One

We returned last week from a ten day trip to Kolkata (Calcutta) and Bhubaneshwar with a few stories, some new insights, and lots of dirty laundry (or as much as you can have with only 5 outfits and 3 pairs of underwear).

I've had many friends who have come to Kolkata to work with the Missionaries of Charity and their experiences, as well as the work that Mother Teresa started here was my main motivation for coming to India. I was glad to finally be coming to Kolkata and spending a few days pretending to be a volunteer, staying on Sudder Street, and hanging out at the Motherhouse. Before we left we told Father Puthumai that we had friends in Kolkata, which isn't entirely untrue. We knew that there's about 10 students from Seattle University in Kolkata right now, one of whom we met on our flight from Seattle and have been emailing since we got here. We'd also told Father that our friends had arranged someplace for us to stay, which was also true - we were armed with a list of somewhat reputable hotels nearby. None of the other volunteers show up with hotel reservations, why should we? As soon as we arrived at Sudder Street (read: Foreigner Street) we beelined for Hotel Maria and when that was full we hopped over to Hotel Paragon where we dropped our luggage and promptly left for dinner with one of our Indian friends that had dropped us off (although he was not impressed with our choice of lodging). Sure enough, when we returned from dinner we bumped into (and met) our new friends from Seattle U who came and spent the rest of the evening in our room, which strangely enough had been their room a few weeks back. The next day was Monday, which conveniently is the day they hold volunteer training at the Motherhouse, so we were able to have breakfast with the volunteers in the morning, come back for a quick nap, explore New Market for a bit, and make our way to the Motherhouse for training, the English portion of which was unsurprisingly led by our friend John from the airport. Volunteer Training would be more aptly called "pick where you want to work and figure out which bus you need to take to get there" and it was a little surreal looking at all of the familiar house names: Daya Dan, Shanti Dan, Shishu Bhaven, Prem Dan, and trying to decide where to spend our one day of volunteering. After a long discussion with our new friend Jeremiah (who we were supposed to have met back in Seattle had we been able to coordinate our busy pre-India schedules) we decided to spend our morning in Kalighat. We made our way back to our hotel, making a quick detour to Shishu Bhaven to drop off some strollers that had been donated to the Motherhouse, because apparently if you stand around too long in the volunteer room Sr. Corina will find something for you to do.

We began our morning with Mass with the sisters at the Motherhouse, then breakfast with the volunteers. After breakfast all of the volunteers dispersed to the various houses where they work so we found some other volunteers and tagged along for the bus ride to Kalighat. Kalighat, home for the destitute and dying, was the first home that Mother Teresa opened in Kolkata and is often referred to as Mother's First Love. It's a former lodging house for pilgrims coming to the nearby temple of Kali, the Hindu goddess from whom Kolkata derives its name and has now become a home where the sisters bring those who are about to die, so that they can experience love and care in their last few days. We spent the day depending on long-term volunteers to show us what to do, starting with dishes and laundry, then medicines, sitting with the patients and helping to serve and feed lunch. The amazing thing was to watch the long-term volunteers, the people who committed to come every day and knew the patients so well...who needed their bedpan changed, who needed help eating lunch, who liked to be massaged, who just wanted their hand held. So many people have tried to describe Kalighat, but in the end the descriptions all seem to sound the same. In City of Joy, Dominique Lapierre describes it like this, "What struck (him) immediately was the serenity of the place. There was no horror here. No longer were the wretched people who had come together in this place tormented with anguish, solitude, destitution, or neglect. They had found love and peace."

After spending almost two months in India, it was interesting to see so many other volunteers, people who had come to India for similar reasons but were having such different experiences. We met so many people, some who had come to work with the sisters for a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or a few years. Many people had planned their trips expressly to work with the MCs in Kolkata, some were just passing through on their travels through the country. Volunteers are quite a diverse bunch: American and European college students taking a semester off, middle aged British ladies, a large young Japanese contingency, and who knows who else, all brought together by the desire to work in some of Mother's homes. Lots of them wear 'volunteer clothes', baggy pants and loose shirts, the type of clothing that was obviously purchased in India, but Indians themselves would never dream of wearing. We also visited some of the foreigner hangouts on Sudder St. like the Blue Sky Cafe, where the owner knows all of his patron's names and the menu has porridge, french fries, and pizza as well as paneer masala, dal, and butter naan. It's a little haven of comfort and familiarity for foreigners living in a crazy city. It was refreshing to talk to other foreigners, but also made us appreciate the experience that we've been having in Raiganj and the ridiculous life that we lead.

