Back at Duke

It's been a week and half and I'm back at Duke in Durham, North Carolina. I often get woken up at 5 am by a Kenyan friend or colleague, so my mornings are still early and fresh with worldly excitetment. The school project, deemed WISER (Women's Institute for Secondary Education and Research) in Muhuru Bay, Kenya, is just addicting and inspiring.

I would love to say I will update the blog regularly, but I know this will not happen as the semester continues. However, I am here to say to those who have been following the various travels that now the next biggest series of steps is getting this school funded, organized, and built by 2008. I will be returning to Kenya this coming Summer after a Spring semester abroad to China where and when I will most likely be returning to the blog.

I cannot thank you enough for the comments and support throughout the summer. It has truly been an amazing journey, and one that has really just begun....

All my best,
Andy

No Internet and Melt Down

To all:

I sincerely apologize for the lapse in the blolg, but throughout my time in Kenya, I had no access to the internet as I was working in a very rural community, Muhuru Bay. By Friday (tomorrow), I will hopefully have uploaded all the entries I had made on my computer throughout my time in Kenya. Thanks for sticking with it and I look forward to talking with all of you soon in person about my travels this summer.

All my best,
Andy

Incompetence Mixed with Brilliance –

Wednesday July 26, 2006

Today, we woke up at 5 am to catch a taxi from Muhuru Bay to Migori, the “city” and did not return until 9 pm at night. Needless to say, we watched the sun rise and saw the sun set, both times from the back of a jam-packed high-speed Subaru taxicab – once going towards Migori and the second going back to Muhuru Bay.

Our objective was to meet with many of the government officials in Migori to discuss options with them about the school and enlist support. And competence was really a hit or miss.

The Deputy DEO – A Miss
I will begin with the Deputy District Education Officer, which we had met prior to the Stakeholders’ meeting as the real District Education Officer (our equivalent to State Secretary of Education) was out to Nairobi. As we described our project, it was if we were talking to a wall. His eyes never focused on either Rachel or Professor Broverman as they spoke, nor did he ultimately understand why were even in Muhuru. After describing the situation with girl-child education and our plans to construct a boarding school, what was his response?

“So, you’re going to help fix HIV in the area, right?”

“Indirectly, yes sir,” replied Professor Broverman politely. I was ready to say, you know what we don’t need him! And we really didn’t because today we had an appointment with the serving DEO, an amazing woman who accompanied Dr. Rose into the community to rescue Judy from Rabwao’s secondary school. But the fact that he was even second in command, or in command at all just made me sick. And the fact that he moved from his regular office into the DEO’s office in her absence just made me think of the disgusting slime buckets in various sitcoms on TV move into their boss’ desk when he leaves and then is caught with his feet on top of papers and books when the boss returns without notice.

Incompetence raged amidst second-in command. And to think he was a leader of education? This was why we were here. If things were great, there would be no need. If only things were better.

The DEO - A Direct Hit
As our car arrived in Migori, Rachel and I stepped out of the car into the same office where we had met the Deputy District Education Officer last week. This time however, our appointment was with the DEO. Although Sherryl Broverman and the girls had already left, Rachel and I served as ten men and women, ready with questions, comments and energy.

The DEO welcomed us into her office and as we outlined our research and project goals, her first response was, “it’s about time. Focus on girls’ education has been long overdue and I am embarrassed to admit it, being a woman, myself and all.”

And with that introduction, we began discussing the benefits of establishing a private vs. public school, how it would affect the community, the existing Rabwao secondary school, what requirements were needed to fulfill to pass inspection of education facilities, teacher salaries and recruitment, and curriculum redesign.

Rachel and I not only held our ground but we moved a little, too. After our meeting, the officer wrote a personal letter of support in favor of the school and our team, giving us a loud and clear – go ahead signal which she meant for us to spread throughout the community and back in the states.

Father Kazito – A Direct Hit

During our initial meeting with the Deputy DEO, one item that did come out of the meeting was news of a task-force established by the office of the DEO to investigate girl education in the region focusing on two main questions: Why were girls dropping out of school at such early ages and what are the reasons for such poor performance by girls who do stay in school in Muhuru Region. We learned that Father Kazito, a Catholic Priest, was the chairman of the task force and had a report ready to be given to the board this coming Friday.

