Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Our morning route takes us past some of Chennai’s contrasts. We brave the crazy traffic as we pass large corporate buildings, a roadside pottery market, a brilliantly painted shrine, people drawing up wooden buckets of water from a community well just outside the entrance to St. Thomas Hospital, a group of thatched huts by a river valley with people’s laundry drying on the ground, and then back lanes with cows ambling around. Assisi Illam is in a quiet neighborhood behind a blue gate. Across the street is a construction site where workers are plastering the second story from a rickety wooden scaffold with an effigy dangling by its neck nearby. As we enter the patio, the children call “auntie, auntie” from the doorway. Deanne, Phyllis and I (Ricca) work with 15 of the thirty-some children in the second floor playroom. Yesterday the children were remarkably well behaved and we were congratulating ourselves on our competence; today it was all downhill from good morning. The little ones were in an ornery mood, fighting over toys, chasing and pushing each other, screaming, even biting. They didn’t want to do the projects we had planned or anything quiet. By 11:20 when Sister Rose came up to get them for snack time and told us to take a 10-minute break, we were ready for one. Deanne observed: “we have now officially lost control”. The day got better after that. In the afternoon Phyllis and Deanne gave their cameras a workout as the sisters dressed up the five resident children –Sylvia, Sophia, John, George and Jasmine - with hats and parasols so they could pose for us. After the children have their lunch, they nap. We sit on the floor with the sisters sharing an Indian meal from our big thermos and their kitchen, playing with the babies, and visiting with one another-- which is English practice for Sister Rose. Kathy had a productive day visiting hospital patients and teaching the novices. She also visited a patient at her home. Karen is impressed with the English skills and focus of her older students, who are interested to learn about the training they will need to prepare for professional careers in law or medicine. George had a good day with his students, and Jim continues his daily quest to manage 45 preschoolers. After our early evening visit with the Seams kids, the group went out for a wonderful dinner. The highlight was a wild ride downtown and back in a motorized rickshaw. Today’s quote: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in….to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, 1865. Bonus quote: “It’s all to do with the training; you can do a lot if you’re properly trained.” Queen Elizabeth II. (If you are the first to locate this quote in the guest house, you will win a prize!) --Ricca Slone
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