I am currently at Rising Star Outreach in Thottanaval Village. It’s about 2 hours north of Chennai (Madres), India. We will be working at a school with the children of some people who have leprosy. About 70% of all the lepers in the world live in India. It’s really sad to think that if they had only had antibiotics, their bodies wouldn’t become so deformed. We might also work at the medical facility to help clean their wounds, etc. I think that will be extremely difficult for me to see and do, but I also think it will be an amazing experience. That will be our choice to work there or not.
We met with a few of the boys tonight after dinner in their hostel. I worked with several on their homework, and Diane sang a few of them to sleep. I already enjoy being here. We arrived around noon today, but since we got up at 4:00 AM to get ready to leave for the airport in Cochi, we were a bit tired from flying and then driving another 2 hours. We basically had the afternoon to regroup, go “shopping” in their closet for authentic Indian clothes that we will wear all week, and take a nap.
Tomorrow, we leave at 7:00 AM to drive all the way back to Chennai to church. The driving here is even crazier than in Kenya, which is hard to believe. They have painted lines on the road, but everyone still just makes up their own lane. They just honk at each other and then move in wherever they want. I’m NOT looking forward to driving through that noise and chaos and back again tomorrow, but I AM looking forward to church. Apparently, they just got a brand new building. This is only the second week they’ve had it. The other problem is that there are so many people everywhere on the road and otherwise. It’s extremely congested.
Wednesday, we drove to Tusker Trails in Thekkady. When we arrived, we asked Jose, our taxi driver, what we were going to do there. He said, “Relax”. Hmmm… we drove 4 hours to sit in a hotel to relax! I ended up getting an auryvedic massage which was like nothing I’ve ever had before! We won’t go into that. It was good, however. We’ve discovered that all the hotels close after lunch at 3:00 and don’t reopen until 7:30, so we’ve missed many lunches due to our traveling from one place to another, and then, we have to wait until 7:30 to eat dinner.
My body is already starting to revolt from eating Indian food. Every place we’ve stayed at has an Indian buffet for dinner and breakfast. They are all the same. I hate to say it, but I would die for some plain old American food. I’ve finally reached my limit on foreign food that I have no clue what it is. I thought I liked curry, but I think it will be a long time before I order it at home.
Thursday, we drove to the Lake Song Hotel in Kumarakom for 4 hours. We stayed in a beautiful hotel on a lake. We paid for a motorboat cruise, but the hotel gave us a free sunset cruise on the lake, so that’s the one we did. I was told we would be “going up a river in Allepay in narrow canals and seeing the village life along the backwaters.” An hour cruise around a lake that just had hotels and condos along the side wasn’t exactly what I thought we were paying for! That’s all we did there, too.
Friday, we drove back to Bolgatty Palace and Island Resort in Cochi again. I thought we were going to Fort Cochin, which we did, but it’s not a fort at all, it’s just the name of the town. Jose told us we could go visit the Jewish synagogue and the Dutch temple, but apparently, they are always closed on Fridays, so we didn’t see either one. All we did in Cochi was shop – which was fun at least.
(There are two political parties in the state of Kerala - National Congress and Communist, but they have a democratic government. I find that very interesting. There was a Communist party convention in this town we passed through.)
I have to admit that I WON’T miss this part of our trip at all!!! I’m wishing now that we had just spent two weeks here at Rising Star Outreach and forgotten all the rest. Oh well, it is what it is. This coming week is going to be great. We’ll be out of the winding roads in the mountains (which were very beautiful, but hard to ride in a car for so many hours twisting and turning), horn honking, dirty streets, millions of people, dirty bathrooms, etc. It feels calm and peaceful here away from all of that, and we actually have sit-down toilets that flush, toilet paper, soap and water to wash our hands. The shower may prove a bit interesting because they use the bucket and little scooper method, but I’ll adapt…
Anyway, we’re in a better space now and things will get better.
Kadi
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