From Kolkata we took the train south to Buhbaneswar, capital of Orissa, where we met up with Father Puthumai, saw some temples, and went to the beach. Our last night there was Diwali, the festival of lights, so we went out to dinner and skirted around fireworks as we walked through town. Now we're back in Raiganj with only a few weeks left before we return home so we'll be finishing up the projects that we've been working on, tying up loose ends, visiting the missions that we've yet to see, and returning to places we've visited to say goodbye to new friends. The past few places we've visited have been much more fun; either the people are getting friendlier or we're getting less awkward. Probably the latter.

Jesus, etc.

This past Thursday Father Puthumai took us to the MC's house in Patiram, where Mother Teresa's miracle took place. In order for someone to become a saint, the Church has to verify two miracles attributed to them. While there have been many miracles attributed to Mother, this is the only one that has been officially seen by the Church, and was the cause for her beatification in 2003, making her half-way to sainthood. So here's the story: A Bengali woman named Monica was staying in a clinic run by the Missionaries of Charity (the religious order started by Mother Teresa) and had an enormous tumor in her stomach, big enough that she had to physically pick it up when she tried to walk anywhere. She'd been to doctors, and was receiving some treatments. One day the sisters put a Mother Teresa medal around her neck, she went to pray in the chapel, felt something cool in her stomach, and when she woke up the next morning her tumor was gone. The MCs run many different types of houses: TB clinics, rehabilitation centers, orphanages... Their house in Patiram was meant to be similar to Kalighat in Kolkata, a home for the dying, but there were so many people in the area that needed only temporary care that it has become more of a general clinic. Most of the patients have TB, which affects almost every household in this region where everyone works hard in the fields and malnutrition is commonplace. Many people who have the disease are afraid to go to the doctor or can't afford any care, so they work themselves to exhaustion before finally coming to the MCs. They get medicine, rest, and medical care until they are healthy enough to return home and to work, where they are likely to relapse. The sisters also have a few HIV/AIDS cases, and other severe patients. As we walked through the building it was incredible to see the joy on everyone's faces as they came to greet us, there was a strange mixture of joy and sadness in the air as we met many of the patients and the sisters shared their stories with us. There are many who doubt Monica's miracle, even her husband claims that her instantaneous recovery was due to the medical treatment she was receiving. But I say that the fact that a sick woman whose family is living in poverty has somewhere where she can receive free medical care and be nursed back to health, that's a miracle in itself.

On Friday Scott decided to have a practical lesson for his English class, so the morning class took us to the market. It was really fun to have a chance to walk around town in the morning, especially with our class pointing things out and chit-chatting the whole way. It was amazing because we didn't have to start a conversation once, the whole class really seemed to enjoy talking in a relaxed setting, in English, translating for each other when they needed help. At the market they helped Scott bargain for 2 kg of potatoes; everyone here knows that Scott loves potatoes, and they also really like it when he makes a scene. The evening class took us to the train station, helped us buy some music, and introduced us to some fun junk food.

Saturday morning Erin and I went to the MC house in Chanditola. This is a house for orphans, abandoned children, and unwed mothers, and we try to go there once a week when we're in town to play with the kids. This week Erin and I skipped English class in the morning and got to the MCs early enough to help with laundry. We hand washed everything in giant stone basins, then rinsed everything twice before it was hung up to dry. Afterwards the sisters made us tea and some treats, which I think might have canceled out the work we did. Since we've been going there on a somewhat regular basis, the kids all know us and get super excited when they see us coming. Sometimes I feel bad because we cause a bit of a ruckus while we're there, lots of running and yelling and screaming, but the kids really seem to enjoy it. They all hold their index fingers above their head when they want us to do the hokey pokey, and touch their heads and shoulders a lot when they want to do head, shoulders, knees and toes. We helped the kids air out blankets in the sun and played on the terrace for a while. They also had three newborns this week, two of which were born on the same day. Chanditola is a place where unwed mothers can come to have their babies and then be able to return to their villages, and all three of these babies were given up so will remain at Chanditola for a while before being moved to a larger orphanage in Kolkata or Darjeeling. There's also a baby there whose mother died in childbirth. She was premature and her family can't take care of her, so she'll stay at the MC's for about 6 months before she's healthy enough to be returned to her family. The sisters will often take in children who are sick, injured, or suffering from serious malnutrition, nurse them back to health for a few months, then return them to their families. It's amazing to be able to come every week and see the changes in the children: the kid who had scabies and would just sit and cry all day is now running around and laughing, the baby who was just about to roll over now flips himself over every few minutes. The work that the Missionaries of Charity do is very immediate, very hands on. It's a nice balance to the work that we're doing at SWI, which are long-term mostly education and awareness programs affecting thousands of people each month, working to change structures and mindsets in local communities so that people will lead healthy lives in the future. The MCs instead say "this one person is sick right now, we need to help them". Both are essential in working towards peace and justice throughout our world and are beautiful examples of work being done everywhere to accomplish this. And, you know, the redeeming power of God's love.