Pulling up in his driveway in Larwentho Parish, we looked around and saw progress. And this is not a Catholic bias at all. But the grounds were maintained. The houses were beautiful. The church was elegant. And outside was what looked to be a small primary school with clean, crisp, uniformed children running about.

Father Kazito greeted us and treated us to a preview of the report outlining some of the major reasons girls are dropping out of school at such a high rate and why their performance is as low as it is.

And he outlined a very brief bulleted list that echoed almost the exact findings we had discovered in our various interviews with the girls and boys of Rabwao Secondary school.

I have outlined them below as an abridged version of the report as we are waiting for a full copy in the mail as soon as possible.

Why are girls dropping out of school at such an early age and high rate?
Attitude of the community – a girl is viewed as liability, not an asset. It is more profitable to receive a dowry in exchange for marriage than it is to send a girl to school where most likely (a track record of 18 years), no girl has made it passed secondary school.
Ignorance – girls do not know their rights to an education. They believe that it is the role of the girl to follow directions, get married, bear children, and serve the husband (most often a husband of multiple wives) for the rest of her life. There are currently no programs to help assist girls to realize their capacity to take advantage of educational opportunities
Poverty – Girls are forced to drop school because their family needs the income from their labor in the fields, markets, or even house. Again, it is more profitable to receive a dowry than to keep a daughter in school. Additionally, when male teachers, fisherman, or other community men offer assistance in school fees in exchange for sex, the fact that the girl has very few other options leads to a higher drop out due to early pregnancies.
HIV/AIDS – It has often orphaned many girls and their siblings, thus forcing them into the role of becoming parents rather than continuing their education.

Why are girls lacking in performance in comparison to boys?
Lack of facilities – students who are older often become overly embarrassed by their developing bodies when younger girls share the same facilities as the older girls. Also, a lack of sanitation causes embarrassment to the girls as they are unable to cope with their menstruation cycles.
Biological Impediments – having a period will often lead girls to skip school for three to five days at a time. When girls are absent, they fall behind. When exams are distributed, and a girl has missed an average of six days every month due to her period, she is less likely to perform well when the rest of the class received the materials on the day she was absent.
Counseling without Guidance – there is a huge influx of counseling services, but a complete void in guidance. All of the services offered to girls are reactionary services – medical facilities for pregnant women, support groups for rape victims, and more. But nothing is in place for preventative programs and workshops.
Lack of Role Models – Besides Prof. Rose Odhiambo, no girl has graduated from the community in the last 18 years. There are no female teachers in the mixed secondary school and there is only one female teacher in all nine primary schools. Girls do not have anyone to which to try and aspire to become. Instead, they have the status quo and the expectation to fail and become ordinary.

Together with the report, the priest was dynamic - a true leader in the community. I was proud to be known as a Catholic and see such contribution to the community rather than scandal and deceit. It was not only refreshing, but empowering. Additionally, it was helpful to see that officially, they have come to many of the same conclusions as we have.

Ground Water Specialist – A Miss
Traveling past the Ministry of Roads, from which the road turned into a huge crater outside its front door, we arrived at the Ministry of Water to inquire about drilling wells and drawing up irrigation plans for the proposed site of the school in Muhuru. Needless to say, after three hours of haggling and still not feeling satisfied, we hired a team of seven to visit our land and conduct water surveys, using, what we later discovered was a 1987 machine. But this is all that the community had. We negotiated and remained firm in our dealings, actually saving 4000-5000 shillings. But overall, you can tell when a neighbor is interested in self vs. others and this was the case for the man who is responsible for life in the community – the water specialist.

I wonder if he has ever felt what it’s been like to be thirsty?

Tour de Muhuru Bay

Monday July 24, 2006

At the Stakeholders’ meeting last Friday, I was invited by the Muhuru Bay Alumni Student association to tour the nine primary schools in the area, by bike. These were Kenyan college students on their summer holiday that decided to return to their hometown community and visit the very primary schools where they grew up and speak to the students, giving them the example of what it means to succeed and that students from Muhuru Bay could succeed – nothing was impossible. They also wanted me to share with the headmasters, teachers and 7th and 8th graders about our proposal for a boarding school for girls in the community.

