The Safety Pin: Versatile & suitable for all needs

Here are some common uses for safety pins in India (at least where I live!):

1. Pinning fresh flowers in your hair.  You stick the needle part through the stem of the flower and then stuff hair through the closed safety pin to incorporate it into your braid.  Or you cheat like me and just stick a barrette through the safety pin.
2. Keeping your sari (6 meters of fabric that is draped on with only a tiny top and a long slip underneath) together.  And they only use safety pins, nothing else!
3. Patching up holes that rats bit in your shirts or torn seams.  The solution?  Simple!  Make the holes disappear by safety pinning them on the outside of course—why miss a chance to make a fashion statement?
   
   
   
4. Fixing missing or broken buttons.  Yes, it is possible to have half a button on your dress shirt.  My theory is that this happens here because people beat their clothes on a rock to wash them (maybe beating them helps clean the clothes better due to a combination of momentum and friction?), so buttons break off in chunks.  You just safety pin 2 spots on your dress shirt and you’re ready to go out!
5. Fixing broken zippers.  Zippers are dirt cheap here, like 20 cents for one.  However, the old adage that you get what you pay for rings true.  Most of the zippers on our girls’ dresses and the boys’ jeans and shorts break in a matter of months.  To fix a zipper quickly and economically, simply put a safety pin near the top of the dress and you’ve got a new style going!
6. Tightening loose elastics on skirts.  If your elastic is too loose, just hold the skirt together so it fits just right & then safety pin it.  It’s dirt cheap, foolproof and only takes a fraction of a second. 
7. Cleaning your ear.  If you’re adventurous, open the safety pin, otherwise take a closed safety pin & use it like a Q-tip!
8. Fixing your flip-flops.  Another way to keep your flip-flops together is to stick your safety pin through the thong (the one that keeps popping out) underneath the shoe so that it won’t pop out anymore.  A personal tried and true method.

My theory is that people use safety pins so often to fix clothing because it saves them time and more importantly, money.  Why spend the extra 40 cents (like a third of a day’s salary for those with the least income) to fix your clothes when you have a safety pin?  After all, a pack of safety pins (around 15) is only like 10 cents.  Using safety pins as a quick fix for clothes is super economical, but like one of my friends commented, it makes one look sloppy. 

At the end of the day, those living below the poverty line are concerned about survival.  Pure and simple.  One does not have the money to consider how to look tidy and smart.  All your money is spent on basic necessities like food and rent.  Whatever you save, you use to purchase a set of new clothes for your children for Christmas or their birthdays.  For the underprivileged, gifts are almost always clothes.  Very few can afford luxuries like giving a stuffed animal or a game or new sports equipment.  Books?  Unheard of.  I have not seen a single family with books for pleasure reading.  All the books I’ve seen here are merely textbooks.  (ok, I know I started this with safety pins & have once again landed squarely on the subject of poverty :P  You know where my heart is!)

Today a child came with biscuits and candies to my door to distribute.  It is his birthday.  The tradition here is that you go around treating everyone you know to candies and sometimes biscuits or cookies.  As he handed the goodies to me, all I could think of was 1) he was contacting the biscuits directly, and who knows whether he has washed his hands with soap first?; 2) I don’t like that kind of biscuit and I will save it for my beloved puppies at the school.  Now as I reflect, I realize I’m quite bourgeois compared to those around me.  I know what kind of biscuits I like (the butter cookies that cost 10 cents a pack) and I wrinkle my nose at the cheap biscuits (the ones that cost 4 cents) that I think are tasteless and stale.  I also wrinkle my nose at the birthday cakes sold in the bakeries in the town: they’re dry, crumbly, and the frostings are artificial and grainy with sugar.  After delectable mango mousse cakes in Vancouver, my favourite tiramisu cake, and Catherine’s scrumptious black forest cake, how can I possibly wolf down a piece of Jangareddigudem cake?  But the kids here are appreciative of almost everything they receive, from tasteless biscuits to stale chips.  Perhaps it’s partly due to the lack of knowledge of what’s better.  I suppose this is an example of how the cliché “ignorance is bliss” as a core of truth. 

