No Sacrifice

All the tears, the discomforts, the loneliness, the frustration, the inconveniences, the language barrier issues, and the worldview clashes are worth it when a child says, "I love you, aka (sister)."

Please continue praying for me.  Jason Upton's "No Sacrifice" is my prayer:

To You I give my life, not just the parts I want to
To You I sacrifice all these dreams that I hold on to

Chorus

Your thoughts are higher than mine

Your words are deeper than mine

Your love is stronger than mine

This is no sacrifice

Here's my life

To you I give the gifts Your love has given me

How can I hoard the treasures that you've designed for free?

To You I give my future as long as it may last

To You I give my present, to You I give my past

Inflation

I know inflation is happening all around the world, but it’s occurring in gastronomical proportions here.  For example, chicken went from $2/kg to $2.75/kg and chili peppers from 20 cents/kg to $2/kg.  It might not seem like much, but when you think about the daily budget for food of an underprivileged individual—60 cents—the inflation is killer.  There are people who earn $1.70 a day as daily wage labourers and they get called for farm work based on the season.  If there’s no work to be done in the fields, they don’t have any income.  Shepherdesses earn even less. 

Living here makes me appreciate the Canadian government’s support system even more.  People earning below a certain amount get child benefits and many people enjoy free medical care.  There are food banks and different organizations reaching out to the less privileged.  Here, if your husband deserts you or if your wife dies, you’re on your own.  You gotta just etch out a living for you and your children.  Some do daily wage labour.  Some go into the forest and collect edibles to sell on the street.  Some herd buffalo.  And some—the ones that are really sick and unable to get medical help—beg their friends and relatives for relief. 

For some, inflation is just a pinch, but for those living in poverty, inflation is a deep gash.

(sorry it's sideways.  It uploaded this way and there's no function to turn it around) 

Baking in Rural India

I’ve been wanting to make these peanut butter cookies from a mix I got as a care package from New York, so I kept waiting for electricity to be more stable.  (There have been power cuts for at least 2 hours every single day of the 6.5 weeks I’ve been here) One day, we had power in the morning, and we had power in the afternoon.  I thought we’d for sure have power at night, so I started making the cookies.  When I was putting them on the cookie sheet, the power goes out.  I’m lucky the power didn’t go out while they were baking!  Fun times J

A few days later, I wanted to bake again, but there was a lot of burnt stuff in oven, so I decided to clean it.  I brought it to the outdoor tap and started using a wet rag to clean it.  Jagadeesh sees me and asks, “aka, help?”  Seconds later, Ganesh comes and tells Jagadeesh to go and rest, saying that he could help me clean the oven.  Since they both were so eager to help, I let them work on it and went to prepare my baking supplies. 

We brought the oven indoors near an electric outlet, and I plugged it in.  I tried to open the door of the oven and felt a minor shock.  I barely noticed it because I experience the same on a frigid and dry day when I take off a coat.  The oven was tilted and about to fall off the stool we placed it on (the current kitchen we use doesn’t have counter tops), and I tried to straighten it.  Suddenly my knees buckled and I screamed involuntarily.  Some teenagers ran up to me, and asked me what was wrong.  That’s when I realized I just experienced a huge electric shock.  I had only touched the outside of the oven, but I didn’t know that it’d give me an electric shock.  I felt pain where the electricity entered my body through my hand & left through my feet.  Then they left the oven under the fan for half a day to dry it.  When I tried baking that night, I plugged everything in and turned it on before plugging in the cord in.  Luckily I didn’t get a shock again.  There are so many 1^sts in India, some pleasant, but some not so pleasant.

Jagadeesh

I’m learning how to be content with very little from Jagadeesh, a 15-year-old boy.  The zippers on Jagadeesh’s backpack are all broken and the material separating the different compartments is torn and the straps are coming off.  I asked him if he needed a new backpack and it said that it was ok.  He has been carrying it with the small strap used for hanging that is on the top of the backpack. 

One afternoon, I noticed him sewing during homework time.  As I walked closer, I realized that he was sewing the broken zipper shut on his bag!  I’ve never met a 15-year-old—maybe I just haven’t met a lot of teenagers—that will not demand a new bag or request that a broken zipper be fixed, but instead proceeds to sew up the zipper.  I told him that he could do his homework and I’ll take it to a tailor in the neighbourhood to sew.

“No problem, aka.  I can do it myself.”  He smiled at me and kept sewing.

Now he only uses certain compartments on his bag.  Astounding.  I am totally bourgeois compared to the kids that live here.  

Amurta

For whatever reason Amurta’s mom sends her to the free preschool held in our compound at age 2.  She started crying for her mommy, so I had to pick her up to comfort her and I started carrying her around.  I was drinking water and she says, “enti?” meaning “what.”  I figured she was asking me “what is it?” so I said, “water.”  She repeats.  “Waterlu.”  Then she points at the talcum powder and questions, “enti?”  I reply, “powder.”  “Powdera” she repeats.  Mirror becomes “Miramu.”  I couldn’t stop giggling to myself because at the young age of 2 she has already somehow realized, perhaps subconsciously, that words must end with a vowel.  So she added a vowel to every word I taught her.  Her accent is out-of-this-world cute!

In Telugu, all consonants are attached to vowels, so you wouldn’t have a word like “Macdonald” in which there is no vowel between the “c” and “d” sounds.  It's so amazing how toddlers subconsciously know grammatical structure without anyone teaching them.  Anyhow, the kids keep me amused.

Efficiency

I was talking to this girl a few days ago and I mentioned the word “efficient.”  She didn’t understand it, so I endeavoured to explain it to her using simpler terminology.  After some time, I decided to teach through example.

