true life planet

Not feeling well, but I will attempt to make some efforts to write something here…

Well, basically I’m sick from exhaustion and pollution.

The doctor more acurately described my condition as ” the combined effect of pollution poisoning and overwork”, and I would have to say I am in complete agreement with him.

The cure? Well, the obvious one would be to leave this city, but that is unrealistic, as I have things to do here. So the alternative is to take some much needed time off and rest, trying to stay indoors as much as possible, and drink hot tea and lemon and honey.

When I went to Bihar several weeks ago I was actually quite unwell, in a state of exhaustion from ther hectic Christmas season and the demands of Daya Dan–and as my Norwiegian friend, Sessel, said to me one day , “Even living here is a full-time job!”. I also had a chest infection and was coughing alot..so I figured the cure would be the clean air of Bihar.

The air in Bihar was clean, but unfortunately every night I slept in a tiny, airless adobe room, and for company there were 3 other people sleeping in it as well. Sleep did not come easily with the ninety year old grandmother muttering away on her pallet a mere foot and a half away from my own cot. Every once in awhile I would awake to her sitting up, crouching over me, blessing my forehead or telling me that they weren’t feeding her(they were).

Back in Calcutta, before I left for Bihar, the entire population of the city heard my coughs and shook their heads…everyone told me that it was obvious I was sick not due to the air quality, but due to the sudden “cold front” that had come with the short-lived calcutta winter.

“Cold front? What cold front?”, I asked, completely confused as to the nature of what defines cold to a Calcuttan native.

Because it was not cold. It was not, even slightly, chilly.

Only on two nights did I need a blanket that I had stupidly bought in preparation for this much talked about and maligned “winter”. The rest of the time I slept in a pair of cotton pajamas and sometimes not even that.

When I would tell my friends that it wasn’t cold, they would stare at me in disbelief. Maybe they did not hear me, for everyone wore hats-the sort you wear skiing-and mufflers and turtlenecks and earmuffs. They wore all of these with pride, like a badge of honor, the more they had piled on, the better. Men walked around in lurid hot pink fake fur vests and women piled on sparkly, glittery vests and puffy grandma cardigans.

I awoke every morning, tried to manage wearing a pashmina scarf for a few hours…and would end up sweating profusely and end up taking the damn thing off eventually.

It is due to this “throat uncovering”, this complete disregard for the Winter of Calcutta, that my Indian friends say that I now am sick.

But I have a different theory. I think it was exhaustion, combined with the increasingly noxious air of the city during it’s short “Winter” that was my downfall.

For as soon as it was a tolerable temperature to me, in other words, not so hot that one was drenched in sweat, but a nice normal, mid range temperature,  the entire population of the city not only donned mufflers and earmuffs, they decided to burn hot oil in large drums on the streets.

The large drums began to burn as soon as it was slightly dark outside, and continued throughout the night. The drums served as heat for the street residents, as well as, for some unknown reason, the city’s officials decided to re-tar the streets for several months every single evening.

Every morning I awoke to noxious fumes in my room and a terrible, painful cough.

So I went off to Bihar, hoping a change of scene would do me good.

And it did in some ways, although for many, Bihar does not rate in the top twenty of places one must visit when in India(which is the main reason I went there!).It is..poor…dangerous..and so on. The main place people go in Bihar-Westyern people-is to do their Buddha-thing, their pilgrimage and so on. However, small villages do not rate high on the average traveler’s list.

I arrived at the village exhausted from the work of the orphanage, and told everyone I was going to take a nap.

I was  exhausted from the train journey (which was a night train, a sleeper car, except I got no sleep as I was in a compartment full of Indian men who looked at me like I was from another planet. I was forced to spend the entire evening awake, pretending to read Shasti Tharoor’s “India”, drinking cup after cup of milky chai, and day dreaming of the moment I would finally get some rest..)

Anyway, back to telling everyone I was going to get some shut eye…

“Fine”, everyone said. ‘Good Idea”, everyone said.

I then went to a small room, where I was given a rope-cot and I laid down on it.

I was not alone. Oh no. I was accompanied by all of the women of the house , whop sat on my bed, squeezing themselves onto it like sardines, inching their way onto it until they were taking up the majority of the cot, forcing me to twist my long body into strange contortions so I could fit on the space left for me.

I laid there. They watched me. And they talked. Loudly.

It was decided that I should sing a song to enliven my resting time, and I had to wrack my brain in the middle of all of my wasted-ness to figure out an appropriate song to sing.

What do you sing to a group of muslim women, who are cloistered in their house, never go out, and who will, no doubt have the entire village singing the song you sing for years to come?

It was difficult to come up with a song that was not religious, not about sex, not about drugs, not about anything much at all. (Try it yourself. You’ll be surprised that you immediately think of Madonna or your countrys’ National Anthem or The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine…)

Finally I began to sing an American song, the one with the simplest content I could think of.

It was:

“Someone’s in the kitchen with Ida

Someone’s in the kitchen I know.

Someone’s in the kitchen with Ida,

Strumming on the old banjo.

He’s playing…fi..fie..fiddly fie fo, fi fie fiddly fie fo….”

And so on.

(It very well may be about sex or drugs or someones nationalistic athem, but at least it wasn’t obvious!)

The song met with great success, and in fact, drew a large crowd of extended family memebers(all women and children of both sexes) and babies and even a few chickens into the two door ways.

After singing a few more songs, which included my poor rendition of Patsy Kline’s I Go Out Walking After Midnight, It was finally decided by all of the women that perhaps I could actually take a real nap.

They did not go away entirely, but they lessened in number dramatically, leaving me with about seven children and 4 women. This did not include the ninety year old grandmother in the cot next to mine, who would occassionally complain loudly about getting her lunch or reach out and grab my leg.

Apparently for proper napping, certain things must occur.

1. Hot-and highly caffienated-chai must be drunk in copious quantities.(But first, the cow musty be milked for the milk in the chai, of course..)

2. Blankets-of every weight and variety-must be layered on top of one, so that you are like a mummy, and cannot move, except to somehow get one arm out to hold yet another cup of chai.

3. A Bihar-oven,kind of a large clay pot, full of red hot coals–which must be stirred often to make sure it is piping hot!-in placed on the floor, directly under your poor roasting body, just inches away from your poor behind..only a fragile jute netting separating your backside from severe burns.

4. Every door and window-any chance of air whatsoever- is sealed tightly, so that, in the room, the air becomes thick with smoke and lack of oxygen, and if not due to fatigue, one falls not neccessarily asleep, but more like passes out because they are, in fact being cooked.

All this is done under the watchful eyes of several children and women, who watch everything you do and never stop talking.

And this was just the first afternoon.

Sleep turned out to be impossible in Bihar.

This was due to several factors, most important being that No one with my skin color had ever been there, ever..and so everything I did was fascinating, from sleeping to eating to going to the bathroom(but that is another story).

Secondly, I had come for the big village festival, which take splace severy single night and most of the day for a week, and as a guest of honor I had to be there for all of it.

So when I finally was on my way home from Bihar, I was looking forward to sleep, blissful sleep, in my very own hotel room. Alone.

When we finally arrived back in Calcutta(which is yet another story , as there was a mad rush for the train and I got swished behind a metal door and then lifted off the floor by the crowd, head touching the ceiling..while my friend who was with me was robbed of everything in his pockets and barely managed to hold on to the handle in the doorway of the train as it was moving..) anyway, when we finally got back, we got off the crowded train with relief and then quickly realized that we could not swallow the thick stuff that was supposedly air..

….and by the time we got over Howrah bridge I was coughing again, choking down the polluted air, trying to hold a mask over my face in hopes it would filter out some of the horrible black stuff. They say one day in Calcutta is equal to smoking 40 cigarettes, but I feel it must be more.

So that was several weeks ago, and now my “pollution-sickness” has turned into a bout with bronchitis( no, no it’s not TB, I got the tests done, you worry warts!) of which I probably will not recover until I am safely at home in California, breathing in colorless air and resting properly.

Which I am trying to do, but I do have to go back to work at some point, even if its only for a week!

In spiter of the pollution, I have to say that this is the most favorite of places I have been in the world. I know. I actually think it’s better than Paris, than Santiago, than Mexico City, than Panama City, than Geneva. It’s got something..no wait, it’s got everything, yes, everything, all at once. It hits you oveer the head and gives you no choice but to buck up and deal with yourself and everything else around you. I love that. There is no real escapism here-it’s all out for everyone to see, the best and the worst.

However, I adored Bihar so much that I have decided to go back again before I leave.

I’ll keep you all posted…

gigi

From a journal entry before I went to Bihar…

It’s 5:30 am, and I’m up, awake, and sitting in a tiny hole-in-the-wall coffeeshop that serves coffee that tastes like water and porridge at this early hour.

I’m up so early because the street-or, I should say, alley-under the windows of my room is being worked on and it’s very noisy. Actually it was worked on all night, and I pretended I was fine with it and that it wasn’t bothering me because I had no choice in the matter.

But now that it’s daylight, and as I have a choice, I’ve left the room and wandered to this little place, hoping to rid myself of my grumpiness and that the coffee will give me a jump start to what promises to be yet another long day at Daya Dan.

My porridge has arrived. It’s mostly boiled milk, with some bits of oats in it and I cover it with a thick layer of honey to sweeten it. The coffee comes, clear brown in color(you’d have to drink 10 cups of the stuff for it to take any effect) and I stare out the grating covering the window into the street.

I’m watching a man across the street. He’s there every morning that I am-his routine is the same, day after day.

