Newsletters from our journey into the rural areas

By the time I left Vancouver, I had collected over $3000 and was it ever needed!  Below are excerpts from the newsletters sent to our donors/supporters/well wishers:

Week one began with our 25 or so welfare families who don't get any help from the govt, rather my community's Council tries to look after them but they are spread much too thin out here:

Newsletter 1:

Dear All,

One more journey begins with few more volunteers working with me. Nusri, Nazira and Asu. More help is a HELP.
When we arrived in the morning , we spent day organizing as our first meeting started at 4:00p pm.

This year Council had given us their Hall. All the families I sponsor were there. Change I saw in them was, life was hard, things are expensive and more and more asked for death as survival is difficult. Specially old people as onions , sugar and basic grocery is way too expensive.
We had started with 300 rs ($9), increased to 500 ($11) and last year it was 700 rs ($18).  It looks like we will have to increase this to 1200 rs ($28).
There are some remote success stories too, but few and far apart. It took us almost 4hrs. to talk to all. Some desperate cases we had to give money there and then.

First visit was at a home of a widow 75 yrs old who has a son 45 yrs old. Both his legs are paralyzed from down. He crawls and thus has developed sores on his bottom and now he will be hospitalized. They will do some skin grafting and will get 3 to5 yrs life. Their home is falling apart and rain has damaged their place. Chairman wants me to work with him to repair her place.

Second experience was indeed very sad. A home with kitchen not touched for a while as the lady of the house was lying in the bed since last five days. Room was tiny with a bed and a stool. Neighbour had brought some rice for her which looked like sitting there since morning. She had a surgery of her heart valve and there was no one to look after her.

Our gang came back to Karimabad area to visit Attar Apt. Our case of Roshan ben whose house got burned about six months back and she also suffered from a broken hand.  Daughter looked after her for a while and son in law did not want her.  She came back to Ahmedabaad and Council got her an apt.  when we visited her, she was sleeping on a mat on the floor with hardly anything to cover.  We made sure we got her all the furniture and paid her rent too.  we have added her to our welfare list.

Newsletter 2:

Dear All,

Our two hour journey to Maliya Hatina Hostel turned into a horrendous 4 hour roller coaster ride as the roads were totally washed away by heavy rains in the previous months.  The highlight of our visit was to witness the pouring of the second story slab in the new girls boarding building.  It will house 100 girls once its built, one quarter of it is built. 

We visited the school and our children, took photos and had meetings.  Nusri will be providing professional development to the teachers, they were quite excited and are looking forward to us visiting on the 30th of November.  On that day we will also be doing a study of 12 new welfare families in Maliya.

It was very sad to see many of the roofs leaking as the rain continues to pound Gujarat.  Earthquake has left a lot of damage to these buildings. 

As some of the dormitories are really soggy and damp, they are joining beds and lots of children are sleeping with 3 on one bed.

Although the return journey was not as bad, it still took us until midnight to get back.

Input from others:

Nazira:  What a heart breaking experience to see how the people live in such poverty.  The worst was the old lady with the son whose legs were paralyzed.  I have decided to sponsor this family and thus I will help to begin and monitor the Welfare Families Sponsor Program.

Ashraph:  This was the worst experience of my life, never having seen something like this before.  I wish I could help them more.

Nusri:  Even though it is my second time here, it wasn't any easier to see our own brothers and sisters in such hardship.  Razia's success stories such as meeting the widow who began her own snack business and no longer needs our help is inspiring us to continue.  Also, the new girls boarding wing at Maliya being built gives us hope to continue with this work and do even more.  While maintaining the Children's Sponsor Program, I will help Nazira to begin the Welfare Families Sponsor Program so that more such families can be helped especially in Ahmedabaad where their situation is utterly desolate. 