Regardless, no matter how I try to live like those I serve, it is virtually impossible.  I can’t eat the same diets of which 90% is rice.  I get constipated.  I get lethargic.  I get grumpy.  And I can eat a bite of Jangareddigudem cakes in celebration of a child’s birthday, but I can’t possibly enjoy it.  And if I get suddenly sick or in an accident, I know I have a vast support network in Canada and elsewhere in the world to call upon.  Those here either have to borrow money or die slowly in their homes.  I am fortunate.  I am blessed.  And now, I’m called to be a blessing.

My Sweet Little Ones

The little ones have really taught me about showing love to others.  One of the amazing things about Indian culture is their generosity.  I mentioned in a previous post that Indian culture is very family and community oriented.  Sometimes the kids’ relatives give them some pocket money and they spend 10 cents buying snacks on the way home from church.  When they get a pack of biscuits, they immediately run up to me and pop a biscuit into my mouth.  I don’t like getting fed because I have no idea what those grubby little hands have touched, but I accept their affection gratefully.  Some kids buy 2 pieces of peanut brittle (often made in balls instead of sheets here) and feed me 1.  Their generosity puts to me shame.  When I have snacks like butter cookies or a chocolate bar, I often eat in secret because I don’t want to share.  I want it all for myself.  I will eat while the kids are in school so they don’t see me. 

A few weeks ago, I was in bed with a slight fever.  The kids came in waves to pray for me.  What’s beautiful is that no one told them to!  One of the girls, 10-year-old Sailaja looked for a face towel to wet to put on my forehead while another 9-year-old filled my water bottle.  The oldest girl supervised the kids during homework time, ensuring that they stayed quiet and everyone finished their homework.  Then the girls came back and Sailaja dipped my towel in water again to keep it cool.  It’s so touching to have the tables turn & the kids take care of me.

Returning “Home”

Where is home?  I don’t know.  I feel at home enough here in India, I suppose.  I have no problem with the food, my surroundings, and inconveniences like carrying buckets of water or flushing a toilet with a bucket.  This is a place where I can perceive, but often cannot understand.  This is a place where I’ve discovered that I am quite a perfectionist and really not that flexible.  I guess I’ve dealt with it by anticipating patterns of behaviour.  When I do that, it’s easier for me to come to terms with reality when people’s behaviour is next to impossible for me to understand.

Here are some incomprehensible things I’ve experienced:

1. The contractor tells us his workers can’t come to work because they only found out that morning that we weren’t providing lunch, so they decided not to work that day.  (part of the reason is that he doesn’t want them to have a shortened day of work because he’d lose money that way)
2. The contractor says it’s Christmas & he has Christian workers on break.  The following week there are various reasons why they can’t come to work.  The following week is a Hindu holiday, so now his Hindu workers are on break.
3. The motor guy ( someone who can install the immersion motor for our well) says he’ll be there by 9am for installation.  He’s an hour late and we call to find out that he’s running late.  We call a few hours later and he says that he’s not coming that day anymore because by the time he comes, there’d be a 6h electricity cut & there’s no way to test the motor to see if it’s been properly installed.  He says that he’ll come the next morning.  He doesn’t show up again & Vimal decides to get another motor guy from Janga (the town 30km away from the school) and brings him on the bike.  Finally after 3 days of no water at the school and 3 days of trucking big tubs of water from the nearby village, we get water.  Hurray!
4. A teacher asks for leave (supposedly for only 2 days) to take care of her sick sister (who can be either her real sister or a cousin) and then extends it another 3 days and then calls in sick herself.
5. A teacher goes home in the afternoon because something came up with her family (they usually live on campus because they live a good 1-2h bus ride away from the school).  She states that she’ll be back the next morning for school.  After she’s late for an hour, we call her to find out that she was running late that morning, missed her bus, and has decided not to come to school since the next bus was several hours later.
6. A few of the teachers are seen reading the newspaper in class while their students do their class work.  Some have been seen to be talking on their cells or texting.
7. A part-time house parent (volunteer) tells me that he’ll be back in an hour when going out to run an errand & doesn’t return for 3 days.  He doesn’t call to communicate about anything, but I find out from Vimal that he had to go home to “take care of some family business.”