He’s ridden up to a spot across the street on a bicycle.

It’s a black bicycle, heavy, almost industrial looking, covered in dirt, dust, and grime. Only it’s silver handlebars show any glint of it’s original color.

On the front are hanging two filthy woeven plastic market bags-the kind poor people use around the world to store rice and then get converted into shopping bags and sleeping mats-and each bag hanging heavily from a handlebar, completely black and thick with a layer of grease.

On the back of the bike, on either side, are two plastic drums, the type people catch rain in or store gasoline in, and they are the size of large trash cans, bright aqua blue in color, a color not found in nature. They are streaked with dirt and dust and oil, and at the top of these rests another container, a jimmy-can, also black, with the top cut off.

The man gets off the bike. He’s wearing a pair of knee length lavender- gray shorts which must have started out as a totally different color but have faded from daily wear; a short sleeved black button front shirt that is much too small, and a maroon and brown headscarf is wrapped around his head. He’s clean shaven with short cropped hair, and his skin is almost black in color, his teeth are stained red from betel-nut juice. The whites of his eyes are very bright against his very dark face.

He moves, swiftly, as he does every morning, unloading his bike of it’s containers and bags.

A burlap cloth that was wrapped around his shoulders he removes and places on the ground.

The moment the cloth is on the ground, the man is surrounded by a group of dogs.

One dog is especially beautiful, large and well built, muscular, looking somewhat like a beefy cross between a Golden Retriever and a Pit Bull. It wears a red collar and it’s muzzle is grizzled. It’s obviously the head dog of the pack.

The second dog is one of the most unusual dogs I’ve ever seen on my travels. It almost looks like a particular breed, but as it is a street dog, this is probably impossible. It’s a female, chocolate brown in color, shorthaired(almost hairless) with a thin, Greyhound like body, erect ears and seems to be the sort of dog Egyptians would have owned at the time of the Pharoahs.Her eyes give her a strange look, as they are exactly the same color as her coat, making her look like a dog from another time or world.

The third dog is a black, scruffy looking dog, with large, blunt square-looking ears that look as though they were cut off to look like that. She’s recently had puppies and she’s obviously still nursing them. She’s got a flower garland around her neck-the kind Hindus use on their statues and shrines, as well as on the occassional cow- and the garland is made of white jasmine flowers, red hibiscus flowers, adn yellow marigolds. She’s also been painted-or smudged, anyway-with orange and red paint, right in the middle of her forehead.

The last dog in the pack is very old, white and black, with almost no hair to speak of, one eye blue and the other brown, long floppy ears and a limping gait.

The man spreads the burlap cloth on the ground on the street and proceeds to dump each bag and container out on to it. Each container is full of trash and debris, food waste he has collected from the street.

He methodically sorts thru each pile of debris, creating four piles of edible trash from the enormous mound of trash. While he’s doing this, he’s hardly looking down, instead, he’s talking to a neighbor who also lives on that same section on the sidewalk, a man wearing a faded blue and white lungi and a bright white shirt, his torso and head wrapped in a hot pink and magenta scarf, drinking hot milky chai from a clay cup.

The four piles are not the same in size-two are larger than the others, I realize. Each pile has a few chicken bones, alot of rice, old bits of chapati and samosas, leftover bits of curry and streetfood…

He’s finished sorting the trash. He motions for all the dogs to come to him, and they sit quietly, tails wagging.

This food he’s sorted into piles-why, it’s for his dogs!

The dogs all line up at their place-the head dog and the dog who has had puppies take the two largest piles of food and the two smallest dogs take the the small piles of food.

I watch this man do this almost every morning- picking thru trash, starting at 4 am, collecting bits of this and that, trying to give his dogs the choice bits from the street, before the professional trash pickers come along and sift thru it all, or burn it looking for metal and bits of plastic.

Crows arrive, perching on the bike. They are large, greyish-blue, beautiful creatures, with large eyes.

The man screeches at them, shaking and waving his arms, scaring the off. Then he watches his dogs finish their meal.

Then, he loads up all his bins on to his bike again, folds the burlap around his shoulders, and rides off again, for one last foraging attempt before the city wakes up.

His dogs lie on the piece of sidewalk they share with him and wait.

gigi

Well, I only have minutes, here. So, first let me apologize for all of the typos in the most recent entry..I tried to fix it, but ended up losing part of the entry, so you’ll have to bear with me!
Oh well.
Bihar was,, fantasitc, like a dream. I’ve got seven blog entries written about it. Now I just have to find the time to post them!
I go back to work tomarrow. I am..looking forward to coming home soon, to American life.
Only seven weeks left to go.
Talk to you all soon,
love gigi

I’ve just come back from a whirlwind trip from Bihar. But before I write about that, I’d like to write about my last day with Mitun, the boy I would like to adopt from Daya Dan. We went to the home for male adults that are physically and mentally challenged that is run by the brothers of the Missionaries of Charity order.

This is from a journal entry.

It seems to me that life has changed more in the last 12 hours than I could have possibly imagined.

It seems I have changed-in every way- more than I could have predicted-in the last 12 hours, too.

The day started today with a tremendous gift. The sisters told me that I could spend the entire day with Mitun, as his “buddy”.

All the children have “buddies” when they are going on outings, and today we went on an all day adventure to the home/care facility the children go to once they grow up and no longer can stay at Daya Dan.

We had several goals in going to the home: one was to perform a belated Christmas concert there; and the other was that several of the oldest children were going to be transferred there in the next month, and this trip was to aquaint them with the place and get used to the idea.

The home is run by Missionaries of Charity brothers, and is located more than two hours outside the city by a river. It’s a sprawling estate that was donated to the brothers some time ago, and houses more than 200 grown men and a few children, all with physical, mental, or emotional handicaps.

To get there, we had to get on a bus and brave the traffic for two hours. The kids don’t handle long bus journeys well-they get stressed out and upset easily by changes of any kind. So the role of the volunteer buddy is to provide comfort and a sense of normalicy, in that children are only paired with volunteers they know. That volunteer stays with them not only for the bus ride, but the entire day. We do everything with them and they never leave our sight-ever.

I had been asking for more one on one time with Mitun, as he was leaving the following day to go back to his boarding school (which is teaching him to speak, to use his hearing aid, and sign language). I was expecting an hour with him but when they told me I would be assigned to him all day I was so happy I could not stop beaming!

The day started very early, as we had many children to get dressed, get fed, and get ready. We have so many special needs kids at Daya Dan that dressing some of them, let alone feeding them, can take a good half an hour at least.

When all the kids were ready, they were lined up in red plastic chairs in the main room, all looking sleepy but excited–this was going to be an all-day outing and such events are very rare for these children.

The boys looked beautiful, all were wearing matching tangerine orange baggy pants and matching shirt, with bright red sweater vests(that strange sense of Indian color coordination seems to think that tangerine orange and red are perfectly suited for one another!); their hair slicked back and parted neatly; their white socks and sandals still clean; and their bodies smelling of baby powder and bananas and the sweet white rice porridge they had for breakfast.

The girls finally came downstairs(girls live there too, but are kept separate as is Indian custom) and every girl had her head covered in fancy hair ornaments, frilled orange and yellow party dresses, and full face makeup.

It was time to go!

I was nervous about being assigned Mitun because I have always been assigned another boy, named Joy (remember, the one who bit my face a few weeks ago?!). I was worried Joy would be disturbed about his change in routine. But my friend, Emilio,another long time volunteer, was assigned to Joy, and the child seemed to take to him warmly. I breathed a sigh of relief, and turned all my attentions to Mitun.

We held hands as we walked down the alleyway towards the bus. Mitun looked positively joyful, and was telling everyone that he and I were together all day long. He was so happy about having me as his buddy that the kid was practically radiating light. I think we both were, actually..

I was thrilled to sit next to him for the next few hours on the bus–we held hands, shared snacks, talked, looked out the window together..it was bliss.

Also sitting next to us was the head nun at Daya Dan, an American sister who came to Calcutta 10 years ago to work at Kalighat, returned a few more times to volunteer–and then ended up being a sister herself.

A wonderful woman, her down to earth midwestern American ways are a relief for me in a way..she says exactly what she means to say, and she says it in a way that gets right to the point. In India, no one ever seems to say what they mean–ever. At least not for a long, long time! So the fact that she is sitting next to me is a pleasure.

She’s watching me and Mitun for over an hour, when the conversation turns to my adopting him.

We talk about it for a good half hour, Mitun snuggled up next to me, looking out the window…

She gives her complete approval. I am on cloud nine.

Then the why, what , how, all those questions of how it will all work and all that has to be done, come bombarding my poor brain a few minutes later.

How Western of me.

She asks me how am I? How am I handling this decision?

I turn to her and say, “Well , the Western side of me has worries. But the Indian side of me has no concerns, as I know what is meant to be will be.”

We both smile.

“That’s why I love India. In the West, that thought that what will be, will be..it would never even come into fruition. All most of us would be thinking about in your situation would be HOW? WHEN? and all those other questions. But the truth is, it all works out as it should, and we should worry for nothing.”, she says.

The rest of the bus ride is complete bliss.

I am feeling new feelings for this child-I am allowing myself to love him.

This is a totally new experience for me. I have had children-other people’s children-in my life before, but never have I felt this way before.

I suddenly have the sensation of wanting whatever is best for this child-whatever it is-and I don’t care what that will require from me. Those concerns have faded away into nothingness, and are replaced instead by this new feeling, this pure feeling, of just loving this child.