Newsletter #3:

While we were in Porbunder we visited Ranavav for 2 potential cases.  We ended up going further into Bhaud.  One thing we noticed is that most of the girls whose husbands died young or were divorced, they ended up back to their parents house with their young kids serving brother's family.  These are the women who are ready to give their children to us.  All they get is the worst room in the house and become house maids and babysitters of the brothers kids. 

As mentioned in newsletter 2, we once again visited Maliya Hatina and this time we found a better road than last time.  The teachers were very happy and all of them gave most of their afternoon for the professional development session by Nusri.  I had a meeting with the teachers and all the hostel staff, it was a pleasure meeting them all.

We also began our research project (mafatia apartments) for Barkat (another Canadian gentleman who does building projects out here).  To our surprise we found some real needy families, many with stinky buffaloes in the paddocks and tons of cow dung around as they were mostly farmers.  Lots of homes had sick people and mentally challenged people, one joint-family had 3 mentally challenged brothers and a blind mother.  Their 15 year old sister was a victim of poverty as she had to stay home and look after them all. This is the family that is begging us to build a washroom as it is difficult to take the brothers to the existing washroom which is far away and has stairs.

From there we left for Amrapuri as we had to visit an ultra poor family Dolani.  Father used to sell vegetables until he was 60% blind until 6 months ago when he became totally blind. There was hardly anything in their house to eat so they had to send away their 14 year old girl to live with their neighbors so that she could get a bed and a proper meal.  Mother goes out whole day to do any kind of labour work she gets.  They were also in debt as they were sending 3 of their children to the Maliya Hostel.  We helped them and have sponsored one of their children, the other two are being sponsored by others. 

Newsletter 4:

Dear All,

We left for Kutch via Rajkot, the parents at the Bhuj hostel were waiting for us to meet them.  We met a family in Kera on our way, I have been sponsoring his brother Akbarbhai, blindness runs in the family.  They had been standing on the road waiting for us for a while.  His brother is also blind now.  Him and his wife took us to their borrowed house.  He was literally begging for help.  We joined him in our welfare program  of 1000 Rupees per month which is about $25 per month. 

We proceeded to Bhuj hostel to meet with our 25 girls.  Karishma and Sonal needed a pair of shoes, and other such issues.  One of the medical issues was a young 14 year old had a lump in her breast.  Right now she is under medical attention.

Next morning we were at Mundra boys hostel, this hostel has always been needing things.  3 years back kids were running away and found at the bus stop.  At that time I decided things needed to be improved, especially their environment.  The washrooms were repaired, the building was painted, the study room was renovated, the kitchen was re-done, mosquito screens were replaced.  All the beddings and beds were also re-done.

 Last year, after visiting all the boys, they requested for a ceiling fan and refrigerator and cubby holes.  All the requests were granted.  This year we visited all the boys again, the only thing we need to improve as they are now getting fruit twice a week which is better than none the previous years.  We still need to improve their menu which I will be looking at once I get back.  Their printer was broken so we bought a new one.  the boys asked for a ping pong table.  I happened to ask the member what is their TV time as the other hostels have 1-2 hrs on the weekends.  He said its been a while the TV is broken, we will have to find a donor to get a TV for them, it will cost about $400.  They also said since the cubby holes are open, some "friendly creatures" are getting in.  So now it will cost about $1500 to have cupboards built for them.  As we were leaving, one of the boys wanted to ask for one more thing.  He hesitated as they had asked for enough things, I came back and asked the boy and it was a cricket bat worth $10 which we promptly agreed to. 

The saddest case was us interviewing a 9 year old boy who had just lost his mother.  After 24 hours of the funeral, father never woke up from his sleep, he died of shock.  Thus kids lost both parents within 48 hours, there are 3 other sisters.  We will be taking care of the boy and 2 sisters in Bhuj.  The older 17 year old, chose to look after them at their uncle's house.

This brings us to the end of our journey in Kutch/Bhuj.