At the heart of the differences is the value conflicts between the West and East (I’m speaking in generalities here and I’m not claiming to represent everyone in the West or East).  Western culture values the individual, professionalism, and independence above everything else.  Most people won’t take a day off work to take their cousin to a hospital for an x-ray (like one of our teachers did).  Eastern culture values the family and the community.  It’s all about doing things for your family and fulfilling your obligations towards them.  Through my time here, I’ve discovered I’m WAY more Western than Chinese.  I guess my education won in the war with my mom—the war of cultivating values in me. 

I do hold some Chinese values, but not very strongly.  I would schedule my obligations to my immediate family around my work schedule and sometimes, I’d just say, “you’re an adult.  Do it yourself.”  So many times I advocate individuals being responsible and independent.  Here, everyone helps each other out.  Frankly, I don’t always like to be helped though. I like doing things by myself.  I like running my own errands.  I like having independence.  I like doing everything myself because I know exactly what I want and I know exactly how I want things done.  Lol…. is this my perfectionist side coming out again?

I truly need the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, and the wisdom to discern between the two.  I don’t want to be ethnocentric and have the “West  is best” attitude.  I know as a volunteer here, I need to adapt to fit into the culture, but sometimes I just want to stand against the grain. 

Going back to “home,” I don’t feel like Vancouver is my home either.  I have very different values from the average person in Vancouver.  Of course, I love my scrumptious meal and I enjoy driving a car, but material goods is not what I am pursuing.  When I’m with some people, all they talk about is shopping or some new electronic gadget or this awesome restaurant they’ve discovered.  Of course, there’s nothing wrong with all of that, but that’s just not where my interest lies.  I am just as content eating multigrain bread with a slice of cheese and a big juicy apple as eating from a new restaurant.  Sometimes I’m with people and the conversation swirls around me, and I nod politely, pretending to be interested, but I’m totally out of cahoots with what’s new.  Perhaps that’s why I avoid large group situations and just meet up with people individually so we can talk about our commonalities and catch up personally.

When I was in Vancouver last fall, I listened a lot to the IHOP worship archives (cuz I have my favourite artists!)  Misty Edwards was singing this spontaneous song that just pierced my heart & I knew it was for me from God.  Parts of the song are as follows:

“You’ve always been a free spirit.  People say “will you ever settle down?”  Your whole life, you’ve been a pilgrim, from one place to another…. You’ve always been a pilgrim, like a stranger in the land, always a pilgrim without a homeland…. You have been faithful, so faithful even when others cannot see, and though there have been trials, many, many trials, you’ve been faithful to me.  You didn’t let the opinion of man pull you to the right or the left.”

The whole concept about being a stranger in a foreign land is something God gave me repeatedly through Abraham’s story in Hebrews 11.  The interesting thing is that after I heard this song, in church they sang a song based on Hebrews 11 and then my personal devotions happened to be on Hebrews 11.  I was reading 6 chapters a day and I was on Hebrews at that time.  As one of my friends say, there are no coincidences with God, only God incidents.  So it all comes down on how to balance my own uniqueness, my cultural background, and my education with the social environment I’m in.  How do I be a stranger in a foreign land and respect the land’s cultures and traditions while at the same time standing up for what’s right?  And what does “right” mean?  According to whose standards?  I’m still in the process of figuring out answers and I may never arrive at the destination.

Giving ≠ Higher Living Standards

A few days ago, I went with our pastors to a retreat home in Goa to have a time of learning and relaxation.  At the retreat home, I went into the bathroom and just filled a bucket.  I marvelled at the fact that I could fill a bucket for my shower directly inside the bathroom & I didn’t have to carry it from a water tank outside.  In the middle of my bucket-and-pail shower, I turn the shower head’s knob and to my surprise, a constant stream of water flows out.  I have been so used to showering with pail and bucket, and no working shower head for the past 5 months that I didn’t even SEE the shower head until halfway through my shower.  The next morning, I walked into the bathroom and filled a bucket.  I only remembered the working shower head after my shower.

