Thursday, February 14, 2008

Travels in India, part 4

Calcutta/Kolkata

Our  hired drive Singh took us at 10 AM to Mother Teresa's home where the Sisters of Charity  live, and where she is buried in a simple marble tomb about 3 ft. high. On the top of the tomb was a simple dedication to her life and a few candles. All appropriate to what she'd have accepted (though more than she'd have approved I am sure.) I couldn't help but think how good it was that the Vatican didn't  somehow manage to entomb her in Rome. How different her final resting place would have been. God called Mother Teresa to India and it is here she wanted to stay. 

A few Indians came to pray quietly beside her tomb. Cameras are allowed only in this room, and out in the  patio  one is allowed to take a photo of a simple bronze statue of her, which had  not even one candle or flower beside it. I was impressed by the restraint at this great woman's tomb as practiced by this order and by the local diocese. 

About 20 minutes after we'd been sitting on a simple wooden bench looking the nuns came in, about 30 of them novitiates, mostly in plain white saris, about six in the white and blue of the confirmed order members.  They began to sing in English to Jesus, the sweetest chorus of voices I've heard in a while. Since so many are young in their 20's, you can imagine the beautiful sound.

We then went on to the red light district  of Kalighat, where Amistad has been working with New Light, a Calcutta NGO founded and led by Urmi Basu. Urmi is one of the planet's more amazing women I have met.

As we passed through the terrace we came into New Light, Urmi Basu's shelter for children of sex workers in the red light district (Kalighat) of Kolkata. This program was initially, and continues to be helped by Shadhika of Palo Alto, California. Amistad began to assist New Light in 2005.  In 2006-7, Worthington, Ohio, SDA church, and Walla Walla University's Amnesty International chapter  joined in our efforts.  We especially thank  Loren Seibold, Mrs. Hezeibah Kore, Hope for Humanity, Rachel Davies, Kathleen Erwin, Janelle Walikonis and their colleagues.

Coming up those dark stairways, which ascended from an alley of  desperation and depravity  into New Light shelter/clinic/school we knew that the name was well chosen. 

 L-shaped New Light is about 1,000 sq ft..  The first room is about 15X by 30, and is a combination medical clinic, play area, napping for the children,  dining room, dishwashing, pharmacy, business office, and in the evening classrooms for tutoring about 50-75 kids. These are children of sex workers who come to the shelter during the evening hours when their mothers are working. Before New Light was born in 2001, the children either played in the alleys or slept under the pallets where their mothers were entertaining clients. Some of the children come for breakfast, others spend the middle of the day there playing. They also nap there and receive a mid day meal. 

New Light  was just pulsing with life this noon, but nothing compared to the activity during the late evening. In the evening the students bring their books to study and be tutored by several teachers hired to help the kids.

This morning, on one side of the room the New Light physician was counseling with two prostitutes. The sex workers are given free medical care for TB, STD, and AIDS, and more. I don't know what happens when they are need to be put into a hospital. We did meet a women who either tried to burn herself to death (or her husband tried to burn her, Urmi hasn't figured out the story yet) and Urmi did rescue her from the public hospital where she was laying on a bare sheet-less bed, with no pain medicine except one analgesic given 12 hours before, her burns already infected. Urmi got her to a private 'nursing home"...what Americans would call a private clinic. The woman was doing well when we met her when she came to see her little girl at New Light.

When we visited the Dalit New Light later same day, about 8 pm, literacy classes for the sex workers were over for the evening. These two programs are funded by Worthington SDA church through Hope for Humanity. Three women of the 30-35 women, who are taking literacy classes were still there that evening.  One I spoke to is happy because she  is learning English. Another  was proud to say she is learning to read and write Bengali.  Urmi's brother and co-director, Arnab,  told us another valuable lesson they are learning is to show up at class on on time, a a new  concept to the women. This small act of responsibilty is a new valuable tool for their lives if they are able to seek another type of employment such as a housemaid etc. They also learn to read bus schedules, and write their name. 

