All I wanted for Christmas this year was the opportunity to spend it with staff and kids at my favorite Children's Home near Bangalore in India. I wasn't the only one with this wish, for the Roberts family from TCIS had the same idea when we first started talking last August. It took little time for us to put the wish into motion, contacting the Home to see if our visit was possible and nailing down dates after we got the OK.Here are pictures of Dina, Rebecca and Sarah Roberts enjoying their Christmas wish...
Plans were soon in place including making flights to India via Thailand, figuring what we would do with the kids once we got to India and collecting donations to meet the need for bedding for 100 kids. Activity ideas (crafts, music, stories and games) came quickly and I put the word out to the TCIS community late October asking for donations. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of our community for by December 18th we had collected a few thousand dollars to meet the need for bedding and then some!
When I mentioned the funds had been wired to the Home's bank account and the 5th graders from TCIS took a special collection just for the bedding needs, the kids were very thankful. Now they have extra bedding to keep them warm during the cool winter nights. In fact they were quite eager to pose for pictures with the blankets and send thank you drawings to share with the people at TCIS.
As described in previous posts (when I was in India last April 2009), once a person arrives at the Home they don't leave! Well, they do eventually, but those who come to visit stay in an upstairs apartment and don't venture off the premises until they are done their stay at the orphanage. Reasons? Well, for one, the Home is out in the sticks and there are few neighboring farming villages nearby, none of them having a Holiday Inn or provisions for tourists of any kind. We could perhaps find a family to stay with but that would be the closest thing to renting a room here in these parts. It is safe to say that very few people come to this part of India as tourists.
But that's just fine with me. The reason I come all this way is to spend as much time as I can with the kids and living upstairs is a fantastic solution. After all: meals are provided by the staff, you have a place to lay your head at the end of the day and you are in close proximity to the kids... what more do you want? Here's a picture of my two sidekicks waiting on the stairs for me to come down and play.
Visitors to the orphanage are reminded constantly that they are in India and things are done just a little different than back home. I find it fascinating to experience the change in landscape and climate, to hear the kids communicate in numerous dialects, witness daily activities so different from my own and see how cultural traditions stretching back hundreds of years can influence thought and action in the lives of the kids today.The grounds at the Home always active with monkeys, geckos and roaming cows, parrots in trees, the occasional game of cricket, washing of laundry by hand against a stone, kids climbing buildings and maintaining their own gardens, etc, etc. One afternoon I couldn't believe when the boys climbed a palm tree (in bare feet of course) to grab a coconut and then, after they got down, use a knife to make a hole and offer me the first drink. Nothing like fresh coconut juice right from the shell! Then no more than 10 minutes later I marveled at a couple girls drawing beautiful artwork on others' arms and hands to enhance the dance costume for the next day's Christmas program. Such is life in India and at the Home.
And imagine my surprise when twenty-three village kids climbed in and out of one auto-rickshaw every weekday on their way to and from school held at the Home. I remember eleven of us climbing into Ed Penner's VW Bug when I was a teenager but this beats that record by a mile =)
