Gita left her house when she was only 5 years old, long before Muna was even born. Gita has been back to her village only a few times since then, and only for short periods of time. So, my original thought – that Gita was excited and happy to have her sister coming to live here – was probably not entirely accurate. In fact, she probably wasn’t too happy about this new arrival – her younger sister infringing on her space, and the added responsibility of having to take care of her too.
Top that with that fact that Muna received so much attention and love when she first came (to open her out of her shell) and that now she can already write better than her sister, and you can just imagine the way Gita is feeling right now.
I empathize with Gita, but at the same time, what can be done? Her sister lived in a poor, poor, home, and only ate plain white rice with salt and chillies every day. She was dirty, had lice, didn’t get any attention from her family members (who were out in the field all day), had NO chance of going to school or learning… What could we do? Leave her there? It’s only fair that she should have the same chance at a better life as her sister, even if that means a little temporary jealousy.
A little sisterly rivalry