Arnab showed us the computer architectural renderings done by an architect in Toledo, Spain who has been volunteering at New Light. He and other Spanish groups are helping New Light and recently purchased land outside of Calcutta ($40,000 USD), Next they will  build a clinic/hospice for sex workers, family members with AIDS. 

Since the women are paid less for their services if they demand that their customers wear a condom, there is little incentive for them to demand use of a condom. Still, New Light provides 6,000 condoms per month to the women, so some are insisting that their customers use them. Yes, the AIDS rate is high among the women.

Urmi came bustling in to the room, her red glasses framing her big sparking black eyes, salt and pepper hair, red scarf, worn so gracefully, an art that seems to be in the genes for French and Indian women.  We had a happy reunion before we set out for Soma Home which is a home for 30 girls, daughters of sex workers. Amistad gave New Light the funds in 2005 to open this home. It is now sponsored by a Spanish foundation, Meridional,  colleagues to whom we give enormous gratitude. 

Urmi deliberately chose a far away neighborhood across Calcutta so the Soma Home girls would not be able to easily return to their former friends and contacts. She also wants the girls to live in an area  where a healthy life in the norm. Their mothers are allowed and encouraged to visit the girls but they must come to to the girls' new home. The mothers were all courageous to let their daughters go to Soma because they had been of potential economic value to the mothers. Often the girls in the Kalighat  follow their mothers into prostitution. 

Soma   Home is located in a nice (by Calcutta standards) neighborhood. The homes are all 3-4 stories high. Lawyers, high tech,  accountants, merchants etc. live here. A school bus comes each morning to deliver them to 2-3 schools they attend (depending on age and grade level.) 

As soon as some of the girls saw us out the window about a dozen came running to greet us. The youngest girls came running first, and we were soon surrounded by about 15 girls from ages 6-12. Most of the older girls were doing their homework, tutoring the younger girls, or were themselves being tutored by professional teachers. 

In India the educational system is so lacking that everyone who possibly can hires teachers to come to their homes after school to tutor their children. The Soma Home girls are no exception. They have access to all that middle class girls have, including dance and music. One girl is studying boxing! On the first floor is a computer lab. Their computer lessons includes all the basics for an entry level job that requires computer skills.

We passed one room where a psychologist was counseling with two teen girls, another service provided the girls. Soma's trained psychologist who is helping some of the girls work through complicated issues of their lives.

As we spoke with these graceful, open, smiling, friendly, pure-eyed, sweet young ladies and children, it was actually hard to imagine that may of them had, only months before, been living in the streets, witness to the harshest realities thrown at the unlucky. At least one of the girls we heard about had already been 'sold out', or raped.  Now this young girl, who suffers from depression but is receiving help at Soma,  has a life of hope.  I wish that every  donor could have been there with us to meet  these girls, to know how very directly their gifts are literally helping to  transform these girls' lives.

Urmi hopes to  offer variety of careers to these girls, from computation, flower shop, airline attendant, etc. These girls are from mothers who are not part of a caste, therefore will not be able to provide a dowry to a potential groom's family. Therefore they are mostly unmarriagable by Indian standards. They must all have a career in order to survive. The oldest girl is 18 so the issue is urgent.

In 2005, I had asked Urmi what her dream was for the little children of New Light Shelter. She described for me how she wanted to create a home for the girl daughters of the sex workers.  We listened to her dream and within several months, thanks to Amistad donors, Some Home was a reality, and there I was looking at the results!  Now Urmi has another dream....she wants to create half way house for the older girls of Soma Home. 

Urmi, in her rapid fire (amazingly American) English  shared her new dream for these girls....

"This home would work as a half way shelter for graduating girls from Soma Home and also for other young women who have no safe shelter in this city to receive any training or further education to have a career that would allow them to have an independent life. The main idea is to assist them in getting education and training . If during the course of training they are able to earn some money they would contribute towards their upkeep. We have also thought about a name for the home taken from a collection of poems by Tagore ...Sonar Tori ..meaning the Golden Boat which signifies a journey from pain and suffering to the golden twilight of hope and future."

Hopefully, Amistad will help her be able to create this new and needed half way home for these lovely girls I was meeting. 