I am at a loss to describe exactly how it felt, except to say that it took me entirely by surprise, for I had felt that I had loved before and knew what love was. But now, I can see that I did not.

The love of a mother, of a parent, is so all encompassing, so complete. And although I am not a mother, this moment was the closest I have ever felt to being one.

It kind of gave me..this intense emotional experience about my own mother, about her love for me, about what she willing had to give up for me. It was just an overwhelming feeling of gratitude that I had for her , and actually for all parents everywhere.

As I have said on the blog before, I’ve never wanted children. I’ve never felt like motherhood was in the cards dealt to me-so it is a new experience for me to have these kinds of feelings, which before were always closed off and seemed like they were not available to me. I’m sure that there are many women who have either chosen not to have children or cannot have children who have felt the same way–as though these feelings were not ones they could want to experience or allow themselves to have.

I was so self aware of what it was like to be with him, to be near him, to watch this child that it blew my mind.

And I loved him. Completely, utterly, loved this child.

That’s something I have not allowed myself, because what if something doesn’t work out? What about all of those what ifs?

But I think love-this kind of love-it doesn’t matter about the what ifs. Worse case senario, let’s say the adoption ended up being impossible for some red tape reason. Why not love this child anyway?

That kind of love, well I guess I never loved anything or anyone like that.

It’s a whole new thing for me.

I think, thinking about it hours later, it means I’ve grown alot during this trip. I’ve grown into quite a woman-one who can make decisions for herself and can pursue goals that before I don’t think I had the maturity to pursue.

What’s more, although I am interested in knowing what friends and family think, as a matter of course, it actually doesn’t make any difference to me whether people approve or not. Whether they can visualize it or not. Whether they are only thinking of all the “what ifs” or not.

I think this is because the decision to pursue adopting Mitun is literally outisde of me-it’s not about me, or my life, it’s actually more of a spiritual decision. And so I have this confidence that it will work out as it is meant to work out.

It is quite simply, the right thing to do. I can see no other thing to do for myself,this is the only option.

And that’s a rarity for me, to feel something so strongly that I just know it will be, that the process has begun, and that hopefuly the end result will be adoption.

Just giving and trusting that what will be, will be.

All new for me.

The only other time I felt similiar to this–not knowing what was next, but willing it into being-was on the Camino. Walking day after day, not thinking of anything but the next step. That is truly living life, that is truly living in the moment.

And trusting, trusting, that if I do my part, things will be as they are meant to be–whatever that is. The universe puts everything in place at the perfect moment.

And-it is a very Indian way to look at things.!!

But I digress.
Back to the journey..

We arrived at the home a few hours later. The place was huge, with an enormous pond, a playground, vegetable gardens, flowers, farm animals, and more.

By Indian standards it was lovely, but by Western standards it was leaving alot to be desired.

The volunteers were talking amongst themselves about the place upon arrival-we had already heard both positive and negative things about the place before the start of the bus ride-and the general consensus was that it was as good as it could be, considering all the factors.

The factors being desperate poverty, too many patients for such a place, not enough people or workers on hand to give the patients themselves personal care and attention, and so on. But the brothers were truly doing the best they could with what they had-and they never turned away anyone.

The best part about the place-which Mitun and all the other children immediately went running to-was the playground. They covered the swings, the slides, the teeter-totter in minutes and the air was full of laughter and sceams as kids played. At Daya Dan, there is no playground-the children are inside all of the time–so to actually be outside, playing, on colorful and interactive toys was a special treat for them.

The volunteers were soon exhausted, and chai was brought around, and we all sat around drinking milky, hot chai and talking about the place.

It was decided that some kind of mini tour was going to take place, sop that the children could visit their friends that had been sent there, as well as letting us all take a look at the facility.

After a wonderful tour of the grounds (all was wonderful except the enormous pond, which for some peculair reason remained unfenced..this inspite of the patients there falling in and so forth!) we went into one of the large buildings which housed over one hundred men.

They were very excited we were there, and their was much greeting and calling out to us. The more able bodied men were housed in this building as well as the youngest ones. There were a few children.

Conditions were ok, not ideal. We asked them when they got to go outside, and they answered once a day, after lunch. This also depended on the patients condition. The ones who were more able did small taks, such as flower gardening and animal husbandry–but, sadly, many were not able to go outside at all…in particular those with which intense one on one supervision was required.

We went into a bedroom , which had over 15 beds in it. It was a large, sky blue room with a long grated window looking out on a grassy area. Seven of the beds were all lined up right next to one another, covered in thick black vinyl sheeting, and tied to each bed, by the leg, was a man.

The men tied to the beds, they needed so much personal care and the brothers did not have enough people to help them, so they simply tied them to the bed.They had bedsores of course, and other physical ailments due to their lack of care.

We have some children like these men at Daya Dan–children who never had an accurate diagnosis, so it is difficult to say exactly what is wrong with them. They are often very small, with small heads and stiff bodies(from some genetic disorder or from inactivity, it is hard to determine). Yet at Daya Dan, the children like this are assigned volunteers and so have someone interacting with them, doing physical therapy with them, talking with them, feeding them, playing with them…and the children, even though they can only make sounds or move their eyes in response, they obviously enjoy and benefit from the volunteer’s activities with them.

Here in this place, there are no volunteers–it’s so remote there is no hospital or anything nearby, so they do not let volunteers come here. These men will spend a lifetime-whatever that is for them, as they often die quite young-tied to a bed, not getting much stimulation of any kind.

The home was also in the area of Bengal absolutely ridden by malarial mosquitos(ah, awfully glad I wnet back on that anti malarial medication a few weeks back!) and the men were covered in bites.When we asked later we found out they did nothing in the way of anti malarial medication for the men or the brothers themselves.

Many of the men were not clean (the brothers did not have the staff to bathe them all daily) and many were crawling, simply crawling with lice.

This was very hard to see and to contemplate for me and for the other volunteers. We were very sad and it was hard to imagine the kids we loved so much in this place.

After this, we talked to some of the adults there who were higher-functioning and were able to speak Hindi and Bengali. From them we learned that what they missed most was that there were no volunteers to interact with them. As they had either been institutionalized their entire lives, or living in horrible conditions(several had been kept in dark sheds for several years by their families and so on, kept as street beggars, street attractions, or found practically dead in extremely horrid circumstances) they did not know how to socialize well, and it was very difficult for them to “make friends” with other patients. They did not know how. Those who had come from various M. C. charities had experienced the one on one attention of assigned volunteers, so they had learned to socialize but were used to the volunteer doing everything for them. Since they came there when they were adults, they were often very lonely.

The single exception was young man that had lived at Daya Dan until a few years ago. In a wheelchair, with one side of his body collapsed in on itself, a mishapen face, and withered limbs, I cannot exactly say what was wrong with him physically or mentally. He couldn’t speak at all it seemed, and then he began to speak in an unintelligble mumble to us.

In a moment of miracles(it seemed to us volunteers) a young tiny man at his side began to tell us what the withered wheelchair man was saying…it seemed that somehow, although these two had only met two years ago at this facility, they had instant kismet and were able to understand one another perfectly! Apparently no one knew–not even any of the workers or brothers-what the wheelchair ridden man was saying. It was complete gibberish to everyone but this young friend of his.

It was absolutely fantastic to watch them together, and it was nice to see such friendship and sweetness bloom in such a place.

Perhaps I am being too harsh on the place-I probably am-it’s just from my point of view, with what I think I know about how things should be, it’s difficult-amazing difficult-to see human beings only given the bare minimum becasue that is all there is to give.

It’s very hard for the Western mind to wrap itself around, as we have a different idea of the quality of life any person deserves, and we think that is a right, it’s a must, and that a world or a place without that level of care is in need of improvement.

One thing I had to remind myself of constantly is that if this place did not exist, the lives of these men would be complete and utter suffering. Complete and utter suffering. This place provided a place to be-a safe place, sheltered from the world and it’s misuse of them-as well as a bed, food, and hopefuly some degree of companionship.

This is the biggest lesson of India-that however I see things, that’s not actually how they look. They actually look entirely different, becasue there is alot more to the picture than whatever I am looking at.

I think that this is why..pursuing adopting Mitun is not as big of a deal to me as it might seem to other people on the outside of my experience. To me, I am looking at Mitun not only from my picture of who he is, but also from many other perspectives. And I am looking at myself exactly in the same way (while back at home, folks are stuck with whatever picture they’ve got in their heads!).

I think India does this to you–if you want it.

If you want it, India can take your life and turn it upside down and wring you out. You can cry until you’ve fot no tears left, or you can “get on with it” and do what needs to be done in that momnet-and often that requires an openess and acceptance that we only talk about in some politically correct manner back at home, but that we actually have not have to practice.

 Plenty of people come here and spend the whole time socializing with other Westerners, wearing Western clothes, eating Western food, and in general walking around muttering to themselves, “What’s wrong with this place!” But to..really let India get inside of you, to go with it, that takes a sacrifice of yourself, of how you see yourself, and of your world view. And then suddenly you see something disturbing, and although your first reaction is about “what’s wrong” your mind takes you to the next place, which is the “why”, the inner workings of why the situation is as it is..and from there, you come to a place of acceptance about it, because in that moment, that’s the only option-and in fact, the best option.

But back to the afternoon…

For lunch, they made us (and the kids) special rice and chicken dishes, and even raw salad. A few volunteers opted for not eating, but those who were courageous ate with relish. I was one of them, even eating the raw salad. As we ate, enormous moquitos buzzed around and attacked our uncovered body parts, covering our ankles with nasty welts.