Razia Nathani Suleman
President & CEO
Bayshore Inn and Waterton Glacier Suites
end of newsletters



Three of us volunteers and two more local women all checked into Navjiwan a naturopathic health centre to recover from our past heart wrenching weeks.  We are really being taken care of in terms of treatments to detoxify and getting a healthy diet everyday.  Will try to post some pics asap.  Thanks once again to all those who have encouraged me on this journey, Nusri.

It's amazing that I have now collected over $2,500 to take with me in donations.  One gentleman said he will donate if I can get a PayPal button on my blog, so now anyone can donate from anywhere in the world and even while I am in India!

Thank you! the donations are just pouring in!

I want to thank all our supporters and well wishers out there.  For those of you who cannot make donations with money, you good wishes are enabling so many others to come forth.  I have now collected $2000 to take with me and still have up to Nov 19 to do whatever else I can.  When a friend asked me if she could mail me a small donation, I shared this with her:

My son collected spare pennies (which ultimately became spare change when he got good at it)  from every single adult he met, he rolled them up and got to donate $20.  I took a photo of the parents to whom that $20 went to buy books and uniforms for their child, it was a tear jerker both ways.  Here is her reply, there are so many creative ways to raise funds....

I'll pop it in the mail. Yes it is true about every little bit adding up. I'm planning for a trip to Liberia (looks like it's happening, amazingly!) and it has been fun to see how people jump at the chance to contribute. There have been large contributions and smaller ones, and they are all beautiful. A friend works at a local community centre and said I can have all the "empties" from the centre each week :-).

more pictures

Our group of sponsored children the first year I visited them

Wow!  Even I would love to teach in one of these kindergarten classrooms!

This is the bathroom where the children used to live before going to live in the hostel :-(

This is their kitchen area in the homes of these children previous to being moved to the hostel

Above are pictures of the group of children we support, the beautiful classrooms they attend and the conditions they came from. 

Going to India again!

I can't believe I have agreed to go back to the trenches!  Three of us are joining Razia again on November 19th to visit the children and their families.  

 Here is our latest status report sent to our existing sponsors:

Your interest in supporting our work with ultra-poor children/families is humbly appreciated. Our Education program is really taking off, by the Grace of God, we now have around 75 children sponsored and 25 families with welfare needs.  Our number of sponsors is 33 to date and growing just as much. We have five volunteers doing this work with Razia Suleman.  The  sponsor program is being looked after by me,  Nusrat Hassam.  If you know anyone else who would like to sponsor a child, this would be a good time as we will be picking up new children in India.

If you know anyone else who may want to make a one-time donation (anything from $50 and over) for all 100% of the fund (no admin fees retained) to benefit the ultra poor families/children while we are there in India, please approach them and give them our contact information.  

Finally the photos and the end of this trip

Finally I am able to post the photos, enjoy! Each one has a story if you want to know more, do let me know.

 This is Razia and the complex that she and other partners built in Porbunder for the ultra-poor families to move into.  

 These are the flats that the parents live in.  They literally beg us to take their children from them and put them into the hostels and give them a good education.

These are a mom and 2 daughters that were moved into the new complex.  All 3 have a blood disorder Thalasemia, they need constant blood transfusions. 

Below is the hostel where the children stay and go to school.

 

 

  

This is the mother whose daughter that I sponsored.  She gets all her water from outside her flat.

The cows we kept seeing everywhere:

 

So now for some the nice "treats/rewards" that I got:  enjoying fresh coconut water as much as could with a lovely beach around us that stretched for miles on our drive from Porbunder to Malya Hatina.

 

I was staying opposite to King Rana's Palace in Porbunder.  My great, great, (about 5-6 generations) grandmother, Ladoo Dossi was married to King Rana and most probably lived in this palace!

 

 In Mumbai, I rested and read books on this most comfortable swing in my friend Priya's apartment.

 

That's all folks, I do have lots of other photos, I carry some of them with me if you want to see more, do let me know.  Thanks to all of you for your encouragement for me take this trip, it was indeed life transforming.

p.s. Quite a few of you want to visit India, we are planning a visit to India for a group of 8 or 12 for next January, 2011.

