Sunday evening, Sept. 6

Hard to remember what day it is - day of the week and date! But here it is Sunday night. Where to start... Well, I'll go briefly back to Friday afternoon when we went to the volunteer orientation. Wow - a ton of volunteers!! There are a couple of large groups from Japan and I think South Korea so I don't know but I'd guess there were about 40 new volunteers that day. Some of them are just staying 10-14 days. We were divided up by language spoken so we were in a group of about 12 for English. We were told of the different places we could volunteer, whether it was for men volunteers, female or both, whether it was a place with children or adults, and what days, times you could volunteer at them. Then we waited to be called, ask for our choice and get the "approval". It went very well (not speedy but well!) with Garrett, Laura and me all getting the same places. We are volunteering at Prem Dan (pronounced Don) a location for the, I guess you'd say, chronically sick. It is similar to Kalighat (pronounce collie-got) which is the home for the dying, but evidently larger and maybe many of the people live longer. We will be there everyday of the week except Thursday (all volunteers are off on Thursdays) from 8 - 12:15. Then on M-W-Fr we will be at the dispensary from roughly 3-5. The dispensary is sort of a clinic setting where we are individually stationed and the people come off the street to be cared for for various things. Haven't been there yet but Laura worked there one day last time and really liked it. We basically had to know about it to work there as it was not mentioned in the general overview. On Fri. evening I was pretty excited about starting in the morning!! We tend to go to bed early, around 7:30 - 8 (I know, unheard of for me!!) since we get up at 4:50 (I know, also unheard of for me!!). The last two mornings we have chosen to wake up to a Contemporary Christian song by Brandon Heath, "Give Me Your Eyes". Here's the chorus:
"Give me your eyes for just one second; give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing - Give me your love for humanity.
Give me your arms for the broken hearted, the ones that are far beyond my reach;
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten; give me your eyes so I can see."
Seems like the perfect song to get us going.
We head out about 5:30 to walk to the Mother House (the convent) - which takes about 20 min. Mass is at 6 followed by a very light breakfast (one of those miniature bananas and a piece of bread and a glass of hot chai tea (it tastes good but I wish it was cold!). Then we head out, each to our respective place of volunteering. Gotta tell you - catching the bus is really something. Oh, my - run, quickly and even if it looks like no one else could get on, about 10 more can (you've heard about sardines or the "how many people can fit in the phone booth"?) Yes, that is exactly the look of the Kolkata bus!! Amazing. And they'll just start up when someone is half hanging off the bus!!! It costs 4-6 rupees to ride each way (around 45 rupees is a dollar, so I guess you're looking at about 10 cents). The entire traffic situation is just an amazing experience - never thought vehicles of whatever type could squeeze by each other so closely!! We took what is called an auto-rickshaw home from PremDan yesterday - hmmm maybe comparing it to a roller coaster ride would be close (thrill and all)!! As we were riding along (maybe close to 10 minutes), I thought to myself that the rooftops and the "buildings" I was beginning to see looked a lot like the slums of Slumdog Millionaire (if you saw the movie...). Yes, that was exactly what it was! You know, in any city in the USA, the area we walk everyday would be considered a horrible slum - awful - but not here. Here we travel to this other part of Kolkata, to their slums. Prem Dan is located sort of in the middle of it - slum, train tracks, Prem Dan, more slums. When we get off the bus, we walk through part of the slum to get to the door of Prem Dan. I have to tell you, this is all - oh, I don't even know how to say - it just hurts the heart! So most of the people in Prem Dan are from the slum area. Men and women are separated in different areas so we don't actually work with Garrett but we see him at break time when we get these crackers and some more chai tea. We do similar types of things. We do a lot of manual stuff - hand laundry (washing, rinsing, wringing, hanging up), stripping beds, wiping down beds, making beds, helping serve lunch, and cleaning up afterwards (each person obviously doesn't do all of those things each day). We also can help in some way with the dressings they have to change (won't even go into that for now), just sit with people, give them a pseudo-massage, help feed them, take them to the bathroom (haven't quite figured that whole process out yet - not like anything I ever experienced in nursing!!), etc. It's a truly blessed experience!!! Well, it is getting close to 8:00 so I need to close and get to bed. I must remember to share about my struggle with all this suffering, Mother's feast day yesterday (what a beautiful day!), my wimpy feet (oh the blisters!!), the flooded streets we walked through today and I guess my experience tomorrow afternoon at the dispensary. Hope all is well with each of you!