Climbing onto my bike in the morning, I felt like I traveled back to the late 1950s when the bikes didn’t have hand brakes. The seat often violated what most men and women would consider their vital organs, and the shocks to help absorb the potholes and boulders laying the middle of the road – well there were none.

I asked Samson, the boy who was chairman of the alumni association, “About how far are we going today?”

“Just out there,” and he pointed out across the lake and all the way to the tip of this peninsula that jutted out into the water. It was as if I was looking at an aerial view of the picture of Cape Cod. And we were about to bike it. I later found out it was about 35 km – uphill, across sandy terrain, avoiding boulders the size of Montana, and rolling into schools where once I was spotted, a sea of students would just begin flowing from inside the school doors. “Mazoongo! Mazoongo!”

Visiting each one of the schools not only provided a chance to better get your bearings of the area but to also realize that already in seventh and eight grades, there is a disproportionate amount of boys than girls in the classrooms. During our discussions, they were always amazed to learn that the valedictorian of our high school class in Rutland was a girl and that in the top ten students, there was only one boy.

At lunch, we took a break by biking out to this collection of rocks and boulders where I was told there was a cave in which the entire Luo Tribe (the people who were part of this community) began their existence and defended their lands from other warring tribes. Walking into the cave was like walking back to the time of cavemen, literally. Then I heard something. A scratching noise. Was it a bat? A prehistoric echo from the past?

Then a young girl came around the corner and she was holding a portable radio in her hand, listening to the static of minimal to no reception in the cave. It was incredible to experience the juxtaposition of time – then and now.

Hopping back onto our bikes, we finished our tour with a few flat tires along the way. It was the tour de Muhuru Bay with various stages. Each stage was a different school and a different set of challenges. My favorite stage involved storing your bike behind a set of trees and rock climbing to get to a school on top of a mountain. Yes, the view was outstanding. But its accessibility was just horrendous. A perfect lesson that proves that looks are not always what counts.

I finished the race and realized I won the ultimate prize – my life’s dream. I wanted to do this for the rest of my life. I wanted to travel to remote locations to learn about what is working and what is not working in terms of school resources and management. I want to collect data and interpret it. I want to teach and learn at the same time. I want to become an international educator with the focus and drive to bring together resources for the betterment of the global child. This was my race. And what a race to bike!

We returned in the evening and singing outside our house was the Rabwao choir. Grabbing my microphone and recorder, I stood on top of a chair with the drinking gourd constellation above, and gas lanterns along the perimeter of the mini circle of girls and boys, outlining the perfect ending to a day of discovery, research, and dreams. I pressed the record button to capture this moment forever.

I wish there was never a stop button.

Our Next Door Neighbor and 2 Cows for a Girl

Friday July 21, 2006

Married to three wives and father to fifteen children, so far, he has remained as the deputy at Rabwao Secondary school. One year ago, a girl named Judy from the school was asked to join him as his fourth wife. Judy, at the time, was in her junior year. She refused. Her parents came into the school and demanded that she marry the deputy (our equivalent to a high school’s vice principal). She refused. She wanted to escape. She wanted to run away. But the dowry was so big that her parents could not let her go.

Two cows for one girl.

Eventually, Professor Rose Odhiambo from Egerton University, the daughter of the local chief who, she, herself, ran away from with a different husband than who her father had arranged for her, found out about Judy’s situation. E-mailing my professor, Sherryl Broverman at Duke, her story began to make the nightly news. Kenyan newspapers began following the story as well. Time went on and a handful of Duke students raised enough money to replace the dowry to pay her parents to allow her to leave the community.

When Rose Odhiambo arrived hand-in-hand with the female District Education Officer, she was assaulted by her own community, receiving the most violent verbal abuse, according to her, she had ever received or even heard in her entire life. She was disowned by the community indefinitely and Judy was to never return again.

While in the car on the way to Egerton University where Judy would continue her secondary degree and then eventually move onto higher education in gender studies, she said to Rose, “I will never go back, not until I can drive myself back and stand up for myself fully. Never, will I go back like that.”