This experience got me reflecting on the challenges of bringing higher living standards to underprivileged individuals.  When I was living in the outskirts of Bangalore for my DTS, my friends and I became quite close to some neighbouring kids that live in poverty.  We had fun with them, took them to Sunday School, treated them to snacks, and met some of their needs.  They had no underwear and slippers.  A few days after we bought it for them, we asked where their slippers were, as we saw them running around barefooted.  They had left their slippers at home because they weren’t used to wearing them.  The rest of the 2 months my friends and I were there, they only wore the slippers for special occasions when we went to town.  They also didn’t always wear their underwear & lost them 1 by 1.  Apparently the 4-year-old boy would throw his underwear over the fence.

I’ve seen a group of boys at a children’s home blessed with a tiled floor.  They had a concrete floor before.  What’s sad was that after some time, their white tiled floor became dirty.  They swept it every day, but a lot of the dust and garbage was swept into the corner of the room.  Apparently, this is common.  I’ve seen dirty corners in a lot of homes.

Out of our concern for children who lack nutritious meals, my friends and I have cooked meals with lots of fibre and vegetables.  The kids looked at the big chunks of vegetables & wondered what they were.  Seriously.  They didn’t even recognize the vegetables on their plates.  They were used to vegetables cut into tiny pieces and cooked so long in spices that the individual pieces were indistinguishable and the colour of the vegetables took on the colour of the sauce.  While they gingerly chewed the vegetables, their faces registered shock and then disgust.  How do you introduce a fibrous and nutritious diet to people who are used to eating mounds of white rice to satiate their hunger?  How do you begin to teach them to savour a healthy serving of crunchy vegetables when they’re used to 2 bites of soft vegetable—sometimes even put through the blender—for each meal?

A sad insight I have gained is that you can give people the best facilities and various gifts to raise their living standards, but sometimes it’s done in vain.  What they need simultaneously is someone to live with them and teach them how to use and maintain the facilities as well as the gifted items.  Raising the living standards of those who are underprivileged or uneducated is not as simple as giving a few hundred dollars or building a children’s home.  It’s not as simple as cooking a balanced meal for the malnourished.  It takes unconditional love, unlimited patience, and constant education.  It takes diligent surveillance and a healthy dose of nagging. 

“Where are your chapels (sandals)?  You need to go and get them from the back porch now.”

“Come on, I know you don’t like beans, but you can’t eat all the rice with sauce and leave the vegetables on your plate.”

“Don’t put your wet towel back on the shelf even if it’s folded nicely!  Hang it outside if it’s sunny and inside the laundry room if it’s not.”

“Stop!  This scrub is used for the shower floor, and that one for the toilet.  If you use 1 scrub for everything there’ll be cross contamination. (like they know what that means.  I usually just say “chi chi” to indicate that it’s dirty)”

“Who swept the room?  How come all the dirt and candy wrappers got swept onto the back veranda?  And how come the corner is so dusty?”

“No, don’t dump the pants you peed in into the laundry basket.  Put it onto the back veranda so we can wash it.”

I know there are common frustrations of mothers, but the challenge increases exponentially when you have 17 children as well as a huge language barrier between you and them.  What makes it more fun is no running water and fantastic inventions like vacuum cleaners and washing machines.  Yes, there is still value in gifts to raise one’s living standards.  At the same time, acquiring a vacuum cleaner and a washing machine will require more teaching and training and close supervision.  In short, we need more staff!

There's so Much to be Grateful For

(yes, I stole the title from a Christmas song... I believe it's by Josh Groban)

Living here does something to you.  Something positive.  You begin to be thankful for things you never even noticed in the past.  Like water.  And sunshine.  And electricity.  And libraries.  Imagine the sweet bliss of being surrounded by mounds and mounds of books and comfy couches.

Every time a sector of society goes on strike, everyone ends up striking (I'm not sure if it's voluntary or not) and they block all major roads and highways.  Even the kids get a holiday from school when there's a strike for water and electricity.  The latest strike resulted in less power cuts in the town.  Yesterday I had a full day and night of electricity.  Almost.  We had almost 24h straight of electricity save 2 short 10min cuts.  I was almost motivated to bake except I had a ton of computer work waiting for me and not enough butter.  The town has increased hours of running water--from 6h to 10h.  Despite the convenience of more hours of running water, squabbles over water taps still break out in the neighbourhood.  Most homes don't have their own tap and the most they have is a storage tank.  When there's running water, there is usually a mad dash to fill up your tank.  High pitched voices at full volume over trespassing hoses that are hogging the running water ring out as early as 7am.  Still, we're lucky to have running water at all, as opposed to well water.  Well water is good, except at the school, it's pumped up into an open-air water tank and then pumped to another open-air water tank near the bathroom or near the kitchen.  What's fun is when we have to scoop out decomposed leaves and other organic matter (I'm not even going to begin to speculate what that may be...sometimes it's just better to turn a blind eye) that have coagulated into slimy long green strips that resemble seaweed.