Climbing to the roof top Soma Home, we saw  what will soon become a new dining area and   kitchen of about 10X 10,  the cook was preparing a nice lunch for  the girls in a closet sized kitchen.

The Some Home housemother, who is about 40, and a mother herself, was up and down the stairs, gracious, friendly, schoolmarmish in glasses,  looking carefully and watchfully at the girls.

Urmi hopes to open a shelter just like Soma Home equivalent for the sons of the sex workers.    Sooner or later,  order to survive,  most of the boys emulate the men in the streets, which means becoming a combination pimp/alcohol-drug dealer and thief. 

We met many of these boys later that evening, studying hard at the shelter during the evening tutoring session, still dressed in their school uniforms. They are clean, well groomed, smiling, open, non-hostile, respectful boys, eager to learn. A shelter for the boys is possibly more important that Soma Home for girls. Uneducated and unemployed males have the potential for causing more social damage through anti-social behavior than the girls (my opinion only.)  When the boys no longer have the secure arms of New Light around them, they will be prey to the depravity around them and can easily descend into the hell of their mothers' lives. 

Nearly every prostitute we saw on the street was under the influence of a chemical, drug or alcohol. She is expected to provide alcohol to her client. Being drunk is the only way she can force herself to entertain 5-10 clients a night, receiving 30-50 rupees per client (75 cents to $1.25) (depending on her age and beauty). Many of the women are Nepalese by birth, either trafficked or somehow ended up here. Nepalese girls are stolen or sold to be house maids by their parents. These Nepalese prostitutes are sought by Nepali immigrant workers and young Indian men who prefer Nepalese beauty to Indian women's beauty. 

After Melanie and I  visited  Soma Home we returned to the Kalighat district as the sun was setting. We then visited the shelter for Dalit (untouchable caste)  children, also located next to a Hindu temple complex. Walking from our car up through a passage way lined by various styles of bas relief and painted Hindu art,  the passage opened into an open paved courtyard of about 150X150 ft. On the left was a temple facade, to the right bigger Hindu temple.This was the Hindu  Keoratala burning ghat..a Hindu crematorium where dead bodies are burnt on wood pyres. All the people who work there are traditionally of the untouchable caste ..who are denied all opportunities of main streaming. 

Straight ahead was an ornate gate, leading out to a polluted river just ahead feet away from the temple. About 20 ft from this gate was the New Light Dalit evening shelter for children and literacy program for adult women.

We walked straight ahead to a building alongside a filthy  river toward the shelter.   During monsoon season the river  floods the entire neighborhood of Kalighat during monsoon, flooding the streets, alleys, and homes to a depth of 2-3 feet twice a day. 

Arnab told us they must enter and leave New Light only when the enter and recedes, according to the tides. They have to time their activities accordingly to the tides.  I'd have to have thick fishing boots before I'd walk those streets during monsoon.    If you can, imagine the sewers in your town joining a large creek and then flooding your home two times a day for a few weeks.  Add to that cocktail some mosquitoes, malaria, typhoid and cholera. Consider that no one has protective shoes or boots, only flipflops or plastic shoes. Imagine if you happened to have to a small cut on your foot or leg? 

Arriving at New Light Dalit shelter about 6Pm about 30 children began to arrive, settling themselves quietly on the woven floor mats.  On the right side were tables serving as storage for teaching materials, dinner trays etc. After the children does lessons with their teacher,  a big evening meal is served.

We noticed one skinny little sad looking girl about 8, short haired,  dressed in a dirty drab olive sweater. Urmi mentioned this child's mother had either tried to commit suicide or was set afire by her husband in January '08.  The child left the room about 6:30 and I wondered where she'd gone by herself (it was quite dark by then). In about 15 minutes a woman in a yellow sari appeared at the doorway with the little girl coming in just  ahead of her. The child plopped back down on the floor with a big smile on her face.  Her mommy had come to school!  What a change on this child's face to have her mother there. It was impossible to imagine painful experiences this child and her  mother had gone through since January. I could see the  hands of this mother, Deepa Sikdar, were still bandaged and there was extensive scarring elsewhere on her body. It is not uncommon for men to burn their wives in north India, or for women to commit suicide by burning or hanging. 