The deputy principal who wanted to marry Judy was our neighbor in the school compound. He was one hundred yards away from my bedroom window. While eating dinner with our house assistant, we learned that Mr. Omonyo, the deputy, was now involved with another affair. This time, the girl is in 7th grade.

One of his own daughters is older than the girl he is bringing back to the house to sleep with at night, while his other two wives and handful of kids sleep on the other side of the house behind a curtain divide. He is the second in-command of this mixed secondary school. Why can’t he be fired? Because the board of governors likes him. Although the principal disapproves, all he can do is slap his hand and wait for the decision by the board of governors, which of course, is made up entirely of men.

One year later, our team of eight, seven of which are females, are here inspired by Judy’s perseverance and determination to keep her own independence and thereby her access to education. We live next door to one of the root causes of girl-child education. We are here to engage in research, interviewing teachers, girls and boys about why they believe girl-child education is so drastically impaired and then work with the community, using the research as our base, to develop a strategy of change – real change through a boarding primary and secondary school for girls.

Our first step was the Stakeholders’ meeting. 57 leaders of the community were in attendance. Pastors, headmasters of primary schools, district education officer representatives, teachers, representatives from the board of governors, former and current secondary students, university students who hailed from Muhuru Bay, and even Professor Rose Odhiambo. Out of the 57, two were female.

Again, this is why were here. There is no woman leadership. The chairman of the meeting said it himself – “The fact that there are almost no women in attendance is indicative of the pervasive problem we face with girl child education in our community and nation as a whole.”

The meeting’s objective was to inform the community of our research and project intentions for girls and listen to their feedback, positive or negative. Although I was not wild about the British set-up for the meeting, which was held in the cement church at Rabwao Secondary school, for the next six hours of the afternoon, a lot of ground was covered. Topics ranging from the impact on the school on the current secondary school to what the community can contribute to the project, helped empower the community and ourselves that this project was not only long overdue, but exciting both for them and for us.

Yes, whispers must have floated throughout the community. But the majority of words spoken were out loud and as a result, a dialogue began. We worked in small groups and shared discussions about what a boarding school for girls must include. What was our dream school, and what would it look like, feel like, be like now and in the future?

At the end of the meeting before we treated them to lunch, each member present wrote a letter to a potential donor in the United States and around the world outlining the reasons why they feel the community needs a girls’ school and what they, as a community, can do to help make this vision a reality.

Leaving the meeting and giving all the men and two women handshakes (the Kenyan handshake of course), I felt that our team was doing more than just coming and learning about the problems, but was taking a step forward in beginning a discussion of what solutions can come out of such suffering and mistreatment in the community.

Afternoon came and evening followed. I felt it was time for bed. Meeting with important individuals of a community and always having to be “on” takes what I believe to be just as much energy out of you as you would lose climbing up the face of Mt. Everest. But, that’s just my thought.

As I laid down in my bed and began to tuck my mosquito netting around the box frame, the rest of the team informed me that it was time to welcome the Sabbath. I thought about it and knew it was Friday. Is not the Sabbath on Sunday? I got up and followed the team out the door with our flashlights and gas lanterns.

Walking beneath the stars, I heard it for the first time. The Rabwao school chorus. Their voices filtered through the night sky and it felt as if I was in paradise. The voices were rich, full and deep with soul, love and feeling. We walked up the cement steps into the same church as the Stakeholders’ meeting. And seated in all the chairs were the students, welcoming the Sabbath.

“Happy Day!”
“Happy Sabbath!”

These were the greetings for the evening. And you were obliged to respond back,

“Happy Day!”
“Happy Sabbath!”

We sat at the visitors desk, all eight of us, and watched as group after group went up to the front of the room, stood around the only hanging lantern in the church besides the ones we carried and listened to their voices of heaven. Never have I heard more rich sound with such sorrowful pangs of emotion. They were voices from heaven and I was sure I had stumbled upon a house of angels.

As I listened and sat in the darkness, I knew that we come to the right community at the right time and with the right intentions. We were doing something big and I was scared to death of it all falling through. But my excitement of making it work overpowered my anxiety and made me one of the most excited people in all of Kenya, Africa and most likely the world that evening.

Oh Happy Day!