Back to Vancouver full of memories

I arrived back after a total of 19 hours on two lags - not a good idea as my ankles swelled up, some good advice would have been to break the journey in London for a day or so. My colleague went on to finish visiting the other hostel while I headed back to Mumbai to recuperate and recover from this heart wrenching but soul satisfying trip to the interior areas of India. Below is what happened with our work as reported by my colleague Razia:

We were in Kutch for almost five days. My maximum energy was put in visiting most of the homes personally. To-date I have only done 40% of homes as this has taken a toll on my health and I sometimes got mentally upset.

Note from Nusri: Her being mentally upset reminded me of the place we had gone to visit in Porbunder. I just couldn't get over the total helplessness we felt for these men: Razia remembers "about 10 yrs back we could see lots of mentally retartded people roaming around in town. Someone on this earth needed to do something about this problem. He bought a piece of land and built up an Ashram for them. Took all of them, gave them baths and clean beds. We went to see the place, this was heart wrenching. He has about 50 of them, all men. Some of them were behind bars in a cell 3 x 6 as they could be violent. We listened to funny stories, for e.g some thought they were president of USA."

My last journey/work began for Kutch via Rajkot. We went to Upleta and then 20 miles inside to a village called Bagh, only one family of farmers there. Man, were the roads ever full of potholes, I had tons of snacks for us but no one could eat anything as we were all trying not to get nauseated from all that rattling and shaking!

The family has sold everything and now both of them sell Pakoras door to door. We are thinking of moving them into Karimabad at Porbunder where they can be in the city with their sales.

From there we went to a village Bhayawadar. Interesting story. The main income earner, Ms. Daulatben's husband had died when she was pregnant (2mo) with her fourth child. for 14 years she would go to the farm to clean onions, she would take her kids with her and get 5 Rs.(12 cents) a day. She got her girls married now. Only her son remains at home with her as he is deaf mute. She looked for a deaf mute bride for him. Now both husband and wife stitch clothes and earn money. Their first son is deaf mute too and they have put him in a school for the deaf mute. It was so neat when I was able to use my sign language with them, I had learned this quite a few years ago in order to communicate with my deaf mute sister in law here in Vancouver! We have picked up their second child Sahil who can talk and have sent him to the Maliya Hostel.

As we were getting ready to leave, Daulatben called her brother-in-law whose son also has problems with his speech. He has a little girl he wants us to take her and put her in the boarding school.

The following is an account from Razia:

After that we went to Gandhidham (Kutch) where we have 4 welfare cases. From there to Nagalpur, where we picked up couple more cases suggested to us by Mukhi Kamadia (local ministers in our community).

Our next stop was Mundra. This is the hostel we repaired last year. I was glad to see the kids happy now. After holding the meeting with the parents and the kids , they (kids) presented a request list.
1. our rooms need cupboards so that we don't have to hang our clothes on the nail
2. Fans are old and they break every now and then, this is very hard in summer.
3. We do not have a fridge so our milk goes bad in summer and we don't get anything cold.

I got them a fridge right there and then while I was standing. I saw smile on their faces. Rest will be done soon.

Finally time came on Sunday to visit all our 25 kids. I love this part of my work as each one of them know me by name. Met with 25 sets of parents and the kids. This ended at night.

Now that I am back, I am attempting to post some pictures as well as thinking about what can be done to raise funds urgently needed to repair the Maliya Hostel's Girl's wing that can fall apart any day as it was badly effected in the earthquake they had a few years ago, it certainly cannot withstand another earthquake and there are about 75 girls sleeping in it everyday.