Over to the right was a pretty girl of twelve with enormous 'diamonds" in her ears smiling while working on her homework assignment. Urmi mentioned she'd love to bring this child,  Puja Sardarto, to Soma Home. But the girl lives with  her grandmother and is the only help her grandmother has and therefore won't let her go to Soma Home.  Once she finishes grades school her grandmother wants her to work. ( I didn't ask what type of work.). This is the reality. And every one of the 30-40 children sitting before us has an an equal story of pathos.

After we'd spent a while at this shelter of hope and love, we returned to the larger New Light shelter where  about 70 children were studying with the teachers Urmi hires for evening tutoring. The meal would be served later.  Serving food in at schools run by charity is common. If the charities don't  provide food, the parents often won't send the children. It makes more economic sense to put the children to work.  

The next day Melanie and I  flew from Calcutta to Delhi, then after nearly 4 hours in security lines (there was a terrorist threat in Delhi that day necessitating multiple baggage and document and person search) we left on an 19 hour flight  (plus a 3 hour stop in Chicago) to California. Stepping from the airport luggage area into the San Jose afternoon, I never realized before how sweetly the air smells in the Bay Area.  

"India--monsoon and marigold, dung and dust, colors and corpses, smoke and ash, snow and sand---is a cruel, unrelenting place of ineffable sweetness. Much like life itself." quote from Traveler's' Tales India

Saturday, February 9, 2008

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. 

Friday, February 8, 2008

Travels in India, part 2

Visiting the Bangladeshi Refugee Community in Varanasi

Later that day we visited a slum community (which are called jhuggis) of Bangladeshi refugees (The Bangladesh government  mowed down some poor communities and many fled to India. Bangladesh is only hours from Varanasi by train, sharing a border with India.  India has, to some small degree, absorbed these hapless nomads (at least temporarily)  several miles away in Varanasi, 19 of whose children are now  students at BSS. Their housing was primitive. I saw only one one water spigot for the entire community. Women were bathing, fully clothed, washing through and under their saris as discreetly as a person could with dozens of people all around. 

(Jumping ahead while I am writing about how women bathe and launder: In Kolkata the women have to get up in the middle of the night to bathe at the spigots. There the cultural norms is that no one is supposed to view the women bathing even though they do wear  their saris while bathing. The men, on the other hand, strip down to their shorts and bath on the dirty sidewalks, which the women are pounding the family's  laundry on the same dirty betel nut stained, cigarette butt-strewn,  urine encrusted sidewalks. They have to do the laundry where the water spigots are located. From time to time I'd see a hand pump for water. It is clear that almost no one in India we saw has running water in their homes. 

Electricity, when anyone has it, is sent through a dangerous snaky mess of illegal wires. We saw the results of dangerous community electrification later that day at Buddhas' Smile School. 

BSS student, Amit Kumar, 12, was one of five children standing under electrical lines when the lines collapsed onto them. Three children were electrocuted to death, Amit and another child survived the electrocution. Amit was badly burned on his leg, arm and neck.  His left leg is in need of a scar release surgery and hopefully  Rajan can find a surgeon to do this surgery  with Amistad's help.  Amit's biggest sorrow is that he can't stand for prayers with the other boys. 

A problem arose we were leaving the Bahgladeshi refugee community. A local Indian community politician came over to the van and lit into Rajan for encouraging the Bangladeshi children to come to her free  Buddha's Smile school. 

The local Indians, who let the (illegal immigrant) Bangladeshi squat in their neighborhood do so because the Bangladeshi  families are doing the worst of the worst jobs, the ones that even poor Indians don't want to do. And they do NOT want the Bangladeshis to learn to read and write. 

Most of Rajan's students must work before or after school, or both. Some of Rajan's  little Bangladeshi students scour their area of Varanasi picking up garbage before dawn in the morning and again after school, selling the recyclable materials (plastic, cardboard, cans) for 9 cents American per pound, (5 rupees per kilo). Rajan's Bangladeshi students also make pies from cow dung,  baking them in the sun and then carefully store them in round piles for sale as cooking fire fuel. 