Shifting Gears, Literally

Wednesday July 19, 2006

I no longer need AAA insurance, I have decided. After being in the car with Pastor Odhiambo from Nairobi to Muhuru Bay (southwest region of Kenya overlooking Tanzania and Uganda near Lake Victoria), I have changed more tires than I probably will in my entire life. And Pastor and I now have it down to a science – a science of about five minutes.

The roads outside of Nairobi might as well be on Mars. Their crater-like potholes slashed tires of any approaching vehicle, sending them off the road in utter defeat. It was not uncommon to see ten cars lined up on the side of the road, all of them working to replace their vehicle’s broken limbs. How could a country function without workable roads?

Slowly.

Lines of cars backed up, slowly going in and out of potholes, passing indiscriminately on the little pieces of pavement and whizzing past those on mules – yes, a chaotic sentence that does not really make sense – but that is the feeling you get of the infrastructure and leadership of Kenya as a whole.

As we bounced in and out of the cavernous crevices on the road, I thought of how my trip had shifted gears. Yes, literally, Pastor was shifting gears about every six seconds, but my trip had really taken a new direction, inspired by the Sisters and their work, but focused on girls’ education in rural Kenya – establishing a boarding school for primary and secondary girls that would become a model school for future schools in Kenya and throughout the world.

Our goal? A team of seven Duke students and one student from Washington University in St. Louis (also my Calculus buddy from Rutland High School) will travel to Muhuru Bay following a four-year relationship with my professor from Duke and a professor from Egerton University in Kenya, learning from this rural community why girl-child education is at its all-time low and how a solution such as a school would address this issue.

How did we start? After writing, editing and publishing a manual for gender studies at Duke University, our initial intention in Kenya was to lead focus groups for the college students taking the class that was using our textbook at Egerton University. Very quickly, however, we realized that the women who were studying about the plight of girls while at Egerton University were the very girls that had succeeded and were really the anomalies.

The girls that needed to know about the obstacles and possible solutions to these obstacles were the girls in primary and secondary schools.

Professor Rose Odhiambo (from Egerton University) is originally from Muhuru Bay, a rural farming community that has no electricity and no running water. It overlooks Lake Victoria which is bordered by Uganda and Tanzania. The landscape is gorgeous, even breath-taking at times. However, it’s also the most infected region in Kenya with HIV (42%) and the lowest girl-child education in the country. Malnutrition, malaria and other sexually transmitted diseases runs rapid throughout the community. They want change and they want it now.

In the last 18 years, we learned, no girl had gone to the University. There exists only one mixed secondary school in all the area. Girls are not valued and instead most resources are given to the boys from teacher’s attention to the number of gas lamps that are distributed for studying purposes. Although no girls have graduated from the community secondary school and continued onto college, Professor Rose Odhiambo is the only individual from the community with a PhD, and guess what? She’s a woman.


Members of the community expressed that this had been a goal of the community for the past sixty years – there are just no resources to jump-start the project. Although we are excited to offer our skills and connections, we have emphasized that we are not building a school for the community but with the community. Students from the US and around the world (particularly Goldman Sachs Global Leaders) are learning about development by-hand. Challenging? Absolutely. Fulfilling? Absolutely. Exciting? ABSOLUTELY!

Muhuru Bay is located in the Nyanzi Province which is the hometown to Senator Obama from Illinois. Throughout the newspapers, there were three headlines: Bill Gates arrives in Rwanda, former Kenyan President Moi gets knee surgery and U.S. Senator Obama’s upcoming visit.

While bumping along the road, I turned to the editorial page. The title of one of the articles in bold, black, crisp print read: “US Senator and Wife – Are they even Kenyan?”

As I read through the article, I was expecting comments about affluence, Western ideals, maybe even a little joke or comment about appearance. I was taken off guard. The entire article spoke about his wife.

One, she was too skinny to be a Kenyan woman – only large women are seen as healthy wives because their size proves that their husbands feed them adequately. The size of Senator’s wife proves that he is not a good husband.

Two, she cannot carry water on her head or cook Kenyan food. How can she call herself a woman if she can neither of the two most important roles for women in Kenyan society? I will remind you, that this is not me talking, but an editorial in the Standard Newspaper in Kenya.