“You know McDonalds?  Well they are very efficient,” I state.  She shakes her head.

“Ok... KFC?” I query.  I think that she must know KFC since it’s so popular in India.  Judging from the people I’ve interacted with, KFC might be even more popular than McDonald’s AND it’s in the city that is 3h away from us.

“No, aka.” She wrinkles her forehead in confusion.  “What is that?”

I decide not to even attempt to explain McDonalds because first I’d have to explain what hamburgers and fries are, so I thought KFC would be easier to explain.  “Well, KFC is a place that makes food really fast and they make fried chicken.”

“Oh, like what Ama does.  She makes fried chicken too!” she exclaimed.

Hmmmm.... Well, I’m glad that she connected the new knowledge to her background knowledge, but in my explanation I totally forgot that village culture is not a restaurant-oriented culture.  I don’t even know if she’s ever eaten in a restaurant before.  Lol... it’s so funny how I often realize that things we take for granted as common knowledge in our culture is not common knowledge in other cultures, especially rural areas that haven’t been touched by technologies such as computers and the internet.  

School Supplies

Although things are generally cheaper in India than Canada or the States, $50/month is still really hard to live on.  That's how much the minimum wage here is.  Jobs that make $50/month include daily wage farm labourers, government street cleaners, and some construction labourers.  A bus ticket costs around 25 cents, a bottle of coke around 60 cents, and a loaf of bread 50 cents.  However, rice is 1/2 of the price it is in Canada, and it is the staple food of South India.  Luxury items like TVs, washing machines, data projectors, and laptops are the same as Canada, if not more costly. 

My heart breaks when I see children so excited about small things.  Some of the children come 1h early to the school in the HMJC compound, so once I gave them some children’s books to read.  When the 2 boys saw the books, they exclaimed, “Books!” and looked at each other in delight.  There are libraries in the cities, but here in the country side, books are scarce.  In fact, I even went to the big city 3h away from here (it’s one of the 3 biggest cities in this state) and I couldn’t find a decent bookstore.  All the bookstores only sell school textbooks and workbooks. 

The children are also super excited about paper and markers.  (“sketches,” they call them)  When they saw some markers in the office, they begged to have them, and how could I resist?  I am always for children having art supplies.  Actually, the markers were bought for our village outreaches to even more remote places.  Places that don’t have stores.  Although we have stores in our town, a lot of families can’t afford markers or fancy school supplies for their children.  The kids in our free village school (taught by a volunteer teacher and held in our compound) all practice their ABC’s and 123’s on blackboard slates. 

Today I noticed a 6-year-old boy carrying his notebooks, slate, and chalk in a plastic bag marked “corn feed.”  I’m guessing his family can’t afford a backpack.  He comes from a difficult family background.  One of his parents was unfaithful and gave HIV to the other.  His father has a drinking problem and doesn’t come home in months. 

I hope I’ll never become desensitized to the suffering and challenges of others.  I just see so much, but I don’t want it to ever become acceptable in my mind.  The cry to stand up for justice and to ensure everyone has the human rights (see http://www.humanrights.com/) they’re entitled to should always resound in my heart and feed my determination to make a difference in a life.

Ganesh

I take my buckets down to the outdoor tap the minute I wake up because a) there's only running water from 6-12pm; and b) I want to use the relatively warm tap water to shower instead of water that has gotten super cold from sitting in my bathroom overnight.


I return to my room, and within minutes, the buckets return to my room full.  Once again, Ganesh takes the initiative to serve others.  He's 18 and in gr.8.  He had epilepsy and as a result of his seizures, he couldn't attend school for 6 years.  He started school late and has difficulty speaking clearly.  No matter what curve balls life has thrown at him, Ganesh has a wonderful heart of service.  When it rains or when it's windy, a whole bunch of leaves and dirt get deposited on the veranda outside my room.  Every time he carries water to my room (I don't have running water) and finds the tiled veranda dirty, he asks me if I want him to clean it.  I tell him that he can if he wants to, but I can do it myself.  He then proceeds to clean the veranda joyfully and thoroughly.

When he sees me filling a bucket with water to wash my clothes, he asks, "soap" and gets me the detergent.  When he sees me squeezing water out of towels or bedsheets, he runs to help me.  He has such a gift of service, and what's more amazing is that he's always joyful when he's serving others.  So many times I'll hear him singing or humming as he's doing chores or running errands.

Ganesh is also very earnest and diligent.  Even when facing mundane tasks that the teacher gives him for homework like copying paragraphs, he concentrates on the task and does not get distracted when the other kids are talking.  We started reading Genesis during group devotions and he was so into the Word that he read ahead.  When I was doing laundry, he came over to me and started summarizing Abram’s life.  This morning we carried water together up to my second-story room twice and both times, he continued summarizing what he read. 

One time, I asked about his family and found out that when he was really young his dad left his mom.  Later on, he got married to someone else and they started a family.  His mom works at a college as a janitor.  She works from 4am-7pm every day, but is only compensated $50/month.  Ganesh’s dad doesn’t really contact him & the last time he saw him was 4 years ago.  From what I know, most children of divorced families don’t have the privilege of spending time with both parents in this culture.  Because Ganesh’s mom works such long hours and she makes so little, she sent him to stay at our children’s home.  


Ganesh is just one of the kids I’m able to learn from.  I’m learning how to serve more and how to go to that lowest place of humility.  I'm learning how to be content with less.  These kids are so wonderful, and I’m incredibly privileged to be taking care of them!