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Travels in India, part 1


2-14-08
Varanasi, India/ visiting Buddha's Smile School, an Amistad International project

Traveling to India with Amistad board member, Melanie Boyd, February, we landed in Delh flying to our first project visitation in  the northern city of Varanasi, one of the holiest destinations for Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims. 

Varanasi (which used to be called Benares, and before that, Kashi) is over 3,000 years old.   Some devout Hindus hope to die here or at least have their ashes scattered in the Ganges river flowing through to the Bengal Bay believing  doing so ensures moksha--instant union with the Universal Soul and thus freedom from reincarnation.

Varanasi is also one of India's most fervently politically and religiously conservative cities, and one of the poorest. It is in the state of Uttar Pradesh, considered India's poorest region. 

Ten minutes north of Varanasi is Sarnath, one of the world's most sacred sights for Buddhist pilgrims. It was here that Siddhartha Gatama (circa 563 BC to 483 BC), founder of Buddhism, gave his first sermon to his new diciples, a sermon on how to live a good life. (This is the era of Jeremiah the prophet when the Jews were in captivity in Babalonia.) 

Buddha's Smile School (BSS) is located in Sarnath near the spot where Buddah delivered this sermon. The school was named Buddha's Smile School, not because it teaches Buddhism, but because it is in proximity to this historical site. Amistad International has been the primary sponsor of this school since 2004 when BSS had only 60 students. 239 now attend this free school for the poorest of the poor children in the area.

Officially, India guarantees all children 6-14 will be able to attend school. This program is called Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Yet the dropout rate is about 53%. The reasons for this are many: lack of teachers, poor school facilities many lack toilets and running water), lack of desks and chairs, books, play equipment, or any sort of enrichment. India has an extremely high rate of teacher absenteeism. There is also a strong component of child labor; many parents require their children to supplement the family income. 

It took us about 12 hours in Varanasi to wonder where the women were. We saw almost none in the streets.   I asked  locals who seemed not to even understand  my question asking, "where are the women?." This was not a question they seemed to understand.  It turns out the men buy the groceries etc. so the women  have no need to go outside the home. The women are, essentially, in  purdah, or seclusion in their hovels, and dingy cramped apartments. There were one or two working at the desk in the hotel, but no women were hotel maids, waitresses, or selling in retail shops.  

Just as soon as our taxi drove us along the madness of the highway from the airport to Varanasi, John Holman (a longtime wonderful BSS volunteer from Australia) and  BSS volunteer Dana Kornberg, (who works at the Clinton Foundation in Delhi), took us to the Ghats , steep stone and concrete steps which lead from town steeply down to the Ganges river. Along the ghats are many  Hindu temples and guest houses, destination for the dying, pilgrims and tourists. The Ganges ghats are where people come to bathe, wash their clothing, and bring their dead to burn. 


The Ganges is quite low and in fact there were Save the River demonstrations that week. During monsoon season  it can rise 40-50 ft up the steep ghats and flooding the city.  India is making new dams along the Ganges, and of course Varanasi grows with more citizens, so they have a water shortage in non-monsoon seasons. The fate of a dying Ganges was the cover story on a recent National Geographic.

We hired a row boat man to take us at sunset to the ghat where they perform Puja at sunset.  At sunset, with the lights, and the flames, and song, it was all dramatic from vantage point of being on Mother Ganges.  At sunset you could see bodies wrapped in white, waiting to be burned. 

Early the next morning we went to Rajan Kaur's  Buddha's Smile school, first having a pancake breakfast served by Rajan's husband, Sukdev, who owns the Sarnath cafe, a clean (and delicious) dining destination for international students at the Buddhist Institute across the street.  At 8:30 we jumped into the the new school van (recently purchased by Geir Davidson and his Norwegian community), a brand new beautiful white Japanese van that would normally seat 12 adults. We can never thank Geir and his community enough for this gift. The students not coming in the van arrive in open auto rickshaws, and they are stuffed to the rafters in these tiny rickety vehicles.