Sunshine.  Without it, it takes 3-4 days to dry my clothes, and even so they feel damp.  It's not like I can hang the clothes in the house and crank up the heater either.  At the end, the clothes still feel damp and smell musty.  

Electricity is nice when your 3G internet is finally working, but your laptop's batteries are drained.  And it's good for plugging in liquid mosquito repellents when you sleep.  It's also nice when you're flushing your toilet with a bucket, but you need light to see if everything flushed down or not.

To my knowledge there are very few public libraries, and in the limited time I've spent in the cities, I haven't heard of any or seen any.  Books provided entertainment and fed my imagination from a young age.  A common summer activity for my family was to visit the library, and we had our own mini-library of Chinese storybooks and Disney picture books at home.  The children here don't even have 1 book for pleasure reading.  When I go home, I'm going to hit the library & stock up on fiction!  Then I'll pack my bags full of children's books and bring more stuff back for our reading time.  

You've Got to be Kidding Me!

1. I wake up one Sat morning at 7am.  The kids are supposed to "sleep in" till 7 or 7:30am, so I tiptoe to the outdoor bathrooms so I can have a few more min of peace and quiet until the chaos of being "mom" to 17 children.  The door to the boys room creaks open and Santosh, our youngest boy who just turned 6 comes out.  As I walk out of a stall and return the bucket to the water tank, I notice that one of the bathroom doors is wide open.  Santosh was standing there with a pile of softened yellowish brown poo on the bathroom floor.  

"Jesus!  Help me!"  I cry out.  This is when my love is tested.  Can I help him clean up?  I've changed plenty of diapers, but this is a whole new level of child care.  I take a coupla deep breaths and laugh out my disbelief at what I'm about to do.  I grab some newspaper and walk back to try to pick up the poop.  Darn. It won't drop into the toilet because it's too soft and gooey.  I end up cleaning up as much as  I can with newspapers and then using water to flush the rest down the drain.  I guess we're lucky we have a drain on our bathroom floor.  It's there because that part is supposed to be the shower.  I survived the test.  


2. The electrician wires the bathroom lights on the right to turned on by the left switch and the lights on the left to be turned on by the right switch.


3. One of our boys (grew up without a mom & herded livestock to help make a living) takes off his shirts by ripping it open.  Guess what happens to all the buttons?


4. 1:42am.  I wake up with a start from a dream in which I'm in a cave and I'm half immersed in water.  I feel this wet sensation on my legs and touch my sheets to find that they're all wet!  Half asleep, I gingerly feel the floor around my bed to discover it is dry.  Forcing my eyes open, I got on my feet to close my windows to the howling wind and torrential rain.  After I plop back into bed and try to sleep again, I hear this periodic "drip drip drip" and feel it on my sheets.  Groaning, I get out of bed again to turn on the lights.  And, to my amusement, I find a hole with the diameter of 1cm in the 6-month new--or shall I say, old?--ceiling and water leaking onto my bed.  Angling the bed doesn't help.  Sticking tape on the hole doesn't help.  Finally, I get a brainwave and open my umbrella.  I propped it between the AC and the ceiling fan to redirect the dripping rainwater onto the floor instead of the bed.  Leaving the children's home and coming back to the town for 2 days was supposed to be a peaceful break for me with no kids waking me up to accompany them to our outdoor bathroom.  Little did I know...

5. We have 2 brothers who have herded cows and sheep as well as washed clothes to support themselves because their dad was seriously ill and the mother deserted the family.  Although they're around 8 and 11, I often feel like I'm dealing with giant toddlers in the terrible threes.  

The younger one tears into the bedroom with his towel wrapped around him and his dirty and wet clothes in a heap on the outdoor bathroom floor.  Great.

