Travels in India, part 3

Visiting Varanasi's Rajghat Leper Community.

Our visit to to Rajghat, a community set aside for families with leprosy, was deeply experience. Twenty of their children attend BSS and the families would like to send many more to school if there were room at BSS. There is not room for more.

We parked the school van in vicinity of the Rajghat train station.  The rails run alongside the leper colony.  We walked about 200 ft. over a dirt rough area  downhill to a long paved narrow street,  about 15 ft wide. On  each side were small one room homes, opening to the street. The homes had no doors or windows.   The families have public lives.

I was first of all impressed by the cleanliness of the Rajghat street. It wasn't long before I felt the deep sense of caring the families have for one another, and especially the joy and pride they have in their children. Grandfathers without hands carried their grandchildren with pride and tenderness. Young mothers brought their children to be photographed. Many of the teenagers asked me to take their pictures. 

These kids were as cool as teens are everywhere, dressed in jeans and t-shirts. One group of boys brought their bike to be included in the photo.

At Rajghat leper colony, about 50% of the adults and 15% of the children have leprosy (Hansen's disease) caused by the Mycobacterium leprae. Though children are more susceptible than adults to contracting the disease, this  is not a highly contagious disease and those in treatment are almost not at all infectious.  This disease take a very long time of continual physical contact to develop. 

The adults and children, elders, came pouring from their homes, crowding around Rajan, They are crazy about her. She is probably  the only human being from the outside world who truly loves them. BSS is providing a free education for 20 of their children, but they begged her to take in more (as did the Bangladeshi families in the other neighborhood.) When I heard the parents' desperation for their children to be educated I could understand why Rajan opened BSS to twenty more students. If only we could wave a magic wand (over the world's  millionaires and billionaires?) and build a larger school on a nice big piece of land! If only the Amistad donors who've helped BSS could have been standing there with me, they've have been covered with goose bumps of happiness seeing what hope an elementary education brings to these, the most humbled of humanity. 

I asked Rajan how the families earn money for food and clothing. She told me some are beggars.  Without hands and or feet, what manual labor could they do? They did not ask us for money. They treated us as honored guests, and as equals, with great dignity. 

One moment I won't forget  was seeing a handsome young man of about 25 years, a resident of the leper colony,  who is the village medic. He set himself up in one of the small rooms along the street and tenderly changed the bandages of the hands and feet of those who were in need of this service. This was a work of extreme humility and my heart was touched to the core. 

That same day Raj and her teachers handed out the large quantity of new, or like new clothing (underwear, trousers, jackets and medical supplies)  which Melanie had brought from her prayer group in West Los Angeles. The teachers put the clothing on right over the childrens' uniforms (think camisoles, and undershirts over red checked uniforms) The kids were just beside themselves with happiness. I don't think that every single child got a piece of clothing but those that didn't seemed to be pretty excited anyway just to be a part of this event. We surely do thank Melanie's prayer group. 

Rajan has a most pressing need (but no space) to open a small hostel for some of her students who live in situations of extreme violence or neglect. Some of her students are at risk for their parents selling them either outright for money or or as prostitutes. Many of the children I saw rarely, if ever,  take a real bath. Consequently skin infections are common

Amistad will be providing funds  for Rajan to build two more classrooms. The building will begin in spring. Amistad provided funds for the digging of a well, and the water began to flow (though more like a cough, drilling wasn't completed) while we were there. The school soon will no longer be at the mercy of the unreliable city water system.

What Rajan and Sukdev are accomplishing on a financial shoestring is nothing short of miraculous. Their monthly budget for educating nearly 240 students, including nine teachers' salaries, is  about $2,500 per month. (The daily meal is a separate cost and is being paid by foundation L' Arche De Dolanji of France, whom we thank deeply.)  

Our hearts go out to Ann Down, Donna and Larry  Peters and Dr. Sundeep Rathore in extreme gratitude for their faithful support which has been providing nearly all of the funds for BSS support. 

Leaving Varanasi a few days later  our airport driver pointed out a jeep coming from the opposite direction. It had an orange shrouded body lying atop a layer of grass or reeds,  atop the vehicle, the body covered with flowers. It was on its way to the burning ghat.

As we flew north 2 hours to Delhi (so that we could catch a plane to fly  two hours southeast to Kolkata) from the window of the plane we saw the Himalayan mountains stretching as far as our eyes could see in the horizon. Looking at a map later on, I think one of the many towering peaks we saw may have been Mt. Everest.