The Sabar children at the Tribal Cultural Society in Sonari on Friday. Picture by Bhola Prasad

Ganga Sabar (11) has an alcoholic father, Ramu. The boy worked as a dhandar (labourer) at the village pradhan house. Now, he can rattle off English and Hindi alphabets

Purno Sabar (9) has known illness and poverty at close quarters. His father Sombari has TB and doesn’t work. The perennially hungry boy started to drink country liquor and hated speaking to people. Now, he smiles, says namaste, and writes alphabets and numbers

Ganga and Purno were among the 30-odd children of the primitive Sabar tribe who came to Jamshedpur on a two-day pleasure trip on Friday, thanks to an NGO working with them since last May.

This was their first trip outside forest dwellings. Jamshedpur, just 45km away, is worlds removed from hamlets Dhamgam and Tangrain of Pokta block, East Singhbhum. Children, in clean bright clothes, went to Jubilee Park, Tata Steel Zoological Park inside the sprawling greens, and to Centre for Excellence.

If they looked bemused, they did not show it. Like all children, they loved the park and zoo, but didn’t know what to make of the abstract architecture of Centre for Excellence. They were also slightly taken aback by slices of bread.

But since May last year, since NGO Yuva — based in Parsudih, 3km from city limits — in association with Asha for Education (San Francisco chapter) started working with them in Project Kislay, these children who knew the taste of hooch but not of toothpaste, have undergone tremendous transformations.

Sabar tribe, on the brink of extinction, is riddled with child labour, child marriage and consumption of hooch. Poverty and illiteracy are as rife as TB. Children work as bonded labour for wealthier rural families, getting an annual pittance of Rs 800. The only thing that the children didn’t know was childhood.

Project Kislay got children started on the basics — brushing teeth and washing hands — before studies. The NGO persuades Sabar parents to send children to school rather than marrying them off or sending them to work, said Yuva secretary Barnali Chakraborty.