"Akash!  Put your clothes in the basket!"  I call out.  Akash pretends he doesn't hear me and continues doing his thing in the room.  I quickly dump some lice shampoo into the hands of one waiting boy and stride into the room.  I grab Akash's hand and guide him to pick up his dirty clothes to dump in the laundry basket.  I then go to his room to help him find a set of clothes.  Reaching onto his shelf, I groan in disbelief.  Not again! All his clothes on his shelf are rolled into balls and 75% of the clothes is wet or damp.  Fantastic.  Akash and his brother always put washed clothes that are still damp on their shelf or they just dump their dirty clothes back.  It's a never-ending battle to keep their shelf organized and hygienic.


6. A private English-immersion high school cancels a day of school because of heavy rains.  Apparently the school was flooding.  


7. We receive our school account's bank statement for July (that means from the 1st to the 31st) on Sept 3rd.  A quick look at the stamp on the envelop tells us that they mailed it on Aug 28th from the capital of the state, which is only an 8h bus ride or 1.5 flight away.  How does one of the biggest banks in India take 28 days to mail a simple bank statement that has only 1 entry on it?

8. "Noooooo!  STOP!" I yell as Kiran (the older of the 2 brothers aforementioned) pees right onto the ground in front of 3 kids.  The kids were all walking a little ways away from the veranda to rinse their plates before dinner and 11-year-old Kiran decides that the grass is a better place place to take a leak than the bathroom in the back.  He's already had the consequence of cleaning toilets several times from doing open-air all over our campus in the past.  What's the next level of a consequence that suits the misdeed?


9. It's impossible to get gas cylinders quickly refilled here.  In Jangareddigudem, we ran out of gas yesterday.  It's been 24h and still we have no cooking gas.  All the firewood is wet from the incessant rain.  Luckily the pastor's aunt lives close by, so his mom just cooks there.  We'll be fortunate to get gas tomorrow.  The gas cylinder at the school was taken from the senior's home, and we applied for gas on Aug 3rd.  It's been over a month and we have yet to get gas to cook with.  Apparently our account with that cylinder got deactivated because we didn't purchase butane for a few months and it's taking over a month to reactive our account.  After it's reactivated in the headquarters in the state capital, Hyderabad, we still need to wait to actually get it filled.  

The cook has been cooking a lot outdoors despite the rain.  We keep our firewood stacked on the veranda to keep it dry.  We even had to buy gas twice on the black market out of desperation.  Apparently what some individuals do is that they purchase extra cylinders and wait until there's a shortage of butane or when people get frustrated with the gas company.  Then they hike up the price by 30% and resell it.  "Gas, gas, please come.  Don't wait another day." (sung to the tune of "rain, rain, go away")

Stars that Splatter the Sky

“Aka, eipenda? (Older sister, finished?)” the eight-year-old in front of me queries.

            “Almost done, chile (younger sister),” I reply.  I scrutinize the fine-toothed comb in my hands and find a tiny black blob.  Sticking my fingernails into the tight space between the teeth of the comb, I endeavour to get the blob out.  I dip the comb into the pail of water to clean it thoroughly.

            “Aka, me too!” another voice pipes up. 

            I look up to see the chaos before me.  Some children are waiting patiently; others are busy scooping water with pails out of the water tank into buckets (we have no running water) to prepare to wash their hair; still others are impatiently crowding around me demanding that they be next.

            A week after our 20 children arrived at the children’s home, I was doing the girls’ hair and I made a horrific discovery: lice.  I had never thought to check everyone’s hair when they first arrived.  I always assume that people don’t have lice, and not the opposite.  It never even occurred to me to check.  I should have known.  I’ve encounterd a lot of kids with lice and I’ve heard that most village kids have it. 

            Since then I’ve been washing the 5 girls’ hair with lice shampoo every day, every time I’m at the school.  It’s taken a lot of cajoling and persuasion to get them to cooperate.  They don’t see is as a big issue because they’re used to it.  I mean, everyone has it, why not jump on the bandwagon?  The girl who was the least reluctant to cooperate had 100 big fat adult lice combed out of her hair during the 1^st hour!  If her thick black hair is as dark as the midnight sky, then the nits in her hair are as numerous as the stars.  And I’m talking about the stars you can see when there’s an electricity cut and there’s absolutely no light pollution.