One new volunteer, not on malaria meds and worried suddenly about that very fact began to be very paranoid about malaria and Dengue fever.

” Too little, too late.”, I said, laughing. “If you get Dengue, you get Dengue. I’ve had it, it’s not that bad, don’t worry”, I siad, pushing another forkful of raw, probably contaminated with god knows what salad into my mouth. (That is a lie about Dengue!, a complete untruth, but what can you say to a worried 19 year old, in India for his first time? The best thing to do is change the subject..).

After lunch,Mitun and I went to the napping room, a room that was painted bright dayglow yellow with a few tiny beds and makeshift, hot pink moquito nets full of holes tied above each bed. Somehow Mitun and I managed to squeeze onto one tiny bed(along with two other boys) and he smiled and fell asleep.

I was enjoying looking at him sleeping when more boys came in to sleep, so I offered up my space on the bed and then the girls wanted me to come sleep with them on the floor–there were 8 tiny girls lined up on a single blanket on the floor–yet somehow I managed to squeeze my enormous frame in sideways.

The girls’ hair was crawling with lice.We had noticed it this morning, the lice problem at Daya Dan, and there were a few boys with lice also. The solution for it here-as in every poor country I have visited-is a daily bath, rinsing the hair with plain water, and then upon occassion or inclination, having someone else hand-pick them out.

So I didn’t really want to lie down with the girls, as I knew I’d get lice from them in such close contact. But their sweet, pleading voices took my out of my selfish and temporary concerns and I ended up having a nice nap with them.

I woke up to Sister Jonafa giving the order to wake up and get ready for the concert. Still sleepy, my head crawling with tiny bugs, I sleepily made my way to Mitun and woke him up, sending him off for a quick bath in the adjoining shower. By the time he had returned, more than half of the kids had had a bath and the room was complete chaos, a messy blur of half naked children and bright white polyester pants and skirts and sequined red sparkly vests. The room was full of Indian masseys(paid women workers) and volunteers trying to dress, powder, comb, put shoes on, and keep some semblance of order.

Right after every one got dressed, we had to line them up outside in a row. This practice has never gone over well wit the children, but those nuns persist in trying! Everyone was temporarily distracted and running around trying to catch their child they were assigned to(luckily Mitun was fabulously well behaved!) when one of the boys, Ankur, fell to the ground, in the throes of a seizure.

This boy has been having seizures for some time-more than several years-and it seems to me that they are coming more and more often and for longer duration. It is a very scary experience, watching this poor child have the seizures that he does.

Luckily, his current “buddy” volunteer had read his file recently, which included information on what to do when he has a seizure, and so she got the situation under control.

It is a difficult situation..Ankur needs some professional help, he needs to go to the doctor, and so on, to have someone make some new assessments about his worsening condition, but the solution is not that simple, as there has to be the means to implement any changes that must be made. Everything is so complicated, even what seems black and white.

At any rate, we all encouraged the sisters that Ankur not participate in the concert–that he be taken to a quiet place instead–and amazingly, the sisters complied with this(in the past, perhaps at times they still wanted him to participate in some task, not truly understanding the gravity of the situation) and so this was a small, significant victory, both for his assigned volunteer and for Ankur himself.

We all walked towards the stage the brothers had set up. Although we were all so very tired-tired from performing every other day since the start of December; tired of singing and hearing Christmas carols(I hope I never hear Jingle Bells again!); tired for the ardous journey and constant watchfulness over 40 children who need constant care(except Mitun!), once we saw the men, the patients sitting there, waiting for us..

All of my cares slipped away. We just focused on the giving, on what we had to give, and we all did the best concert we could. And the men, the patients and the brothers-oh, how they enjoyed it! They hardly get any visitors, and it was so wonderful to watch them watching us…watching themselves, really. All of our children were just like them, had the same problems they had or had had, and so they related to the kids in a way other audiences had not.

Mitun was allowed to wear his hearing aid for the concert so he could sing along(they do not let him wear it much at Day Dan except for special occassions and mass, maybe because it is expensive and other children might destroy it? Who knows, it is not for me to question at the moment)..at any rate, he was able to actually hear the music and to sing along somewhat, and he was beaming with delight.

I was sitting next to Binoy, and although being his teacher for the last three months has been exhausting(and two more months to go!) I am astonished how we make such a great team-his behavior and his social skills have improved so much that it’s very noticable. His drumming isn’t always consistent(he’s easily distracted by lights, fans, colors and so on, particially because he is autistic and particially because he is going blind) but he actually listens to my instructions and he is able to sit still, concentrating perfectly on counting from one to one hundred, sitting with hands folded, peering closely into my face,even being a perfect little gentleman during the songs he doesn’t have to drum for. Everyone comments that his behavior has really improved.

I am thinking during the concert that being Binoy’s teacher has taught me alot. Like about how to be with children, that it is important that children respect you and that they understand you have some authority over them, and that being their “friend” doesn’t always foster the best learning environment for them-especially in an institutional setting.

I actually can relate alot more to my own parents, due to my relationship with Binoy. Sometimes I used to think they were too strict, but now, with this new found experience, I am beginning to think that a certain degree of strictness is a valuable thing. It helps the child respect you.

When I arrive at work in the morning, all the children come running, hugging me, talking with me, telling me about something or other or just touching me. They have bonded with me. And I think part of this is becasue I am the only volunteer there all day, day in day out-but part of it is also that I am very strict with them if they misbehave, and I will “send them to the corner” when it is required.

I remember when I first arrived at Daya Dan, how upset I was that I would even have to “send them to the corner” and I refused to do it, trying to be their “friend” instead.Now, I rarely send anyone into the corner–sometimes all it takes is a single look from me in the mishaving child’s direction and they immediately straighten up and apologize. It’s amazing what a little follow-thru can do!

The concert’s over now, and one of the brothers gets up to speak. I’m going to tell you what he said, because I think it’s interesting and also is so far outside of Western experience..

His exact words were,” People often ask ‘What is M. C.?[MIssionaries of Charity]’And we often forget ourselves, what, exactly, is our mission here and elsewhere in the world. But our mission is very clear. It is to provide only the basics of life to those who do not have it and are in need of it. These are: simple food, simple clothing, simple shelter, and the most basic of healthcare. We focus exclusively on the neccessities of life, of living. This is our mission.
Oftentimes, we are told we are not doing enough. We are not taking care of the lives given to us as we should. We are not fulfilling other needs people have.
Yet this is not our mssion. Our misson is to provide the most basic of things–not comforts–to those who would otherwise die in the street. And that is all.”

He pauses here, and I have a moment to reflect on his words, on my thoughts throughout the day about this place, about my thinking that the brothers need to do more, do better, help more ways, meet more needs…

He continues,” And although that is all we are mandated to give, this group of children, the sisters, and the volunteers, who obviously have worked for months to make this performance what it was, for us, have inspired us. Perhaps it is not enough, what we are doing, and perhaps we can find the time, the energy, to give ourselves even more fully to this work we are doing here. Perhaps we can also teach the men to sing or to have a program for their enjoyment as well.”

The volunteers all heard this and I believe we collectively breathed in a sigh of gratitude, that all of our hard work-and the childrens’, and the sisters’-could inspire these brothers to hopefully teach these men a few songs, or maybe have a play or drama, or do something towards working on their minds, on their creativity.

It made the trip so worth it for all of us.

After the concert, the older boys were invited to go take a look at the river, which was about 200 feet from th edge of the grounds. To get there, we walked thru the grounds and had a small tour, which included looking at an old building being revamped and repainted(whose patients were housed, temporarily in an old abandoned chicken coop!) and had a deeper appreciation  of the greatness of the task to which the brothers had decided to devote themselves–an endless stream of men coming to them, and them making room for whoever came their way. They were the most amazing group of men working together for what was a never ending problem, and their attitude about it was, well, joyful.

The river was beautiful. Surprisingly free of litter(although I’ve been in Calcutta, so, hey, litter is all relative. One hundred, one thousand pieces of trash on a small space of ground to me, at the moment, is a place without litter!) the river was murky and greyish brown. Apparently it silts up quite often, and boats are brought in to desilt it. Huge ships rested in it’s waters in the distance, their lights dimly visible due to what I’d like to think of as fog, but was actually pollution. The ships had to stay there until high tide, when they could leave, or they’d get stuck in the waters.

The handful of volunteers that had come out to see the river and a few of the boys from Daya Dan sat along the rock wall and breathed in, what was to us, extremely clean air.

It occured to me that the air wasn’t clean at all-in fact, it was actually quite foul-but comparatively, to Calcutta, it seemed very breathable and clean!

Occassionally groups of bicylists went by, the men riding and the women, clutching their brightly colored saris and a plastic picnic baskets on thier laps, perched on the handlebars.

The brother who tok us to the river told us that the more able bodied patients, in nice weather, sometimes were brought out here for a picnic, along the water’s edge, when the brothers could find the time. They would bring out big pots of tea and packages of biscuits and make entire afternoons of it, and the patients enjoyed it tremendously.

The brothers also owned a parcel of land across the river, and up until several years ago they used to take patients out there, across the river, on a small tiny boat, and then they’d stay at a little house they ahd built out there. Sometimes patients needed a calm place.

But it was difficult managing the patients in the boat, and about two years ago some other brothers asked if they could use the little house–and the boat–for recovering alcoholic men, and as the house was quite far from anything and everything with no alcohol to be found nearby, it had turned out to be an excellent detox center! So that was how they were using it now.

