Part 3, Posted February 24, 2001
| Dr. Stephanie Gilbertson, Ed.D.
a disciple from the Cincinnati Church of Christ, was in New Delhi, India
for a month working with other disciples and representatives of HOPE worldwide
providing a brief teacher education course to HOPE staff who teach in the
Village of HOPE, a leper colony, and in the Asharan Orphanage. Ten days after
her arrival, India was struck with one of the most severe earthquakes in
decades. This series of articles chronicle her thoughts and activities from
her life changing experience.
I'm almost a native. I've learned enough Hindi to get really lost but people love it when someone as strange-looking as me speaks their language. I've met with many of the teachers and have organized the training sessions for next week. It has been a lot of work but it is going great. Tomorrow I will visit the HOPE school in one of the slums and take the supplies from Aunt Suzie. There are 150 kids and 3 volunteer teachers. There is no formal school for those children. Tuesday I will meet with the adult education instructors at the Village of HOPE, a leper colony. I keep thinking of my Grandma Wandstrat who used to make hundreds of rolls of bandages to send ot leper colonies. She really was meeting a serious need. Later in the week I will visit the Computer school at the jail and work with the instructors there.
There are 26 children in the orphanage right now.
10 tiny infants, 12 3-5 year olds, and 4 teenagers. Three of the 4-year olds
really get to me. Sarita hides and waits for me, behind doors or in the stairway
or in the washroom. sometimes for hours, then smiles and runs to
We are at capacity for infants. They are 2 -3 to a crib in a room that is the size of my kitchen. The newest arrival, a preemie, was left, in the middle of the night in the basket that is set up outside for that purpose. When a baby is placed in the basket an alarm goes off in the orphanage and everyone comes down to see the new arrival.
Everyone uses the same lanes on the road. Busses,
cars, trucks vans, cycles, rickshaws, people on foot, bulls, dogs, cows,
boars, pigs, elephants.yes, I've seen five elephants in the road already.
Some of
We are without electric part of every day. But people just go on doing what they were doing, or something else if what they were doing required electric.
We rode around to the other side of Kasturba Nagar,
down many narrow twisting streets of dirt and broken pavement, through a
market area and arrived at Rajni's home. Along the way many people stared,
even though I had taken care to wear Indian style clothing and to wrap a
shawl around my shoulders.
Rajini's husband arrived shortly after we did and her daughter went to call their sons. Rajini proudly explained that she and her husband owned their home, an 8'x6' room of poured concrete. Two of their five children had to sleep outside the home. One daughter is married and lives with her husband's family.
It seemed really amusing to me that earlier that day I had gazed at objects in Mahatma Gandhi's museum and now in the evening I was on display for all of Rajini's neighbors. |
me when I finally notice
she is there. She hardly weighs anything and she will just stay on my arm
as long as I will hold her. Little Ahgee is the youngest one in that group.
We guess he is around 3. He loves to tell me his numbers and ABC's. Then
there's Mandula. What a child, what a face, what a dear. They all call me
Auntie, emphasis on the second syllable.
Today, because it was
Sunday, a girl brought me a bucket of hot water so I could "shower." I'm
so glad I brought some soap. Other things I'm really glad I brought: the
slippers from Dave and Kathy, my sleeping bag, three days worth of water,
and waterless hand sanitizer. Things I didn't bring but wish I had: Flashlight,
more water, toys for the kids.
Rajini, the orphanage cook,
invited me to her home. She is Hindu and does not speak any English. I figured
I might as well go and we would figure out how to communicate after a fashion.
As it turned out, my hosts would not allow me to leave without an escort,
so Rupa (whose English was about as good as my Hindi) accompanied us. The
three of us climbed onto a cyclerickshaw and the skinny little driver heaved
all his weight and willpower onto the pedals to get us going.
I guess I stared, too.
There were many animals in the road and everything that goes with them. I
also noticed that there were no street lightpoles back in the hood, though
there were light poles out on Vivek Vihar by the Orphanage.
Rajini's daughter prepared
tea for all of us. It is a lovely custom here to always serve sweetened coffee
or tea with milk, and to always offer it served from a tray. They had me
sit on the bed with the family (I was used to this because I had visited
other homes and the only place to sit is on the bed) and everyone else crowded
into the couple of feet along the other wall.