Elephant Love Medley

Last week we celebrated Durga Puja, one of West Bengal's biggest festivals, honoring the Hindu goddess Durga. The city is filled with lights and giant bamboo structures called pandels are built throughout the city, kind of like temporary temples to house elaborate clay statues of Durga, who has ten arms. There are also huge bamboo archways covered in lights over the streets (our power's been going out a few hours a day for the past month so that the city has enough electricity to power everything this week). Everyone buys new clothes and spends four nights going "pandal hopping," going to worship and make offerings at all of the pandals and also to check out all the lights and junk food and everyone else's new clothes. SWI is closed during the festival so Erin, Scott and I decided to take the whole week off and do some traveling up in the hills. But before I get too carried away, I'll fill you in on a few things that happened the week before we left:

• CRS sent us a last minute project proposal to send to the Clinton foundation so we had an all day work party to write/edit a proposal to increase HIV/AIDS testing for children in the Malda district.
• We visited a few interesting places nearby: A nearby rock quarry to see their working conditions and nearby homes (in the car Father had already started talking about what could be done to study their health conditions and increase awareness of nearby services), a Jesuit physical therapy clinic where they have only herbal medicines and practice a lot of alternative medicine, and an old age home that is completely cared for by the elderly that live there.
• Monasi, one of the girls we live with, is in charge of the health division of SWI, where Erin has been helping. Her new project to increase child immunizations in the entire Raiganj diocese (Uttar Dinajpur, Dakshin Dinajpur, and Malda districts) was just passed for funding by Manos Unidas in Spain, and it's already started in full force. The supervisor training was held while we were gone, and the field staff will be trained later this week, so we'll be spending a lot more time in the field and setting up data entry as the project begins.

And now for our trip... We drove up to Gorumara National Park to try and catch some wildlife, stopped in Siliguri to pick up our special tourist visas for Sikkim then hopped on a bus to Gangtok, where we spent two days before driving back down to Darjeeling for another two days. It was a really good trip, lots of mountains and tea, and I think the best way to explain it is just to cut and paste Scott's list of highlights:

• Listening to Phil Collins, Bryan Adams, Michael Jackson as we climbed to over 13000ft, while our driver sang along
• Watching people carry giant bags of tea from a backpack that you strap to your head...a head pack
  
• Hiking to the top of a Mt. at 13000ft in the Himalayas and seeing gorgeous views of Lake Chungu and the mountains, while wondering why all the other tourists are just sitting by the lake
• Watching a cultural program in the shrubbery
  
• Riding yaks
• Having countless "photo shoots" with Indian tourists, while feeling like some sort of celebrity
• Drinking tea from a lookout tower overlooking the jungle at our hotel
  
• Getting a private serenade from the people sharing our jeep
• Eating the best Chinese food ever, because we were basically on the Chinese border
• Watching the sunrise in the Himalayas
• Seeing animals like the snow leopard, rhino, elephant, red panda and most importantly Peacocks!!
  
• dressing up like traditional Nepali's
• watching an Indian water light show
• sleeping next to the Pleasure Palace
• Hearing a certain Whitney Houston song while eating Thai food
• Watching 1000s of Indians dance like Evan, Steve, Doug etc.
• Going to a real Bollywood movie-Bhool Bhulaiyaa
• Seeing amazing statues of Hindu deities
  
• Watching countless Indian music videos
• Almost getting stuck in Gangtok
• Eating amazing pot stickers, chowmein and Samosas (no not smores) from a small hotel that didn't expect any tourists
• Getting the best rum ever from a local bar for about 40cents per shot
• Bus almost leaving with out me in Siliguri, while Erin and Andrea and my luggage wondered where I was
• Seeing HSM 2 in Hindi
  
• Fresh Darjeeling tea in a tea field
• Frolicking in a stream with our driver Matthias
  