One boy, Mongol, who has a wasting away disease and is wheelchair bound, wished to go along the path along the river and I offered to take him and another boy, Sudan, who is very mentally retarded, along the path.

The brother siad the walk was easy, and if we followed the path, we would end up at the brother’s front door.

We walked along, watching ferries unloading their passengers, watching a hulking boat being built by the most rudimentary of means, watching fishermen bringing in their catch. We followed the cobblestone path until it got quite dark, anf the path became so uneven I was afraid that Mongol would fall out his chair and over the side, so I told him I would carry him.

I am very ungraceful and ungainly, I am afraid, and am always in fear of twisting my ankles, so carrying Mongol on the dark uneven path was no easy task–plus, keeping Sudan with me and keeping him pushing the empty chair was no easy task either.

I was beginning to worry that we were lost when we came upon the village, and then suddenly, the door to the brother’s facility.

I set Mongol in his chair(he is 15 years old and doesn’t want anyone to know he had to be carried) and we raced thru the gate and thru the grounds, towards the bus, whose lights we could see in the distance.

“They’re waiting for us!Hurry, hurry!”, shouted Mongol.

We arrived, breathless, and managed to get into the line of kids waiting to get on the bus without anyone realizing we’d been gone for so long.

I got on the bus, Mitun, waving wildly at me,”Where have you been?” he says, shaking his head.

Everyone settles in for what is going to be a very long ride (for some reason, it took over 3 and 1/2 hours on the bus to get home!) and Mitun and I are holding hands again, looking out the window.

We stop in the village for dinner–the kids a re very hungry and we all get eggrolls for dinner.

We don’t ask any quetions about what’s in the eggrolls, we eat them, without question, even if it means we might get sick. The eggrolls are not what I think of as egg rolls at all. They are like..an American pancake, a big one, and this pancake is wrapped around what seemed to be alot of tomato catsup, something that tastes like the pickles you find on a McDonald’s hamburger, and some sort of vegetable thing that has a rubbery, old, boiled shoe texture.

I eat it and am grateful for it.

Mitun and I finish off our eggrolls, and he takes my scarf off of me and wraps it partically around himself as the bus is drafty. He looks out the window, resting his hand on my lap, casually, and occassionally stealing glances at me.

He finally falls asleep, wrapped in my cream colored scarf, his head on my lap.

A sister, heading to the front of the bus for something or other, glances at him and I as she passes our seats.

“Now that”, she says, “is beautiful.”

Yeah. It really was. Beautiful.

gigi

I can hardly think of blogging right now..still recovering from what has been an endless Christmas celebration…but so much has happened to me int he space of two weeks that I MUST write some of it down.

I don’t really know where to begin. Being here, working with the kids, it’s changed me in so many fundamental ways that I sometimes don’t recognize myself.

Of course, at each junction in this journey-in each country, at each volunteer posting- I’ve felt similiar to the way I feel now.

But here, it seems so drastic. Maybe it’s the environment I find myself in, or maybe it’s just that all the experiences I have had up until this very point have somehow prepared me and made me ready for the changes that are happening right now.

One thing is certain: This place has turned my life upside down and made everything topsy turvy. Not in an uncomfortable way, but in a unforseen way.

Just a few months ago, I was entirely committed to the Ngobe of Panama. I still am committed to them but something has changed.

The thing that has changed is me.

I just don’t think helping the Ngobe is enough. I feel like I want–and can–do more..in an intimate, personal way.

Being here, being with the kids, it’s taught me more about love and patience and gratitude than at any other point in my entire life. I can quite honestly say that although I’ve had many peak experiences on this trip, volunteering at Daya Dan has actually been the peak experience of my entire life.

So, I am making some adjustments.

Big ones.

Huge ones.

Changes in my life and to my earlier goals(which sounded so good and made so much sense 90 days ago but now seem completely inappropriate to who I have become.)

The major, enormous adjustment is that I have decided to adopt a child.

From here, from Daya Dan, if it is possible.

This is quite a drastic change from my earlier thoughts on the subject, but then again..I had never spent time with kids like this and seen, felt, known..how much I would enjoy it.

How this impacts my life, and those in my life, I can only begin to think about. The last few days have been clear only in the sense that I know, simply know that it is what I will be doing.

There is a sense of peacefulness about the entire process that I find to be entirely unexpected. I am actually not worried about it in the least. In fact, I am comfortable in knowing that it is along process that takes alot of planning and patience, and that proper discernment is part of that process. And believe me, I have been discerning about this for quite awhile.

There is one boy in particular that I am interested in adopting, who is named Mitun. He is of unknown age-perhaps 8, perhaps 12- who is the child that has captured my heart.

He is very new to Daya Dan..in fact, he is rarely there, as he attends a special school for the hearing impaired. He is here for the holidays and then going back to school on the 6th. Until then, I am managing to get to know him and have many special moments with him.

He seems to be very intelligent. He simply was not educated in the past because he could not hear and so his speaking skills are poor. He is only just learning his ABC’s now.

He has a hearing aid, which he does not use regularly(perhaps because the other children would break it) and when he uses it he can hear much better. If he was in the States, had a proper hearing aid and so on he would have a chance to have a much more normal, higher functioning life.

He is mischevious and funny and a wonderful dancer, very well socialized and seems to be the sort of child who charms everyone.

Including me.

He was obviously in a very loving family up until very recently, when he was given up. He is warm and affectionate, plays well with others and is helpful.

It is obvious that he is..in the wrong place, in the sense that he has more intelligence than the children he is with. He simply has speech difficulty..the sisters say he has mental retardation as well, but he doesn’t seem like it to the volunteers. There is not much understanding of children with his special need here.

If any of you met him, you would immediately understand why I am changing my entire life to do this.

It is a very time consuming process, adoption. It takes several years. Luckily it seems I have the support of the sisters in this enormous task ahead.

The whole trip has been about “saving the world” but being here has taught me that I can’t really save the world..but I can drastically improve the conditions of someone’s life…and give them a chance. A real chance.

I never considered myself that kind of person-the person capable of giving a child that chance. But now I realize alot of those feelings were about others’ perceptions of me in the past and not about the person I have become on this incredible journey.

So much to do! My goodness!

I end 2008 as a person who never, ever considered doing anything like this…and I begin the New Year with entirely different goals.

I wish all of you a very Happy New Year, and hope for each of you to be as  happy and content as I am in making this decision.

love to all,

gigi

I’m a bad blogger..bad! It’s been two weeks since my last entry.

I’ll try to cover everything this time in a single one. let’s hope I do a decent job of explaining how everthing here at this moment and how I’m feeling about it all.

The last two weeks have been so busy that I literally can’t pick out any day in particular to tell you about-everything has just blended into one blob.

What’s odd is that two weeks ago I was going on and on about how lovely Christmas was here–no American greed, no shopping for gifts, no bombardmentwith red blow-up plastic Santas, Christmas light overload, Christmas carols nonstop, plastic trees, and shop til you drop.

That has all changed. It would seem India loves Christmas–and the hectic frantic pace it brings–as much as Americans. At least in Calcutta, anyway. We’ve got plastic blow up Santas, Christmas carols, busy shopping malls…

The Christmas tree in the shopping center is fabulous, made up entirely of plastic water bottles that have been cleaned and attached to a bamboo frame, then filled with plastic lights. A fabulous testament to Indian ingenuity and recycling.

We may have to try it in Winters, my tiny town back in America.

Well, I thought I would not have to shop for gifts. Wrong.

Just when I was really enjoying not shopping, the head Sister at Daya Dan asked me to do all of her Christmas shopping this year! I was handed some money, a budget, and a list. A very long list, full of strange items.

It took three days–three days!–to find it all, and that list took me all over the city.

Not only was I to buy things for the children, but I had to buy things for the Sisters themselves. Forexample, 12 matching hankerchiefs. 12 pairs of scissors of a certain length. 12 bolts of fabric. 70 childrens sweaters, 70 coloring books, shoes, etc. Everything to exact specifications.

Sound easy? It wasn’t. The Sisters have strangely specific requirements for every single item. For example, a hanky must be of a certain quality, of a certain size, of a certain color, and without design. Impossible!

The Sisters also get special food around Christmas. Speciality food, things that have to be imported. They don’t get much, just a taste. It’s the one day they have  afew luxuries, like American peanut butter for the American nun, Italian pasta for the Italian nun, and so on. But I had to buy enough for twelve nuns. And the hardest part was the bargaining.

I’ve learned to bargain but this time I had to bargain hard. So hard that it tired me out!

But I did manage to get everything on that two page list!

I have turned out to be such a good shopper that the Sisters have asked me to do their shopping again next year! Oh joy!

Well, didn’t I tell you? Yes, I am already planning on coming back here next year for Christmas. The Christmas here is so amazing..being with the kids…and doing the work we are doing. I love it, simply love it.

The Sisters also asked me to come back! So it looks like I’ll be doing all the shopping next year, too….

Other than shopping I have been very busy with the Daya Dan Big Band. That’s the name of the band of the kids from Dya Dan that have been practising for months on end numerous carols for Christmas, and we have been going out to perform almost every other day.

It’s been an interesting way to see the other Sisters and Brothers’ homes in the Calcutta area..we’ve been to most of the homes for sick, mentally ill, dyingpeople; as well as orpahanages and so on. The breadth of work being done by these women and men is astonishing, and the people that they are helping would not be helpied by anyone if these nuns and monks were not devoting their lives to this task.

