A Tamil Australian In Jaffna: Reading Club With The Kids
It has been two weeks since curfew started and to begin with my day was just wake-up, eat, watch a movie, eat, watch another movie and sleep but I kept thinking how long can I do this for?
Society & Culture
Apr 23, 2020
It has been two weeks since curfew started and to begin with my day was just wake-up, eat, watch a movie, eat, watch another movie and sleep but I kept thinking how long can I do this for?
I had also been spending time with some cute kids from next door who are my neighbours. The older one is 13 and the younger one is eight years old. I noticed that they were more interested in using a mobile phone than studying or any other activities during curfew, much like a lot of us.
I have some Tamil books that I bought when I was in Tamil Nadu a few weeks ago. A lot of these books are autobiographies. I told the kids that we would start reading in the morning, and then they can play on mobile phones after. That's how we started off this routine between us.
Now we have four kids that come over every day from 8 am to 10 am to read books, listen to BBC World News in Tamil and chat about living a healthy life.
I aim to increase this number from four kids to forty kids when curfew is over in order to create an environment where importance is given to other activities other than using a phone. I would also like them to do more activities than just study.
It would be great to bring out their talents in sports, music, dance, boxing, or whatever their passion is!
