HOUSE OF MANY TONGUES

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 106, 29 January 1938, Page 4 (Supplement)

HOUSE OF MANY TONGUES

The East Gomes To London Every morning in a house in Hackney a grey-haired Englishman reads aloud a chapter of the Bible—in Urdu, Hindi, Mahratti and Malay. His voice intones each strange-sounding Oriental dialect with the ease of twenty years’ daily experience. Around him, standing, kneeling or sitting on the floor, are young native women listening to their native tongues. It is prayer time as the Home for Ayahs and Amahs (native nursemaids). When I called on Mr W. Fletcher, one-time foreign missionary, now for twenty years the superintendent of this institution, I was struck by the peculiar quietness of the house, said a writer in the “Sunday Express.” Mr Fletcher gave me the answer in one sentence: “It is a slice of the East in London,” he said. I was shown the communal sittingroom set out with low-seated chairs; most of the inmates find it difficult to sit at ease except on the floor. Here ayahs and amahs were at their prayers. Some kneel on the window ledge, some stand, others lie flat, according to their caste and creed. Although the superintendent and his wife, the matron, make a point of a pre-breakfast Bible reading, few of the women are Christians, an'd no attempt is made to convert them. The girls live almost as they would in their native villages. They cook their own meals. Each has a separate saucepan and gas ring. Mr Fletcher explained: “High and low caste girls must not sit together at table. “They must eat from different sets of crockery and not drink water from the same jug. “It is all very difficult, but somehow we manage to conduct our little home in perfect harmony.” Ayahs are Indians, Amars Chinese. Nepalese or Ghurkas, the hill women, make the most reliable nursemaids, the Amahs the most courageous. Their days in the home are spent waiting for jobs which will take them back to the East. Many have travelled in charge of children as many as fifty times between the Orient and England.