The concerts are quite hectic, as all the children must get bathed and then dressed in special concert clothes, then have their hair done and be made up….yes, they put make up on them! This seems to be the norm in this country. The job has fallen to me, I am the “make-up girl” putting makeup–lots of it–on loads of little squirming wiggling boys, wearing white trousers and satin shirts withred sequin vests and bow ties. It’s a hilarious chaotic scene, believe me.

Then we have to get them out of Daya Dan, walk down the alley, load them onto the bus, and keep them out of trouble, keep them from vomiting, wetting their pants, htting each other, putting their hands out the window, and so on..for up to an hour or so, while we breathe in foul air and wrestle with terrible traffic.

The bus rides are adventures in themselves. Seatbelts and car seats are not used here. Volunteers simply are told to hold on to the shoulder of that child and keep that child on their lap as we lurch through traffic.

The main safety featureof these bus rides seems to be the painted “Missionaries of Charity” sign painted on the side(hopefully keeping other drivers from hitting us) and perhpas..the constant blaring horn of the driver. Apparrently a truly skilled driver will just keep his hand on the driver the entire time.

Once we get to the place we are going to perform, we have to manageto keep the children altogether and behaving until the concert starts.

When the concert finally does begin, all my attention focuses on Binoy, who is a fantastic drummer, but only if I am sitting there beside him. As far as I am concerned, it’s just Binoy and me for the next 40 minutes.

What’s amzing is that when I look up and see the audience, see the tears in their eyes, see the kid’s enormous effort…it’s really beautiful.

It’s what Christmas is all about for me, that one shining moment.

After the concert, kids are carted off to be fed ChowMein or something else that is delicious, and the volunteers get a short break.

Or rather, we are supposed to. But Joy(the little autistic boy I have mentioned before) has taken a liking to me and refuses to be parted from me at any time before of after the concert. This includes during Chow Mein time.

After we eat, we load them all up on the bus again. Joy has to sit next to me or he gets very upset.

He also gets upset if he can’t get off the bus right away when he finally gets home to Daya Dan.

The other day, he had to wait to get off, and in his worry and stress, he bit me. On the face. he bites when he is upset, and I suppose my face was the nearest thing to him at the time.

Needless to say, I had to spend the night with the Sisters, for I needed to ice it all night long. I am happy to say that it is recovering nicely, thankyou.

Everyday here is one colorful adventure after another. Face biting included.

For Christmas Eve, I am very excited to go to Midnight Mass at Motherhouse, where Mother Theresa’s tomb is. That will be the experience of a lifetime. Then on Christmas day, we have planned a very nice day with the children, including watching Finding Nemo in Hindi and generally spoiling them a little bit.

Christmas night, a group of the volunteers are coming over to my rooms. I’ve bought a tiny tinsel tree and some candles and will ask everyone to light a candle, eat some food, and package up some food for street children, too. Then we’ll go out and see and American movie.

Being here..it’s been an amzing experience. Not only do I adore India, but I have discovered that I am actually great with children! Especially difficult and special needs kids. Who would have known?

There is nothing quite like showing up for work, opening the door to the orphanage, and being hugged, called out to, and generally loved like the way I am with this group of kids.

This makes up for the difficulty I seem to always face here in other areas–right now, I am dealing with a bad case of bronchitis. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.

Oh well.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas.

gigi

From terrorism to my room filling with smoke every morning to discussing my bowels with complete strangers …a taste of Calcutta life for those readers who are still with me!

 Bits and pieces…

For all of you who have written in with your concerns about the Mumbai incident, thankyou.

I cannot say that I am not worried-I am. If something happens here in the city, some terrorist activity, I will come home early.

However, the feeling in general(amongst Indians and Westerners I have spoken to) is that that is not going to happen here anytime soon. It would seem that the terrorists would prefer to attack bigger targets, with more rich tourists and with more Western influence. Calcutta is a struggling city, teeming with poor people living on the street. It doesn’t have the city feel of Mumbai or Delhi.

However, you never know.

Certainly since the attack–and since it was discovered that some of the equipmetn the terrorists used was bought here in Calcutta(this according to Indian newspapers) the security here stepped up.

It wasn’t overnight, of course, as this is India. But within several days, there certainly was a different presence in this city, that mainly being the presence of armed soldiers.

They are everywhere, in particular at night, walking the streets and near the more expensive areas with hotels and nicer venues.

There are also many more police, armed guards and so on at all of the nicer hotel entrances, where they now also have bomb sniffing dogs sniffing both people and cars.

Metal detectors are now used-as well as (seemingly random) bag searches on the metro.

I am still walking around the city, even walking home at night sometimes if I get off early enough to do so.

You have to realize just how big India is. It’s huge.So what happened is the equivalent of, say, Chigago getting a terrorist attack and then me worrying about it in very far away California.You can only worry so much.

But I will keep you all posted…

Other news:

My room was filled with smoke the other morning. What am I saying? Actually it’s been every morning since I rented the rooms.

It turns out that some very poor people come every single day(except sunday) and burn the trash in the alley(to make charchol, and to fish out bits and pieces of things they can sell), and the smoke curls it’s tentacles into my room.

I always wake up coughing.

Don’t go and suggest I change rooms now.

The whole city is fuill of smoke now-they burn oil in the streets to keep warm, they burn effigies of their gods in the river which covers the city in a thick haze that chokes one, they burn tar on the streets in huge barrels while they work on the roads at night.

The air quality is so bad that it makes my chest hurt. I find myself coughing alot. I was coughing so much that I stopped walkign home from work(which takes an hour, through the city streets) due to the smoke I was inhaling on the way home–but then I started feeling a real loss of energy, so I’m back to walking again. I need the exercise.

It’s hard to exercise in a place like this. There are no outdoorsy places, except a large strip of park which is quite out of my way. Walking down the streets , one needs strict concentration to not get hit by cars, autorickshaws, or busses. People stare, and men groping you as you wait to cross the road is not uncommon. There are holes everywhere one can fall into(remember my accident a few weeks ago?) and of course, human poop all over the place.

Exercising in my room is kind of funny. I try, but it’s not easy, and anyway, leg lifts while your room is smoky can’t be good for my health.

Also in the news this week, I discovered I had worms.

I probably got them at work, as handwashing is close to impossible at times. How I discovered them I will not disclose, except to say that I had figured it out before I actually saw them because I had a constant urge for pizza (there is a Domino’s pizza here) and ate about 20 of them without gaining a pound. I ate that many over a month or so, of course.

I went to a pharmacy to get some wormer. That was simple, right?

Wrong. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can be simple here.

I got the wormer, easy, no problem. Amazed, I Then asked them for some malaria medicine, which I just started taking again. (I had stopped taking it for awhile due to stomach problems etc.) You take one a week and uit’s so strong it knocks my socks off, but, hey, that’s better than malaria, right?

Then I asked them for some laxatives (I know, I’m a living breathing medicine cabinent) because I gave mine away and that’s not something one wants to be without here.

The man in the pharmacy yelled out across the counter “LAXATIVES, PLEASE, FOR THE LADY AT THE COUNTER.”

All head turned to me. I burned a whole into the ground with my shame and embarrassment. This in spite of the fact that I really didn’t need them at that moment.

Apparently the man at the other counter, where laxatives were stored, was a deaf mute.

Again, Man no1 called out “LAXATIVES, FOR THE LADY AT THE COUNTER… PLEASE, LAXATIVES!”

The second man suddenly was near me, waving many packages of laxatives in his hands.

” HOW MANY LAXATIVES DO YOU WANT, Ma’am? “, he’s shouting at me.

I look blindly at Man no1. “Why is he shouting?” I ask.

“He’s partly deaf, ma’am.”, is the reply. He continues, “Tell us about your problem ma’am. How is your stool feeling?”

My stool is feeling fine, I am thinking, wanting to end this conversation about the quality of my poop quietly. I can’t leave, they have my malaria meds, my wormer meds…

” They are for later. My stool is fine, thankyou”, I say.

“Ma’am, you can talk to us. We are here to help you. Tell me how your stool is feeling.”, Man no.1 continues.

Oh, I am so tired . I am so tired of india today. How come nothing can be easy here?

I dive in.

“My stool is..weak and tired. It feels unhappy.”, I say.

This gathers a crowd of pharmacists(or paharmacy employees?) who ponder what to do about my “unhappy” stool.

I stand there, in utter shame and embarassment, and particially in wonderment that I am so embarrassed talking about my poop (which is actually quite happy, thankyou very much) in a country where men poop in front of each other while talking about cricket matches and politics at any time of the day, in any direction I look.

The city, in fact, in covered in poop every morning.

As I pondering the pooping habits of Calcuttans, the pharmacists have decided I need 3 packets of Milk of Magnesia packets.

I buy everything, thank them, and as I am leaving. Man no1 calls out after me,

” Come back, ma’am. We are happy to discuss your body problems with you. I hope the pills cheer your bowels.”

gigi

The Top Ten Things I love About This City….

(in no particular order whatsoever)..

1. The Indian “head nod”.

This is a slight nod, usually to the left. It means everything and anything, yes, no, maybe. It takes practice, but after being here for several months, I find I am doing it myself.

2. The Indian “head wobble”.

More famous than the Indian “head nod”, probably because Westerners cannot master it so easily. This head wobble literally makes the head of the person doing the wobbling look like it is only loosely attached to the neck. It usually means yes.