We had the great fun of traveling that morning in the new school 'bus' van to pick up students. Very exciting for us and even more so for the children.  The kids were  thrilled  to have visitors showing up in their new school van.

We were able to meet some of the parents of the students who live in what one may think of as provisional housing. Perched right on the roadside, the homes are only lean-to's made of grass, plastic sheeting, rock, mud, and sit only feet from cars and auto rickshaws, carts and motorcycles whizzing by. Their cooking, bathing, all of life is done looking at the wheels of cars, tailpipes of buses, and bicycle rickshaw drivers' feet. The air they breath is vile.

One forward-thinking family had placed their home by a public water spigot where a large, 10X20 pool had formed, algae growing over it. No doubt a mosquito breeding pond also. This is the community's  all-purpose watering spigot for cooking, drinking and bathing, and washing clothing. The women were hanging clothes  to dry on the brick "tree saving" enclosures wrapped around saplings, part of a Varanasi, Delhi and Kolkata 'green India program" in which a huge public works program has planted millions of trees hoping to clean India's  air. The brick enclosures are needed to protect the saplings from the cows roaming everywhere one can imagine.

Three young teen girls, about 13, came over to us to shyly greet us. They don't go to Rajan's school but are either family or live near the children that do come to Buddha's Smile School. The girls were dressed in raggedy clothing and were pretty dusty looking. Rajan told me these girls are at very serious risk for prostitution. They, along with other young girls from Rajan's school, work at weddings, carrying candles atop their heads for 8-10 hours, all evening into the early AM, for only a few cents pay. The girls are  at risk for attack by predatory drunk male wedding attendees, of great concern to BSS founder/teacher, Rajan.

Rajan would like to be able to provide a training for these and other young girls in handcraft, or sewing, or other practical skill so that they don't have to work at the weddings or even worse alternatives.

Across from the spigot, there was one especially pathetic little thatch falling down lean to, about 4X5 ft in size. Rajan told me that one of her young students had lived there until the previous week when her grandmother, with whom she lived in the shack, had died. Some relative had taken the girl away to a family member in the countryside. I asked what happened to the grandmother after she died, did anyone provide the firewood for her to be burned? Rajan told me that "No, her body, like the other poor, was just dumped into the Ganges without burning." When people don't have the $2.50 USD for the wood necessary for the fire, they must give their loved one to the river. 

School started a little late that day because our presence had disrupted the normal schedule. BSS' physical layout is difficult to describe. It is a 2.5 storey warren of unplastered brick rooms, built one after another when cash has been available. Rajan and Sukdev have personally sacrificed their meager cafe earnings to do some of the building, and donors have done the rest. 

The seven classrooms are long narrow three sided rooms, open to the air, windowless, cement floored, lit by one bulb. A blackboard is on the wall at one end. Most of the children sit on the floor (desks needed). A few pieces of student artwork adorn some of the walls. There are signs hung around the school inspiring the students with  virtues. In front of the two layers of classrooms is a small courtyard about 20X20.A gate to the street closes in front of this courtyard.  The courtyard is where the children pray together en masse in the morning, asking God to bless their work. At noon, the children return to the courtyard for their one meal of the day, a large balanced hot delicious meal, which has been sponsored by the Flora Family Foundation through Amistad International for this  past year.  As of March, 2008, the French NGO,  Arche de Dolanji,  is supplying the food and we thank them so much! For most of the students this is their only meal of the day. Because of this meal, most of the children are energetic and healthy, though a few  did seem in poor health. 

One boy, the eldest child in his family,  had tried to commit suicide the day before by swallowing pesticide. His unemployed parents, often out looking for work, are often not at home. The child's despondency that his parent could not feed the family overcame him. Rajan was able to take him to the hospital in time to save his life.  He wrote a letter to  his parents before taking the poison,  begging them not to burn his school papers or school books (when they would burn his body.) Gishan's final words were "God is satisfied with my work. Don't burn my school papers."  This child, like her other students, considers school their only place of peace and happiness in their lives. 

This boy had no last name when he came to school. Rajan gave him the last name Kumar just as she does the many other students who have no last names.