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.