Just yesterday, boys approached me to get their hair combed.  I haven’t combed every boy’s hair yet, but out of the 6 heads I combed, 5 had lice.  Fantastic.  Now half the children at our children’s home have lice.  I might as well take on the position as the licerminator.  I’ve seen lice in every shape and size.  The baby ones are transparent, but they’re red if they just had their breakfast.  As they group up they turn gray and then eventually, black. 

            The problem is multifold.  First of all, the medicated shampoo isn’t strong enough and it’s intended to “stun the lice” so you can comb it out.  The first thing I’m going to do in Canada is to get some strong lice shampoo that actually kills the lice.  Another problem is that all the kids sleep on the floor on bamboo mats.  Because they sleep so close to each other, I get them to sleep in alternate directions.  However, some of them rotate 180 degrees, and by the time I wake them up the next morning, their heads are touching other kids’ heads.

            Not only does sleeping on the floor exacerbate the lice epidemic, but it also can be dangerous for the kids.  Last Friday, we spotted a 1m long snake near the bathrooms.  Later, we were playing a group clapping game with all the kids sitting in a circle on the veranda when suddenly one of the older boys jumped up in fear.  He had discovered a scorpion on the veranda!  Snakes, scorpions, and centipedes (whose bites are terribly painful, as I discovered in Feb) are common where the school is located.  We are the only settlement in a 2km radius, and we’re surrounded by forests and fields.  Beds.  A simple solution.  We trust that God will provide for them soon.

Apple Peels

From Aug 10^th to Aug 21^st we had the pleasure of hosting David, a volunteer from Taiwan.  After lunch one day, he peeled an apple to increase his fibre intake.  Siddu, a 7-year-old boy who is often homesick, approached David and pointed at the apple peels as if to ask for permission.  After David nodded his consent, Siddu took a peel and ate it with relish.  David felt sorry for Siddu, so he gave him a slice of apple and watched as Siddu gobbled it down.  Most children from impoverished families, including the kids who are currently residing at our children’s home, have diets of mainly rice.  Rice is not only their staple, but it is also the main foodstuff they eat to satiate their hunger. 

A typical meal consists of 2 bites of really salty and spicy vegetables and some kind of soupy dish.  When I first stayed with a low-income Indian family, I thought Indians just liked their food super salty and spicy.  I later realized that I was eating too many vegetables (compared to what they usually eat), so that’s why I found the food too salty. 

My heart always cries out when I see the children so happy to eat a banana.  Bananas are the cheapest fruit here, and you can get a dozen small ones for 40 cents.  However, if you look at the income of $50-100 of a typical lower-class family, 40 cents is a lot.  If a father of a single-parent family or a widow makes only $50/month, it means they’re surviving on $1/day for food.  And that’s for like 3-4 people.  Things like fruit, eggs, and meat are considered as luxury items consumed on special occasions.

My heart also aches when kids tell me their favourite food.  Most kids back home in Canada might say McDonalds or ice-cream, but at least 4 out of 20 of the kids at our children’s home said eggs.  Can you imagine?  Back home, we always have eggs in the fridge and more often than not, I choose not to eat eggs.  Here, for families living below the poverty line, eggs are a precious commodity.  In March, a dozen eggs were 85 cents.  Even then, many families cannot afford to give their children eggs every day.  Now, in Aug, eggs have inflated to $1.20/dozen.  Absolutely unaffordable.  As around the world, inflation is hitting the poor the hardest. 

I’ve lived here so long that I’m used to eating soupy rice.  The other day, I had the luxury of eating some boiled spinach, and I found that I wasn’t used to chewing the fibrous food.  I usually can afford to buy some fruit for myself, but I always feel guilty when I have to hide to eat fruit because I can’t afford to buy it for everyone.  Financial support is good, but we’re praying now that our micro-businesses can start up.  For starters, we want to purchase 15 buffalos so they can provide milk for our kids, and we can sell the rest of the milk to dairy manufacturing companies.  We don’t know how to procure the capital for our micro-business ideas, but our eyes are on Him, the author and perfecter of our faith.