January 14, 2008
Pongal O Pongal!
The Pongal festival began last night with the first celebration – Bhogi. Pongal is the harvest festival and bhogi is the occasion for discarding old clothes, brooms, and other house wares. A couple of team members awoke in the middle of the night to drumming. Brave Roma ventured out in her night gown to see a group of children sitting around a fire in the street burning old garments and drumming. In the morning the air was heavy with smoke and little smoldering piles of ash dotted the streets around the guest house.
To celebrate Pongal, St. Joseph’s school invited team 60 to attend a Pongal performance. So, after breakfast of noodles and hard boiled eggs, the team (all but George who headed for Grace School) drove and walked over to St. Joseph’s. The celebration was very exciting, including the cooking of the pongal in a clay pot over a fire on the cement porch, two beautiful dances performed by students, a great description of the festival by father Chinnappa, and songs and prayers. Of course the event ended with all the volunteers being served warm pongal – a delicious mix of rice, coconut, ghee, raisins, and cardamom. All the volunteers agreed it was a real treat to attend the performance, and we all left with flowers in our hair.
As today is Monday, it is the beginning of a new week, and there are some changes to job assignments. While Elyse and Lucy moved from Assisi to St. Joseph’s Social Center for painting, Joann went to Assisi to take care of the children. Because of Pongal the daycare at Assisi is closed, so Anne, Roma, and Joann worked and played with the regular crew of small children, as well as some older children that live there. At St. Joseph’s Social Center, Lucy and Elyse were introduced to the painters and nuns. They painted a window in the morning, and after a break for lunch, some Indian soap operas and some time outside, they began stripping the wallpaper in the chapel. George’s schedule was also disrupted by Pongal. Grace School usually has around 80 students, and today only had about 20 with the addition of a few neighborhood kids. After seeing a few kids eating sugar cane George asked if it would be ok if he bought some for all the kids. So, after a trip around the corner with all the students, they sat in a circle in the sand and ate sugarcane together. After the Pongal celebration in the morning at St. Joseph’s School, lessons continued as usual. Jan reported that her kids were all in their best “colorful” clothes and rather proud of themselves. Ginny reported success with the 2nd graders with an activity about favorites.
As usual we visited SEAMS and Assisi in the evening. After a half hour of educational time, we all got together and tried to learn the devotional song we all had been humming over the weekend. Joann had sat with a group of girls to transcribe the words in Tamil and English for the song. We all had a great time and promised to practice.
Dinner was back at the guest house complete with sweets Stephen had brought from Kumar Sweets.
Thought of the Day
If you want to go quickly, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. – African Proverb
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