3. It’s a dog’s life, here in Calcutta.

Oh, the dogs! I spend hours photographing them, because they are everywhere and anywhere. Fat ones. Skinny ones, Little ones, Sick ones, Hairless ones, Black ones, Spotted ones. Packs of dogs. Single stray dogs.Dogs lying in the middle of sidewalk. Dogs curled up in the street, oblivious to the goings-on around them. Dogs on leashes, being walked by their owners in the early morning, sniffing for the best trash in ther steaming trash heaps. Dogs waiting outside of butchershops, never tearing their eyes away from the butchers hands, waiting for a morsel.

I have never seen so many dogs in one place in my life.

3. Shopping.

Oh, yes, this place is fantastic for buying things, but it’s even better for window-shoping. Except there are few windows.

You can find whatever you want, if you’re willing to go to bother of actually finding it. And although the buying part isn’t that fun, the looking part is really wonderful.

A whole cultural experience, that many people find intimidating as proper bartering here takes time. You need to sit, look, think, then have soda, then think some more..then maybe decide on something, then change your mind, then almost walk away…

4. The colors of the clothes.

Never before have I been around so many colors , just saturated colors, day in and day out. Western clothes seem so, well, boring.

The other day as an experiment, I wore Western clothes–a classic travel outfit, black pants and shirt. I felt so dull and depressed.

Hopefully some of this color will rub off on to me at home. Even black things here have patterns and texture, always something interesting. At home everyone looks the same. Here, everyone’s saying something , just by their headscarf, sari, bangles…all noisily creating one big concert of messy colors. I love it.

5. The kindness of the Bengali people.

In general, people here are the nicest of anyone I have ever met on my travels to third world places. If you are in trouble, say, in a disagreement about a taxi ride price or whathaveyou, you will soon be surrounded by a crowd who will either set you straight(but kindly) or the taxi driver.

6. The metro. It’s actually clean. It’s actually fast. It’s better than the metro in the USA.

Makes my life so much easier, and as long as I stand in the women’s compartment I can usually avoid the occasional groping hand on my bottom!

7. The view from my window.

I’m on the third floor, looking down into a busy alleyway, which always has something going on, even at 3 am. (I’m writng a long journal entry about the goings-on in the alleyway at the moment, hoping to post it on the blog at some point).

8. Kit kat choclate bars, which are vastly superior to the horrible ones we have at home.

They are actually real chocolate and taste non plastic-y, unlike the kitkats at home. I’m a convert. I’ll have to have those kitkats shipped from India to California, now.

9. My job at Daya Dan.

Although at first I felt like it was too much and was ill at ease (Me with autistic kids for 8 hours a day?) It’s turned out to be a good fit. I’d actually (if my home life was different) consider adopting one of these kids-or a child with a disability like autism-someday. I love what I’m doing and I can truly say that it has changed me for the better.

10. The time for reflection that being here has given me.

This may sound odd, buit in spite of being so insanely busy here I have probably thought more about my life and what I want from it and even what I think about things here than at any point so far on the trip.

Maybe it’s becasue you are so confronted with such extreme scenes of poverty and so on, and you soon learn that whatever you would normally do in a Western culture will not work here. It wil not solve things.

So you are just left alone with your thoughts, all of them, some of them terrible dark depressing thoughts and others are golden, rising up from this mess like steam.

I’m so used to keeping my thoughts to myself most of the time, and frankly just having to be with them, that I have found I am thinking more clearly and efficiently here.

I am able to see myself as separate and distinct from what I see around me.

This in turn has led me to define myself more and more in almost every other area of my life.

Being here I have a very strong sense of who I am and what I am willing to do for others and what I am not.

All, in all, a very good top ten list.

gigi

A special project on my day off leads me through winding alleys to find clay, then to Daya Dan to spend the afternoon witha very unusual and smart young boy, and finally, a long chat with the head Sister at Daya Dan over cups of hot chai and Christmas cards leads to a small victory….

This last week I had the wonderful opportunity to work with a very special child at Daya Dan, named Mongol.

Mongol is 15 years old, a very small boy with tiny limbs and gnarled hands who is in a wheelchair.

He has a wasting illness.

He has lived with the Sisters since he was 3 years old, along with his sister Meghan, who also has the same wasting away illness.

Mongol and Meghan were found by Mother Theresa’s tomb after a Christmas celebration. Although the room is quite small, it becomes very crowded for the Christmas celebration and the two children were not discovered until after everyone had left.

They were left in small basket.

The Sisters took them in and they lived at the orphanage for small children, Shisu Bhavan, until they were a bit older, when they were both moved to Daya Dan.

Now, brother and sister are still together, just living on different floors, although they spend time together each day.

Mongol has the mind of any 15 year old boy. Perhaps he is even smarter than the average 15 year old–it is hard to say, for although he is a quick learner he only recently(within the last few years, with a change in nuns in charge of the place) began recieving proper lessons and learning difficult subjects.

His prognosis is not good, and it is assumed that he will die there, along with his sister, at an early age.

He, of course, doesn’t know that. He has the goal of becoming a priest–although this would require special dispensation and so may be unlikely.

Sister Jonafa is trying to encourage him to study a great deal so that not only will he pass his exams, but so that he will also be able to teach the other children for as long as he is with us.

Mongol spends so much time studying that he rarely does anything fun and relaxing.

Sister had the idea that Mongol make something to present to the people we are performing the Christmas program for…and we decided on little Jesus’ in mangers.

An appropriate gift from a represnetative of the Sisters of Charity!

But how to go about making them?

I had to first spend several hours finding and buying the supplies. I went to New Market-the large public market nearby- and asked my friend, Martin (the tailor) to help me.

He sent his guys running around trying to find everything from plaster of paris to paintbrushes.

I needed swaddling for the baby Jesus and other supplies, and Martin (being a very good Muslim) promptly provioded me with everything for free. Amazing.

Finding clay proved close to impossible, which was surprising in a city where entire sections of the streets are permanently devoted to making clay effigies of Hindu gods all day and all night!

I decided to make my way to this neighborhood and buy clay from these makers of gods.

I took the metro the next morning to the stop closest to where I thought the neighborhood was. oh, wait a minute..I’m making it sound so easy.

Well, it wasn’t.

You see I was loaded up with big bags of white powder. Big heavy bags of white powder.

And since the terrorist attack in Mumbai, things here have gotten incredibly more interesting insofar as bag checks and guns and armed men running about. Especially after it was discoverewd that the phone card the terrorists used was actually bought here, in this very city.

Therefore, they 9the armed guards–the very armed guards) did not want to let me onto the metro.

In fact I was searched 3 times.

The white powder was poked a few times with sticks, but that was about it.

I was delayed and missed all three trains, each time.

And each time, a metro employee came to my rescue and told them I took the train everyday and worked for the Sisters.

Thank goodness!

Anyway, finding the neighborhood was easy, as it’s near Daya Dan.

Explaining what I wanted was impossible. I attracted a huge crowd of on lookers and an equally huge crowd of dogs (I had a big bundle of samosas for the children in my bag!)

Think about it: a big white woman wearing a a bright orange salwaar suit, carrying 6 bags of stuff and also 60 samosas shows up in a very Hindu neighborhood that doesn’t see any tourists and starts waving her arms around wildly trying to explain that she wants to make baby Jesus statues. It would attract a crowd. Logical.

I decided that the samosas would be better put to use at that moment, and after sharing the bag with the crowd and a few lean dogs and puppies, I was promptly whisked to a tea shed where a tiny man brought me several bags of powder (and the requisite cups of chai as we talked over the price, of course!).

Apparently I was to mix the powder with water and glue, and then it would magically become clay.

At least that’s what I thought he was saying.

The clay and supplies were so heavy that I hired a rickshaw driver to carry them(not me. Just the supplies, which weighed as much as I did. Whoever knew plaster of paris could be so heavy?) and we walked to Daya Dan.

As soon as I walked in, Sister Jonafa sent me up to Mongol, who was waiting in the art room. He was so excited he had this giddiness about him that I have rarely seen. He is normally a very serious boy.

I explained what we were going to do–how the man had said to make the clay–and that we would make little baby Jesus forms out of the clay, let them dry, and then paint them.

We started to mix the clay, water, and glue…would it work? Oh, I was a bit wary, I have to admit, and nervous that if it didn’t I would have some explaining to do to Sister Jonafa (which I was not looking forward to whatsoever).

Mongol thought I would be doing the mixing.

“Oh no”, I said. “We’ll be doing it together.”

“But my hands”, he protested, looking down at his hands like they were useless foriegn objects that had just appeared on his lap.

” Well, it’s true that you can’t do it like me. But you will have to figure out which part you can do. You’ll just have to think creatively.”, I said.

He looked extremely forlorn.

But minutes later, when we had sucessfully mixed the clay together, using teamwork, he was glowing and laughing.

“I did it! I did it!” , he sang out. He was so happy that his happiness filled the room.

I told him that now we were going to knead the clay like dough.

“I can’t do that.”, he sighed.

“You know, Mongol, you can do it. We will do it together.”, I said.

And we did–we kneaded the clay, formed it into a loaf, cut it into pieces, and wrapped them in plastic..all doing every step of the way together.

He was so jubiliant that I figured he’d be ready for the next step.

Making the forms themselves.

He started to tell me that he couldn’t do it, and I interrrupted him.

I showed him how to make the first form, a simple figure of a baby, lying down, arms folded.

Then I sat and watched as Mongol spent the afternoon making 10 of these little figures, using his hands that he had seen as worthless in this task only a short while ago.

It was an amazing afternoon, and we spent it completely quietly, not speaking, just being creative, stopping only to eat chocolate bars and steaming hot milk in metal cups.

The boy was smiling and laughing more than I had seen him do the entire time I had been at Daya Dan.

