When we arrived at the orphanage we were met by a nun who ushered us into an office that was attached to a room with an alter and a Jesus statue. As we entered, she told us, “Go say hello to Jesus.” Now I can’t say that I’ve ever said “Hello” to Jesus but I tried my best to do as I was told. We then went into another building where SAS students were already playing with a bunch of little children. At first I was a little overwhelmed for the fact that I hadn’t realized that the orphans were all children had some sort of physical disability. As I stood in the doorway a little girl came up right away and pulled me in. All the kids were so cute and looked so happy to see us with our gifts of little toys, coloring books, and stickers. When I went upstairs there were nuns feeding some kids and one little guy actually got a hold of a tag on my book bag and ripped it off as a nun tried to subdue him. The only thing that I found sort of depressing was that on the other side of the wall of the complex was a school with children playing outside while the children in the orphanage were inside. On the way out we again stopped at the front office and made a donation and asked the nun what they needed that we could send. She informed us that they needed razors, bar soap, diapers, shampoo, and chocolates, but told us that we needed to send them with the next SAS ship and not through the mail due to the post office going through the packages and taking most of the supplies. This truly pious told us to simply put the children in our prayers and to not worry about sending things. She said that they make due by people coming through.
We then headed back to the ship with a rickshaw driver named Paul, that Shannon and Linda had been with a couple of days before. After lunch Paul took Kira and I to go find a cricket bat among other things. I ended up finding a bat at a real good price. As we then got back into the rickshaw, Paul showed us pictures of his three sons aged 10, 7, and 6. He asked us if he could then take us quickly to three department stores in order for the store to give him a backpack for his eldest son. As we agreed he went on to explain that every time the ship comes (once every semester for 5 days) the different department stores make deals with the rickshaw drivers and every time they get customers to go into the shops they get either shirts or backpacks, etc as compensation. Paul went onto explain that this is the best money making time out of the whole year and told us that it costs 2000 rupees (approx $46.50) a month each to send his sons to a private school. This is a pretty exorbitant amount. This leads him to work 12 hour days (8am-8pm) and his wife to work as a tailor.
After spending the afternoon with Paul and learning a little bit about his culture we bid him adieu and headed back to the ship, where I got my cricket bat confiscated (hopefully I get that back at the end). This is the point where my mother would go on to say, “Why do you need a cricket bat?” which I would go onto reply, “Why do you like the Christmas Tree Shoppe so much?”
It will definitely take me a long time to process everything that I saw and experienced in India as it was quite a sensory overload. I think this quote about India definitely defines it: “Whatever you say about India the reverse holds true.”
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