• Baby elephants at Rhino point
  
• Visiting the first ever Tibetan Refugee Camp
• Eating Pan, which I'm pretty sure is made from the Betel Leaf
  
• Visiting the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute and seeing really neat artifacts from the original Everest summit
• Tibetan Butter Tea is nothing like I imagined Butter Beer in Harry Potter, it is mainly just butter with water
  
• Seeing the first white people in a month
  
• Learning that when the hotel offers you tea, even though they are making you late because they were not ready when they said they would be, it still means that they will charge you room service price for the tea
  
• Getting our picture taken with Indian Military and having them tell us we look "Superfantastic" while holding up the OK sign

We arrived back in Raiganj just in time for the last day of Durga Puja when the streets fill with processions of people bringing the Durga statues to be submerged in the river. We walked around town a bit in the evening to see the pandels, then sat outside SWI wearing our new puja wear, bought a few egg rolls, and watched the longest, loudest, dancingest parade ever. All in all, it was a pretty good week.

Walk by Faith

One funny thing about all of the religious houses that we visit (convents, rectories, seminaries, missions...) is that they all have inspirational posters - always framed- that have some sort of inspirational message in English such as "Laughter is the Beauty of Today's Moment and the Hope for Tomorrow's Promise" or "Winners never Quit, Quitters never Win". This message will be written across some sort of scenic picture - sometimes its a palm tree on a beach, or a house set in a meadow. Usually though, it's a picture of creepy babies. Sometimes they're Indian babies, sometimes they're American babies. Sometimes they're dressed like babies, sometimes they're dressed up like grown-ups. Most of the time they're holding flowers. You know how Angela on "The Office" has that poster by her desk of the babies wearing sunglasses and playing saxophones? Now imagine that "You are the Light of the World" is written across the bottom and it's framed and hanging in the dining room of the Sisters of Charity. It's not only babies though, there are posters of kittens and puppies too. I definitely saw one that said "Walk by Faith, not by Sight" with a picture of a Golden Retriever. The poster that I'm looking at right now has three babies (although I'm pretty sure it's the same baby transposed three times) crawling in a field of yellow flowers wearing diapers and straw hats covered in flowers. Across the top it says, "Every Eye has its own Crystal". What does that even mean?!?
Creepy.

Sons and Daughters

Erin and I spent the past week in Bolaigaon, about 45 minutes from Raiganj where we stayed in a convent with the Sisters of the Divine Saviour. Most of the convents or missions here have the same formula: somewhere for the priests/sisters/brothers to live, a dispensary where they provide free healthcare and hand out medicines, an elementary school, and a hostel for children from the villages who go to the school. There are four sisters that live in the Bolaigaon convent, Sr. Mini who runs the dispensary, Sr. Solly who teaches third grade in the school, Sr. Mukta who runs the hostel (if you’ve never had 90 elementary aged girls as your upstairs roommates, it’s pretty fun) and Sr. Anisha who brought us to the different villages everyday.

We had come to spend the week traveling to nearby villages and seeing the health programs that the sisters were implementing. When we arrived, Sr. Anisha had called all their health workers to greet us and to have a meeting to plan out our week. Let me back up for a minute. The programs in Bolaigaon (and most of India from my understanding) are based off of self-help groups. These self-help groups consist of 5-10 people (usually women, although more men’s groups are starting) in rural villages who join together to open a savings account. They are based mostly on economic reasoning, so each person in the group will pay a set amount each month (most of the groups we met were saving 30 or 40 rupees per month) which the group will then deposit in a bank account. Then if one of the members needs a loan to buy some land or a cow or something, they can get a loan from the group. Lots of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been starting these groups all over rural India (SWI has about 2000 self-help groups that they oversee) and the government has been working to start them as well. The health workers in Bolaigaon are women from the villages who are involved in these groups; each worker oversees about 10 groups in villages near where they live. So the health workers not only help to run the self-help groups, but then they also teach lessons during the group meetings. The topics for the lessons range from health and hygiene to social issues. The workers are all women from the villages, and it’s a very blended group; some of the women have never been to school, some got through first or second grade, and some got all the way to tenth. The sisters have about 28 health workers and four supervisors who run self help groups in every village within 3 panchayats (counties) and have seen a lot of successes in their programs. It was amazing to see the health workers during our meeting, they were so excited to meet us and ask us all sorts of questions about where we’re from and what we do and tell us all about their programs and what they’ve accomplished. It was really incredible to be surrounded by so many empowered women.

