How do I know I'm in India?

My Indian friends do not all look or act like my friends at home.  The geckos and I have formed a new relationship--intimate.  This morning, it was showering together, then as I went to make the bed, I discovered a friend that probably spent the night with us.  A couple of days ago I was standing by the shelves in our room and a little one leaped off the top shelf to land on my shoulder.  This is definitely getting all too familiar.  We have a lot of lizards at home, but Indian geckos prefer a certain closeness that I'm not quite used to!

Busy week around Rising Star Outreach.  We are in the process of getting some micro- businesses started with the children, including chickens, and crops:  rice, chilies, watermelons, ladyfingers (okra to us), and vegetables with tomatoes, eggplant, etc.  The idea is to have each family (we have 3 boys families and 3 girls families) have a project that is there own to develop. The crops will be sold and the children will begin to work towards their future with bank accounts, to be used upon graduating from 12th standard.  We have a power tiller, which our land managers use to prepare the ground.  Some of the planting is then done by the village women and some of it by the children.  The children will be responsible for the weeding, and general maintenance of the planted areas. It will be a big job--we have several acres planted! The chicken problem has not been totally solved yet--we are down to 4 chickens after losing several to a night marauder.  The boys responsible for them have now built barricades around the coop, certain that no critter will be able to penetrate it. Our egg production has dropped to zero since the night terror.  We're hoping it will pick up again as they begin to feel safer.  Saturday was our biggest day yet in the fields, with nine boys planting half an acre of watermelons. They worked so hard hauling very heavy containers of water all over the field, after getting each patch prepared and planted with three seeds.  Ron and Joyce got into the act, but our land manager, Mani, directed it all.  They were tired, but they also had a ball playing in the water that was running to irrigate the rice field.  It dammed up making a great hole for cooling off! 

Next week the girls will start plugging the rice fields that are all prepared.  The green of the rice fields, is the most beautiful green seen in God's kingdom of color!  The rice has been growing in a "nursery", and will be tied and plugged ready to grow in the flooded fields.

Today was Republic Day for India.  We had a wonderful program this morning with a holiday the rest of the day. The children decorated the base of the flagpole with the Indian colors, gave speeches in Tamil and English, and performed more exercises that the PT Master (physical education or PE to us) had taught the children.  It was very fun.  India is the largest Republic in the world--for 59 years more people have lived in freedom than anywhere else.  It makes me think of all the contrasts we see here--so many living in freedom, but with such a minimum subsistence; so many living in freedom but with a government that is run on bribes, influence, and protection of a lot of evil people.  On the other hand, it is a country that is making available higher education to so many. Hopefully there will be jobs for all these engineers that are filling the thousands of colleges. We are working hard to prepare these beautiful children at Rising Star to take advantage of the higher opportunities that will be available to them.

Sorry the pictures are in reverse order--I always forget how they upload!

India, Land of Color

We're back, and happy to be here.  There's more for us to do, so for the present this feels like home!  The children were as happy to see us as we were to see them.  I'm sure there's always doubt that anyone will really return.  We ended our stay in the US with a great board meeting for Rising Star Outreach at the beautiful home of JaLynn and Greg Prince.  Our added bonus was having three more days with Matthew and Natalie Hanson and four of our great grandsons before we headed back.

We arrived during the week of Pongol (harvest festival), the biggest of all the holidays in Southern India (at least big in the length of time they celebrate--five days.)  The children will return to school today, after many days off.  We're all excited-- the children are ready to get back to a regular schedule.  Big event on Thursday was our first official field trip.  Children, house mothers, cooks, and assorted others were loaded into five vans for the drive to a nearby bird sanctuary and Mammalapuram, a big tourist attraction at the beach.  Exciting day--it almost finished off the adults, but the children having been up since 4:00a.m. were pretty exhausted as well.  Ron was so grateful not to have lost children in the high surf or scrambling over the great rock formations. Counting noses at the end of the day and having the same number as at the beginning was big! 

In the afternoon, we headed for the local village, Thottenaval, for a celebration with them of the blessing of the cows, part of the Pongol celebration.  The cows were beautifully decorated--clean, painted and decked with balloons, flowers, seashell necklaces, etc.  The children and mothers were also colorfully attired, with new clothes or saris if possible.  We were invited into three homes after the drum corp and parade show, and the puja (Hindu prayer with food offering) was completed.  We received food: hot buffalo milk with sugar, fruit, sweets, and chapatti with sugar, as well as a gift of money for each of us.  There is much we are learning about kindness and generosity.  We find ourselves being the receivers, more often than not.