Visited the childrens' hostel in Maliya Hatina

The highlight of the last few days was driving out to Maliya Hatina where I got to meet about 30 of the children we have sponsored including the girl I began sponsoring two years ago! They were all very well cared for and I even got to interview the principal of the school. This school has won top awards in sports and academically and they are the best one in the whole of Gujarat. It was way better than I had ever expected. I saw some children eating in the dining rooms and we visited both the boys and the girls dormitories, once again the pictures shall be posted soon!

The not so good side was being in places with tons of garbage strewn around and seeing cows, dogs and pigs all over the street (together with a lot of cow dung that we learned to dodge very quickly!). The cows were also used to eating the paper garbage and we saw a calf just having been born about 20 mins before. Very limited internet time out here, bye for now.

Made our base in Porbunder

A few hours after reaching Ahmedabaad, we had over 20 cases of "welfare" families waiting for us at little shed in the housing society. One very old man said it's been 3 years that he has been asking to get his roof fixed as all the rain water leaks into his little "house". My colleague, Razia, was surprised why nothing had been done about this. He said, " asked me to move rather than fix my place, but I don't want to move out".

The next day, we went to visit his place, it was in the poorest area called Itjaad or something like that. Once Razia had a look, she said even spending over $600 would not fix his roof as there were deep cracks in the foundation and the walls and the new roof would just collapse. The money would be better spent moving this old man and his son, his wife and their 4 young children out.

This time the son promised us he would convice his dad to let go of this place. We offered them a lot of help to move them to a much better place. This was only one case, each case has its own unique needs. One very old lady who sat on the floor due to her high blood pressure is looking after her only son who is totally handicapped and in bed all day, no amount of medicine could help him, they are also being looked after both by Razia and the local welfare society from our community as the govt has no welfare plans.

We drove 7 hours into Porbunder after that - that is 6 of us inlcuding the driver and with 8 suitcases - were we ever cramped!

I had already become sick after eating a slice of veg. pizza and roasted veg. sandwhich with cheese. It was the cheese that made me ill. After vomitting and having diarrhea for the whole night, I took 2 immodiums so that I could travel the next day and had nothing but bottled water to keep me going. Three days later, I am still having stomach cramps even though they are feeding me nothing but freshly cooked home made food.

In Porbunder we began our visits to the parent's whose children we have put in hostels. We visited 7 "homes" , all of them were wreaking of stench from open sewers all around them. Some of them had communal washrooms only. Unfortunately, no time to put our pics up yet. There is no internet here, so I get a couple of hours access every few days from a doctor's house. His wife has very kindly made available their ethernet cord that I can plug into my laptop so I can do my work - which beckons! Bye for now. Thanks to all of you for your comments, Abbie, I missed the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabaad but I shall try to visit the Gandhi shrine/temple they have over here in Porbunder.

Leaving Mumbai and off to Ahmedabaad

Wow! I have 5 followers, better live up to it! I have had a few days "off" staying here with my hostess Priya. The highlight was an indoor swing as large as a sofa in which I kept falling asleep due to my jet lag. She took really good care of me, I ate the most exotic vegetarian dishes and tonight she has cooked some fresh methi (fenugreek) parothas with spinach. I am well recovered and rested for my 7:00 am departure from Mumbai tomorrow morning into the ultra-poor regions beginning with Ahmedabaad then into Bhavnagar, Kutch, Malya Hatina and Bhuj. Our main base will be my friend's house in Porbunder which I hear is near the ocean. So far, I couldn't get any pictures up, will work on it. My laptop did not have internet access as Priya has one of those sticks she uses in her apartment rather than Wi-Fi and of course it did not fit into my laptop just hers which she so generously shared with me all this time. Bon Voyage for now, Nusri.

Leaving for India

After getting all kinds of packages for my host in India and clothing donations for the families, I have an extra suitcase which I may need to leave behind as two of them are jam packed and probably over the weight limit as is. Not looking forward to having to use mosquito patches - ugh! Really looking forward to the spiritual/cultural heritage of India which reminds me so much of Africa where I was born. Next post will be from India, cheers, Nusri.