Every morning Erin and I would wake up early for Morning Prayer with the sisters, have breakfast, and get ready to start our day. Around 9:00 one of the supervisors would come to meet us and then we would head out with Sr. Anisha for one of the villages. The first day we visited the nearby villages, the other days we would walk for about an hour, hour and a half. When we got to the villages we would walk around to a few people’s houses, and then meet with most of the women in the village. They would ask us a lot of questions, like whether we grow rice where we’re from and what our climate is like and we would ask them questions like what type of agriculture they had and what other projects their groups had been involved in. We probably visited about 8 or 9 villages during the week and it was amazing to see all the differences in how they built their houses, what language they spoke, and the different ways that they have incorporated these self-help groups into their villages.

Bondita, one of the supervisors that had been bringing us to some different villages, invited us to her home. It was very similar to most of the homes that we visited: it was built sort of like a compound, with a courtyard in the middle that the rooms opened into. There would be one or two rooms that the family lived in, a kitchen, and a storage area. Most of the homes are built out of mud, some have bamboo supports within the mud walls (sort of like re-bar) and they mostly have straw, clay, or aluminum siding for roofs. Bondita’s house was the first one that I had been in where they had built their walls of aluminum as well. When we got there Bondita surprised us with some lunch, which was quite the feat considering that she had been with us since 9:00 that morning which means she had woken up super early to prepare this for us. We didn’t eat much, but she had made some wonderful treats for dessert, kind of like mini crepes with cinnamon which we filled our mouths with while her adorable 7 year old daughter Birnali danced for us and played with my camera.

Scott came out to join us during the weekend and it was fun to fill him in on some of the adventures that we’d been having and show him some of the villages. We got to take a boat on a rope across a flooded road, ride on a bicycle van (kind of like a bicycle with a truck bed on the back of it), eat sugarcane that we got fresh from a field, all sorts of fun stuff. On Sunday we went to a blessing of a new chapel that had been built in one of the villages, and to get there we each got to ride on the back of a different priest’s motorcycle. After Mass the kids from the hostels performed some dances which were all really good, I’ll try to get the videos up when I have a chance.

All in all it was a really great week. It’s nice to be back in Raiganj and we’re planning a lot of exciting things for the near future, but I’m definitely going to miss the Sisters and all the people in Bolaigaon and I’m sure I’ll go back there at least once more while we’re here.

Where the Streets Have No Name

I've been spending the past few days out in the field. On Friday I travelled with the CBDP (community based disaster preparedness) supervisor and another staff from SWI and we met up with some liaison officers from Kolkata that work with all eight dioceses in West Bengal. We drove to Kumarganj in the South Dinajpur district, about 2 hours south of Raiganj (but still in the Raiganj diocese) to go to a few community meetings to see how the villages have been implementing the CBDP programs into their communities. One of the communities that we visited performed a drama of how they had implemented the program and steps they had in place to prepare for a disaster. Basically they have community meetings and form a small self government in the village and also teach basic hygiene, first aid, how to make lifejackets, lifeguard saves, where the nearest high ground is in case of flood, etc. All in all it was really great to have a chance to go out into the villages and see this stuff in action.

Erin and I are heading out to a parish in Baliogoan which is a village about an hour for here. We'll be staying for a week so I'm sure I'll have lots to write about when we get back. Oh, and I saw the sunset while we were driving on Friday and Saturday. It was amazing.

Kyrie

I can't believe that we've been in India for a whole week! Our journey began at SeaTac airport on Wednesday where before we even got on the plane we met someone from Seattle University who was also flying to Kolkata (Calcutta) to work with Mother Theresa's Missionaries of Charity. We reached London Heathrow and spent our layover talking to a Canadian family who work with Canadian International Development Agency and work in a pineapple farm in Ghana. We reached Kolkata on Friday where Fr. Puthumai met us and took us to Seva Kendra, the Caritas center in Kolkata. Let me back up for a minute. Fr. Puthumai is the director of the Social Welfare Institute (aka Caritas) in Raiganj where Erin, Scott and I plan on spending the next few months volunteering. SWI has connections to CaritasIndia and also does a lot of work with Catholic Relief Services. So we went to Seva Kendra, had breakfast, and rested from our flight. That afternoon we went to the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity to see Mother Teresa's tomb, then went to the Catholic Relief Services office to meet the staff there and had our first Indian coffee and meet and greet. From there we went to the train station and hopped on a train to Raiganj.