Three, how can she let her husband sink so low as to possibly be under a women as the possibility exists he may run as vice president with Hillary Clinton. I quote, “Never should a man be under the authority of a woman, never.”

Case closed. I looked out at the road which had turned again from pavement to dust. The path switch-backed frequently overlooking a land known as Muhuru Bay. We came around a bend and there it was – the African sunset. If you have seen the opening scene of the Lion King and the Circle of Life, I know exactly where they got their inspiration. The sun took up half the sky. Two islands in the lake made silhouettes in its sunset.

Alan Paton, author of Cry the Beloved Country, got it all right. The land is what makes Africa. And as we pulled up to the house and greeted the Duke team of seven girls and my professor, I looked up into the sky which had turned to a blanket of stars. The Milky Way was easy to spot. I felt like this was it. This was the community where I was meant to be. I had prayed all summer long beside Mother Teresa’s tomb for this opportunity, and now I was in the moment. We were here to learn how to improve girls’ education and the betterment of the community at large through such an endeavor.

Pastor shifted the car into reverse as he pulled out of the Rabwao School compound, the only mixed secondary school in the community. As the care moved backwards, I felt my summer moving forward in a new direction.

And it was time to put the pedal to the metal.

Come Rain, Sleet, and Snow – Serving as the Sisters’ Mailman

Monday July 17, 2006

I had thirty-two letters from the Sisters in Kolkata to deliver to one address:

Missionaries of Charity
Nairobi, Kenya

And time was not on my side. I had a total of three days in Nairobi before I flew back to New York with only two more days upon my return to Nairobi before I traveled to a rural community, Muhuru Bay, to begin work establishing a boarding school for girls. But I had promised the Sisters in Kolkata that I would pull through. Zipped up in a clear plastic bag, I carried all thirty-two messages through the security gates in Kolkata, within the airport terminals of Mumbai, across the tarmac when we had to switch airlines suddenly, and finally touching down at Nairobi’s international airport, with a giraffe greeting us out of our window.

Getting settled was quite easy after being greeted by Pastor Odhiambo, the husband of one my professor’s best friends and the reason why many of us were coming to Kenya – to research girl education in Kenya and begin the steps to creating a model boarding school for primary and secondary aged girls in one of the most rural communities.

But before such work began, I had to deliver.

Asking Franklin, one of the sons of Pastor Odhiambo who sounds like Sting when he sings, I was told to take Matatu number 12 into the city center, walk across the city, catch a larger Matatu number 48 until it reached THE Catholic church, walk through the slums of East Nairobi until you hit a street called, “Mother Teresa Road.”

“You can’t really miss it once you get close.”

Hopping into a Matatu, for those of you who may be unfamiliar with the term, is like hopping into a mini-nightclub on wheels. Picture a small Volkswagen van that has managed to fit 14 seats in its back interior, add six speakers that are usually located directly in front of your face blaring the latest rap songs of the early 1990s, and start swerving ferociously in and out of traffic making the passengers sort of sludge to the right and to the left while grazing the metal ceiling of the van, well at least I hit the ceiling, and you have a Nairobi Matatu.

After getting out of number 12, I proceeded to walk through the streets of Nairobi. I had been placed into a mini-replica of Albany, New York, or Raleigh, Durham – both of which are capital cities in the states with skyscrapers that indicate importance without necessarily the most wealth in the country.

Nairobi was clean. I could breathe. I could see blue sky. The weather was cool. The people were dressed in suits and ties. Women carried brief cases. A few carried items on their heads from the outer regions to sell at the market. Taxis were white. And the pace was Western, even American at times, or at least it seemed. I walked past Nike stores and ‘Citi Hoppas’ – busses that looked like they were from the American Grey Hound terminal in New York. The 26 story Hilton Hotel was the last straw. I had been transported into a city of progress, change and modernization. Although there were streets with beggars and fruit stands similar to Kolkata, the overall character of the city was quick and new.

And then I hopped into Matatu number 48 and headed towards East Nairobi. I watched as the landscape of the buildings turned from skyscrapers to slums. The clean, glass windows devolved into small cardboard huts. More women carried water buckets on their heads and pieces of charcoal in their hands. Small streams of water and feces trickled through the mud pathways that started from the elevated main road winding back into the recesses of bottomless pit known as poverty.