Sister Jonafa came upstairs and examined his handiwork, and said to me out in the hallway, “Now, when he’s finished you will stay behind and “fix” them, right?”

I told her, no, there would be no “fixing”. The figures were Mongol’s gift, they were perfect as they were. These were not store bought things, they were made with love and such concentration that I thought they were in fact bettert than anything I could have made.

“Yes, you are right.”, she said, after doing the Indian head-wobble several times and thinking it over.

I told her that Mongol had something he wanted to ask her.

She went in to see him.

“What is it, Mongol?”, she said.

“Sister..I would like to have real art classes with Auntie Amy. Please.”, he said.

I stood there, somewhat surprised but happy.

Sister said, ” I will think about it. You have your studies.”

After Mongol left, Sister Jonafa came up to the art room and we sat talking for a long while while we both worked on our own art projects. It was the only time I have ever actually been alone with her, and the only time I have ever had a conversation with her that was deeper and more intimate.

The conversation that afternoon was wonderful–we talked of what her life is like as a nun, what she is hoping for for the children, and we even managed to talk about some of the disipline practices they use which I don’t agree with.

It is a difficult life, being a Sister of Charity. They live like the poor, they have no luxuries, they work daily and they get little time for rest or relaxation. They rarely see family members and they are not encouraged to develop freindships even amongst the Sisters they live with.

They would be lonely at times if they were not so busy. they do not have time for the luxury of loneliness, it seems to me.

Talking to the Sister was good for me…I developed more compassion for her, which I needed, as I have not always found her easy to work with. I actually ended up liking her very much!

I steered the subject to Mongol and the possibility of art lessons.. She didn’t think he should have “proper” art lessons. She wanted him to keep to more formal study.

I told her that I thought a once a week time of learning some sculpture, painting, or more formal art would probably be relaxing and fun for him. Up until now, the only art he has made has been when his assigned volunteer teacher is able to make the time for it, and then it has been simple projects like making cards.

She replied that it had seemed like he was really having fun, that was true.

But she wasn’t going for the art lessons.

“Well, he needs to use his hands. It’s good for him to use them. He also could learn to paint on a canvas holding a paintbrush with his mouth. That would be a god skill for him to have as well.”, I said.

She smiled a big smile.

Mongol starts art lessons next week with me. I’m going to buy some stretched canvases and proper paints so he can learn to paint.

It’s moments like these when you know you are really making a difference. These kind of small moments where you can see the impact you are having and the goodness that is coming from your efforts.

These kind of small victories keep me going in this city that seems to confront me with problems so immense one does not know where to begin.

Working with Mongol is a very nice begining.

gigi

Tired, so tired…..but  I have the day off and I’m so behind with the blog that I am determined to write up at least a few entries.This entry is all about Binoy, the spunky little autistic child that I have been assigned to work with one on one for five months.

The last few weeks have gone by in a blur. Each day looked like the one before, with a general pattern emerging of get up, grab something to eat, get to work, work, go home, grab something to eat, fall asleep. Then wake up and do it again.

Christmas here is actually more hectic than it is at home. It’s different, of course, as it’s not all some big mad rush to bake cookies and buy presents.

I think it’s a very busy time for anyone working with the Missionarities of Charity here, especially if you are working with children.

At Daya Dan, we are preparing for a special Christmas program, which has been designed by Sister Jonafa, the sister in charge of the children’s day to day activities.

In the past, the kids just wore costumes and some played the bongos.

This year Sister Jonafa has her sights set extremely high, with a full fledged band and 6 perfomances throughout the city. Some of the performances are at Daya Dan and others are at Prem Dan, the Motherhouse, and so on. One is at the Governor’s Mansion.

The kids we are working with need to learn 7 songs, stand still, introduce themselves, bow altogether, play instuments, sing, and behave in an extremely orderly fashion.

The kids we are working with are dealing with a myriad of disbilities, from autism to mental retardation to speech impediments to an inability to stand still for 2 minutes.

My child, Binoy, who I work with everyday, is supposed to play the drums for six of the songs. During one of the songs he is supposed to sit quietly in front of his drum set and not move. Trying to figure out how to get him to do this has been nothing short of a miracle, but I have succeeded(or rather, he has!) by turning it into a game and counting to 500.

Binoy was very blessed this week as a group of volunteers generously bought him a real drum set. Previous to this he had a drum set worthy of the trash heap, a toy drum set that was missing parts and whose few parts were attached would actually fly off as he played, causing me to either continue holding it together for the rest for the rest of the set..or nose-dive to rescue to part and quickly reattach it.

His new drum set is enormous and actually made for adults. Binoy is such a tiny boy that you can’t even see him behind the drums!

Binoy was at first afraid of his new drums..they are not only enormous but intimidating. He has needed alot of practice just to get used to playing them. It requires that he use his whole little body to play them. He has needed alot of encouragement to gain confidence.

My job has been to practice the drums with Binoy for hours everyday. Hours and hours of drumming and sitting still, interrupted by breaks and playtime, and then it’s back to drumming again. I am going deaf from telling him to play softer and from sitting next to a drumset for hours on end.

Not only do we practice alone together, but we have “dress rehearsals”, almost every single day, for hours, of the entire concert with all of the participants. My job is to sit next to Binoy for the entire concert as he beats his drums, tell him when to start playing, when to play, keep him playing the song, keep him from playing too loudly and so forth.

Sound easy?

It isn’t.

I have mentioned before that I have absolutely no musical talent. I have told the nun in charge that I am not a suitable candidate for this job, as there are numerous volunteers who are actually drummers and would be much better.

However, Binoy has grown very close to me and he actually listens to me. He doesn’t seem to care to listen to anyone else.

Therefore, I am the only person suitable for this deafening and tiring task.

So, other than being hoarse and losing my hearing (and sometimes my patience) what else is going on?

Well, at Daya Dan, we stil have our normal work schedule of morning to afternoon, with all the activities we normally have to do: Dressing, bathing, cleaning the children; making beds; changing diapers and dirty underwear; feeding and assisting children to eat; walking and exercising chidren; and school.

Since Binoy is the main child I am assigned to, I have private classes with Binoy. We are now up to simple addition problems and simple reading. This is amazing, as a year ago, Binoy could hardly speak, and his tongue was so under used that his last volunteer has to do mouth exercises with him to foster speech.

Now he is shouting out(when he sees me walking in the door in the morning):

“Auntie, 1 plus 1 is two! Auntie, 2 plus 3 is five!Auntie, Peter is a boy! Auntie, Jane is girl! Auntie, There is a shop!”

He is a bit like a proud little peacock, strutting his stuff-his new vocabulary and his new knowledge-in front of the other kids and volunteers…

It’s very exciting. I feel like Binoy and I work so well together, and that he is able to learn with me. He is enjoying learning and he is excited to open his school bag and start class everyday.

I feel like Binoy is growing. He’s got the potential to really learn a few skills and have a useful and interesting life in spite of the fact that he will be in an institution his entire life. He’s finding things he enjoys doing, and he’s seeking out more information, asking more questions. It’s an exciting time.

For me, it’s exciting too, as I am simply in love with this child. I really care about him, so very much that it surprises me. One day I just realized that I loved him.

Otherwise, how could I spend so much time with him, day in and day out?!

He is not easy. He has many behavioral problems.

When I first arrived, he was always in trouble…he was always in the corner… was often being punished by the Sisters or by the Indian women who work at Daya Dan.

Although I don’t agree with some of things and tasks Binoy is being asked to accomplish, I soon discovered that the fact that I agreed or not made no difference to the Sisters..he would still end up having to do those tasks and things, even he got “punished” in the process.

It was a big learning curve for me,when I realized that I was going to have to help Binoy figure out how to do what was expected of him, and teach him some survival skills and some ways of coping so that he can consistently do what is expected of him in what can sometimes be a very inconsistent and unfair environment to a small autistic boy with a two minute attention span.

To make it work for Binoy and for the Sister’s expectations, I have discovered that turning positive behavior into games works. Also we spend alot of time memorizing things and behaviors, doing the same thing over and over again until Binoy actually corrects himself on his own.

The past few weeks have been very busy for me, sometimes ten hour days, with few days off(today is my first day off in nine days) and what has made that time easier is that for the most part, Binoy has been able top stay on task and most “punishments” have ceased.

For when I see Binoy punished, for each time I see him being hit with a stick or a hand by a Sister, I lose my mind temporarily. It pains me, as it is such an inefficient way of teaching a child anything.

Each time I see it happen, I try now to look carefully at what is happening and why. Then I try to come up with ways to teach him a new behavior. After practicing several times, Binoy will still do the old behavior, but he will stop immendiately if corrected and begin to do whatever new behavior I have encouraged.(Not everytime! But most of the time!)

I am so surprised at his progress and mine in this regard that it kind of blows my mind.

Working with Binoy has so far, taught me that almost anything can be learned, and that patience–infinite patience–is required.

I also have come to the point that I understand that although there may be better ways of doing things, that things are going to continue going as they are at Daya Dan for some time. The only way to change anything is to first change how I am looking at it and secondly, figure out a loophole, a way to shift things subtly from within.

Another thing that I have learned is that volunteering long term has so mauch more value in this kind of situation than volunteer for just a few days. That is not to say that one can’t make a difference at a place like Daya Dan in just a few days…it’s just that staying long term builds the children’s trust, the Sister’s trust, and you really develop relationshps with the kids that you could not do in a week.

You are like family.

Binoy is such a blessing to me that he has been my greatest teacher on this trip.

gigi