What a year!

Surprised by Joy, or Here's to One More Round

As many of my readership may have detected by now (drum roll, please): I am extending! That's right, folks, one more year in Curryland.

Here's why:

Thank you to Rising Star volunteer CJ, whom I like to think of as our photographer-in-residence, for this gorgeous picture (and also for those of my mom a few entries back).

More Wunderkinder

To respond to questions from the previous blog entry: yes, Joseph is an amazing boy. That's why he is one of five children we are hoping to send to an international youth conference in Connecticut this summer. Teenagers there will participate in athletic classes and workshops on peace.

Joseph's application essay (most of which is reproduced below) was so poignant that I wanted to share it. Someone asked me whether he composed it by himself. Joseph wrote it out by hand, with coaching on what to include. I adjusted the grammar.

We've been warned that it is nearly impossible to obtain passports for minors in India. We are determined to try anyway, so wish us luck!

And there have been a few hurdles even on our end, such as lost birth certificates, the fact that our children only have first names, and a student whose birth certificate bears the wrong name (apparently his confused grandmother misreported it)!

Joseph's name is actually Stalin. Communist sympathies run deep in southern India. But a previous director at Rising Star did not think that little Stalin should be going through life with such a name. So she changed it to Joseph. Fine, but none of this assuaged my befuddlement as to what I should write on the US application, since it required two names. "Joseph Stalin"? Will they think this is a joke?

Be that as it may. A remarkable feature of the kids' essays is that every one of the five wrote about how they want to draw on this experience to lift others. All of them included this on their own, without any prompting.

Here are a few more excerpts:

Gracy
[I can't find a picture anywhere and give up. Just take my word for it that she's a cute girl!]

"When I come back to India from this summit, I want to help the poor and leprosy affected people in southern India. I can teach my friends and family in my colony about how to take better care of their sores and how to make the life in the colony better. I know that coming to this event will make me a better person. I will learn things that will help me in college when I study to be an engineer."

Shankar

"I am from India. I have a lot of potential. It is my goal to be a positive leader to help my family and my country. My grandparents have leprosy and so my family has been very poor because they cannot get jobs. I want to show my country that the people who come from leprosy families can do great things."

Rajesh (above, in red): "When I was a younger child, I lived in Paranur with my grandparents. Paranur is a leprosy colony in southern India, and my grandparents have leprosy. Now I am staying at a boarding school, but I go to visit them on all of my school holidays. I help them by carrying water to their house, getting food and other things at the store and sweeping the floor. My Grandma and Grandpa cannot walk well so I walk for them."

Joseph

The leprosy colony I grew up in is called Kalvarinagar. In my family my father, grandmother and grandfather are affected by leprosy. In the colony the education is not good but at my new school I am getting good grades and learning English.

I love Life Dance and my dance master, Shaun Parry. Life Dance is a dance program for the thirteen best dancers in my school, and I am one of them. I have never missed the practice because it is not only about dance. It is also telling about our life and how to be a good leader and how to focus. If I am sad then when I dance I feel very happy. I never give up even when the work is very hard. I keep practicing until I do well. My Life Dance troupe performed at the Marriott Courtyard hotel in Chennai, India with David Archuleta. We did a dance about the leprosy people. When I think of them I feel very sad. I feel the pain that they have.

When I return to India I will remember what I learned in America and teach it to others. I will start to spread what I learned and I am going to help the leprosy patients by showing tenderness and giving medicines and money to them. I also want to dance together with the leprosy affected because then they will feel happy. This will be good for their health and give them energy.

My father has leprosy and he is missing his fingers. So it is difficult for him to eat. I help him by holding the spoon to his mouth. When I do this I feel happy because I am showing my love for him. I also wash my parents’ clothes because they have a lot of work in our hut. Sometimes I go to the shops and buy the rice and milk for them. If anyone gives me money, I save it for my parents. I do all of this to be a peacemaker. I want to learn more about peace and how I can help others to be peaceful.

Apologia

I've gathered through the grapevine that the previous blog entry seems insensitive, as if I were making fun of the children's poverty. Thanks for the feedback, and I'll do my best to provide an explanation.

By this point I feel that this is my home and that these are my kids. The holes in the shoes and socks are like a family joke. Like when your baby walks around with an inverted bowl on its head. You laugh and you take a picture to share with friends. You certainly aren't scoffing at the baby.

Our children are well taken care of. We are surrounded on every side by abject poverty, and the children in adjacent villages sometimes do not get enough food to eat. But our kids all have American sponsors whose donations provide for their clothing, food, and school materials. They all had new shoes and socks over a year ago; it's just that they've now been reduced to shreds.

An important point that I forgot to mention in the previous blog is that new shoes are on the way. We have received a donation that will enable us to purchase new shoes for the whole school (actually, we are switching to sandals next year, which won't necessitate wearing socks). I can see how the pictures would seem less humorous if that's all the kids are going to have.

Maybe it's also human nature to throw up one's hands and laugh when the situation is beyond control. We have tried to keep everyone clean and neat and presentable. But they're kids. A volunteer who was here briefly in the fall was horrified not only at how many children she was constantly catching in the act of lying or stealing, but that the rest of us volunteers just laughed when she mentioned it. After months of threatening and punishing and scolding oneself blue in the face, I guess you just start laughing.

Holier than thou

The children have been wearing the same shoes for over a year now. Why? Can anyone tell?

What especially cracks me up is when they have just as many holes in their socks as in their shoes. Then their toes are peeking out from both the socks and the shoes.

Each child only has one pair (and sometimes those are even lost) which they wear for all occasions. We request that they leave them behind (along with their underwear and toothbrushes) if they ever leave campus. They go barefoot. Otherwise, we never see them again!