I bounced in the Matatu, hitting my numerous times on the metal ceiling, listening to M&M sing “Will the real Slim Shady please stand up, please stand up, please stand up...”

The bus stopped and the driver told us to get out. Squeezing my legs through the fourteen other passengers, I fell out of the van onto the street, stumbling here and there. I began walking through the slums which I had just watched from the safety and comfort of the main road. Now, I was hopping the streams of feces and walking alongside those who were forced to call this home.

I saw a steeple a ways beyond the steeple and knew that was my final destination. Where there’s a church, there are usually some Sisters. Carrying my zip lock bag, I felt like a mailman – except instead of snow, sleet and rain, I was pushing through mud, feces and disease. But for some reason, I was used to it. Kolkata was almost five times more poor, dirty and impoverished. There were more skeleton bodies, enlarged bellies of children, and beggars grabbing your legs for a few rupees or pieces of fruit. The point, though, was that even though there were not as many men with ribs piercing through the skin, children running with pop bellies or women lunging to hold a hand that has money to give, they still existed, and that was enough to know poverty is poverty. A man dying in India is the same as a man dying in Kenya, is the same as a man dying in the United States. Death comes, but the world has a choice how to time that death – ignore each other’s need and we have become murderers by negligence. Acknowledge the needs of others and we begin to respond to the crisis of these developing countries.

In the time period of less than thirty minutes, the quick, new, and modern Nairobi had been stripped of its guise and exposed of its fall-out – in a sense, the Kolkata of India, the Bronx of the United States, and surprise, surprise, the home of another chapter of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity.

Turning right on the road marked with a blue and white street sign, “Mother Teresa Road,” I continued to walk through trash, cramped huts, and crowded streets. The kids ran behind me with my fiery red-bolt of hair and blinding, white, pale skin chirping, “Mazoongo, Mazoongo,” over and over again, meaning white-man in Swahili.

I passed a shop where silver buckets had been filled with pyramids of charcoal, meant to be sold by the end of the day, children running through the street with GAP sweatshirts and t-shirts carrying sugarcane in their hands, and women everywhere carrying huge sacks of anything on top of their heads, focused and unphased by the random potholes in the mud road.

And then I saw them – the gates. The gates that marked every home of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, the gates that are not erected to divide, but instead to designate the entrance of a community- a community of givers and doers, the Sisters in white and blue, what had become my extended family. Immediately, my thoughts raced back to New York and Kolkata – I was about to enter the third home of the Sisters and witness and participate in learning how to serve the community in which they live.

Knocking on the gates, I heard its echo through the streets. A small Sister, as they all are, came up to the gates and asked my name and my purpose. I held up the zip lock bag and told them my name. Smiling excitedly, the Sister opened the gate and I stepped into what can be best described as an oasis in the middle of hell.

Outside of these gates, like most houses of Missionaries of Charity, is a dump, a sea of disease, a street of the dying. But inside, it usually beams of warmth, care, and comfort. But this compound was different. It was beautiful. It was like stepping onto a colonial resort – colorful, simple, and yet so clean and fresh with green vegetation and flowers sprinkling all of the buildings.

The day school for the children was just letting out and we saw each of the students step out of the classroom and walk down to their residential houses. Each student was no more than three feet tall, wearing baggy jeans and pants with sweaters and sweatshirts on top. They waddled like penguins, shifting their weight from one side to the next. All of them were orphaned by their parents, mostly due to HIV/AIDS. I looked on as they spotted the compound, gently – ever so gently.

Then I looked up and almost erupted in excitement. It was Sister Alexandria. Standing at around 5 feet tall, wearing silver glasses, and the well-known sari, I could not believe what I was seeing. I had met Sister Alexandria in the Bronx, New York, actually she was one of the first Sisters I had met throughout the summer. She was the one who opened the door and welcomed me into the first house of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity.

I ran over to her, literally bouncing over the waddling three and four year-olds, and grasped her hand.

“Hello, Andrew, I was expecting you.”

“What?” I asked.

“You told us you would be in Kenya in July, so I knew I would see you again. And, well, here you are!”

Are you kidding? It was like seeing family again. We were joined by the Superior of the compound.