Eleven hours later after our first full night's sleep in India we arrived and jumped in a car to go to DDC, where Erin and I would be staying. DDC, or the Diocesan Development Center, is a training center about four miles out of Raiganj where SWI holds various trainings. There aren't any going on right now, but there are classrooms and dormitories and pigs and chickens and a huge pond. Erin and I are sharing a room, and we live there along with some of the other female SWI staff and a few Cannosian sisters that teach at the nearby Jesuit School. That afternoon we went to SWI, where we will be working and where Scott is living, along with Fr. Puthumai and a few other priests that assist at SWI. On our way back to DDC we stopped to visit the MC sisters at the nearby home that they run for unwed mothers and their children. There was a girl there who they had just brought from the hospital. She was just skin and bones and being spoonfed by her mother. The doctors expected her to die at any time so the sisters had brought her to care for her.

On Sunday, after Mass at the Cathedral, Sister Philo who runs the house at DDC took us to meet some of the Catholic houses in the area. We started at Loyola Seminary, which is a minor seminary for those training to be brothers. Then we went to St. Leo's seminary which is the seminary for the diocesan priests. Then we went to the TB clinic run by the MC sisters. At every single place we went we sat down and had a cup of coffee and visited with our hosts. While we were at the MCs we experienced our second major rainstorm. When it rains here it really pours. We finally got up the courage to run back to the car and made our way back to DDC for lunch. Right as we got there we heard our first clap of thunder. It was really loud, the kind of thunder that would make you jump into the arms of the person next to you, or run into your governess' room and start singing about your favorite things. After lunch we went to the new Vocational Training Center where dropouts from St. Xavier's can learn how to drive so they can get jobs. Then we went to St. Xavier's school, the Jesuit school in town, and also took a tour of the hostel where boys from the villages can come and live during the school year. Then we went to visit the Carmelite Sisters of the Little Flower and the novitiate that they run, we stopped by the Poor Clare's Convent next door but didn't stay because they were having Mass, and then went to the Cathedral where Fr. Puthumai used to work and visited with the sisters that run the school there. All in all it was a really good day. I met more nuns than I've ever met in my life and had 7 cups of coffee in the course of about 5 hours.

Monday we had our first full day in the office. Erin is working with the Health education program so she's been editing the report for their last project and helping as they prepare for their next community health program. Scott's teaching an English class, so he spends most of his time working on lesson plans. I'm working with the CDCP program (Community Based Disaster Relief) so I've been familiarizing myself with the project and helping Scott with lesson plans.

On Tuesday there was a festival, so instead of going into the office we went to help out the MC sisters. Sister Sofia asked me to teach the children, so we went over the alphabet and numbers, which they're all pretty good at. If anyone has any good elementary ed ideas, or some good action songs, please let me know. The girl that had been bedridden the last time we were there was sitting up on the bed, and when we sang songs she even stood up. She couldn't quite get through all of head, shoulders, knees and toes but she did pretty good for someone who had been on death's door the day before. That afternoon we went out to some of the villages near Altapur and stopped by the school and hostel there, where most of the sponsorships from Sean Bray's Assist a Child program are going. As soon as we got there the sisters had chairs set out for us and the girls put on a pretty elaborate dance performance for us which was pretty incredible considering that they had about half an hour's notice that we were coming. Afterwards we had a tour of the hostel and made plans for Scott to come back and work on a needs assessment of what needs to be repaired, mostly the roof in the medical dispensary where the ceiling is eroding and water is coming through. We also started to discuss where extra funds from Assist a Child is going to go. Father has already decided to purchase a battery backup system for the MC's (the electrical current here ebbs and flows) so that the children won't get scared when the power goes out, which it does a few times a day. We also discussed buying beds for the children at Altapur (right now they sleep on blankets laid out on the concrete floor) but now that USAID has cut their funding most of the Assist a Child funds will probably go towards food costs.

All in all it's been a great first week. I don't get claustrophobic under the mosquito net anymore, Erin and I took the bus by ourselves for the first time this morning, and I've completely forgotten how to eat with silverware. I've even learned how to make a homemade cup of Indian coffee: equal parts instant coffee, milk powder, and sugar. I haven't seen a sunset yet, although every time I see the sky start to change colors I have to fight the urge to drop everything I'm doing and run up onto the roof, but for now I can keep it as one of my goals. So here you go- short term goal: watch the sunset. Long term goal: ride an elephant.