Saturday 7/21/07

Saturday morning we continued classes. We had no running water Fri. afternoon and night and Fri. night when I went to bed I stank. I got up Sat. morning – still no water, so I opened my bottle of Aquafina and took a “shower” with it. This was my drinking water and I didn’t bother to ask for another bottle of water to drink until about 4:00 p.m. that day. I had used my drinking water to take a bath with, but I didn’t care – I thought it was worth it. Simon’s little boy, Franklin, followed his “aunties” Karen and Leah all over the compound that day and had the other children all calling us “aunties”. Franklin, who is 5, brought his 2 year old sister, Shella, upstairs to the roof to visit us. We fed them some of our breakfast – I thought Franklin was a bottomless pit! He opened his mouth and looked like a little bird that we would put little pieces of cereal and granola bars into. The roof which is right outside our door has a low protective wall around it and it was really funny when Franklin started pointing at something (actually I don’t think it was anything) in the distance and excitedly telling Shella to look, look! She couldn’t see over the wall and she had her little hands on the top of the wall and her toes dug in to the sides and she was grunting and straining trying to see over the wall. Franklin kept telling her to look, look! She never could get up to see and finally gave up. Then he went down the steep steps and left her. She stood at the top of the stairs and cried for help, so we took her down to her mother. They are quite a pair! That morning Karen and I also got to play frisbee with Deva and Sathish. I think they liked their frisbees and were a little disappointed when they fell on the ground and got scuffed up. Sathish tried to polish his off when he took it back to his room. Karen also taught the women how to play hopscotch and I think they had a lot of fun with that. This was Lee’s day to teach classes since I had taught Thursday and Karen had taught Friday. Lee gave an excellent explanation about diabetes with Karen’s assistance on the nutrition end and I threw in my 2 cents worth about wearing shoes outside and then Lee and I both taught about cancer and diseases common to the area such as typhoid and cholera. That afternoon we said good-bye to the Eureka Children’s Home orphans. We handed out balloons and suckers and jump ropes. They danced again for us and got us to dance a little for them. We all laughed and had a really good time, but I think Grace cried a little bit. Sindersen was leaving the next day for 6 months Bible college. He is to return home just once a month. After the singing and dancing, Bro. Sindersen drove us back to Chettipatty. (Patty means village in Tamil). It was really hard leaving Sathish. I have sponsored him for 5 years and I was so excited to meet him! I felt like I was leaving my child and I might never see him again. It really was a difficult thing to do.
One thing I saw that was really interesting on the way back to Chettipatty was a brick kiln. Suganthi explained to me the way bricks are made. A woman takes an ordinary bread pan and fills it with the red mud mixture and dumps it out to dry in the sun. Then the bricks are stacked on a high pile in a particular fashion that leaves large holes (spaces) between them. Tree branches are pushed into the spaces and the pile is set on fire for 3 days out in the open – not in an oven like I would have imagined. The fire is continually fed with wood. After 3 days the bricks are allowed to cool and dry in the sun, then tarp is wrapped over them until they are ready for shipping. I thought this might be the same way that the Tower of Babel was built way back in Nimrod’s day. We drove through some really remote villages where the houses were thatched huts. It was interesting to see modern day tractors with plows parked beside the huts. I think the houses were probably owned by tenants and the tractors by their landlords – what a contrast! Anyway, we got back safely to Shady Grove and….Praise the Lord! Running water!