“I’m sorry, sir, but visiting hours are closed for the day and we do not accept many volunteers, you will have to come back—“

“Sister, he was with us in New York two months back, and then he was in Kolkata for the last month and bit. And, Andrew, what are these?” she asked, pointing to my clear-plastic zip lock bag.

“Letters from Kolkata.”

The Superior let down her guard and just started laughing and smiling and welcoming as if I was a Sister arriving for the first day. We began catching up on the Sisters in New York and India, somewhat name dropping here and there, and then diving into updates. “Sister Vandetta?” I would ask and Sister Alexandria would begin telling me about the shelter and how the head cook changed, but she was the one who trained her, etc. etc.

I was gossiping with nuns. Who would have thought?

It was about 2 pm and visiting hours were from 8-10 am. It was like being family. Rules don’t really apply. The Superior of the compound then offered me a walking tour of the facilities. If I were to compare the Bronx, Kolkata and Nairobi, I would relate them to the different degrees of how great hotels are, according to budget and many times location.

The Bronx was like a Holiday Inn, fairly large in scale with many rooms to accommodate their guests, but definitely on average a 3 star hotel. Kolkata was more like a run-down Motel with limited capacity for hosting guests and on average a 1 or 2 star rating. Nairobi, however, was like the Hilton in Times Square, five stars for service, comfort and atmosphere. The atmosphere was fresh and new. It was like returning to downtown Nairobi, right in the center of the dirtiest slums in all of East Africa.

Sister brought me to the school where orphans and street children are given daily school lessons for free. All the backpacks, clothing and food are donated by local Kenyan citizens and churches. The kids look healthy, warm and happy. Across the garden was the house for mentally handicapped women ranging from 15 to 87. Their bed spaces were immaculate, soft and to be honest, huge. The kitchen looked like an industrial complex under one roof having the capacity to cook for more than 500 people for one sitting. I met the women in the commons area, where most were preparing the vegetables or sewing for the evening.

Out the door and down the steps was a marvelous playground. A Fisher-Price paradise, if you will. Fluorescent blues and pink slides, mixed with purple swing sets and red clubhouses. It was like any other American park, really.

We then stepped into a long hallway with green and white square tiles, on which my sneakers squeaked on its immaculate surface. Inside was another sea of beds. These were made for physically handicapped children ranging from 6 yrs. Old to 23. At the time I entered the room, all of them were laying on one huge mattress where a few nurses were doing what appeared as physical therapy with individual students.

I decided to kneel down and begin helping. The Sister was a little shocked that I wasn’t afraid of touching the kids. She even chuckled, “You know, there were only a few people so far that have actually just gone in and touched one without being pushed by us. What is it with touch? Are people really afraid of it?”

I had seen it, too, way too often. Volunteers in Kolkata were just afraid of physical touch – not because they were afraid of touching another human, but afraid of a.) getting what the patient had b.) hurting the patient c.) not really knowing what to do once they do touch the patient and d.) justifying in their minds that staring was better anyway. And looking into a patient’s eyes is one thing, but after being in the ICU just for two days in a foreign land, alone, I began to realize the power of touch.

Touch is what connects you with others. A hand in another hand is a universal sign for trust, care and acknowledgement. That’s why when the Sister said she was surprised to see me jump right down with the children, I just said, “Give me your hand,” to which she hesitated, and I said, “You see, even we hesitate with each other, but it was a little less hesitation than when we just met each other a moment ago.”

After a couple of hours with the kids, we went across the quad and visited the orphanage. As a boy, I was never allowed to visit the orphanage in Kolkata. Why? Who knows. But in Nairobi, I was welcomed into the most soothing and colorful nursery I have ever seen.
Ladies from the communities, many of which have about five kids of their own, spend shifts of eleven hours helping to feed, clean, and play with the abandoned children. The floors were clean enough to lick with your own tongue. And it was warm and quiet. Although there was an occasional cry for attention, the kids were at ease and so were the ladies working with them.

It was about five o’clock and I did not want to be in Nairobi after-dark. So I thanked the Sisters and told them I would return the next two days and then one or two days when I returned from the states.

As I was leaving the compound I could not help but think – this organization has their act together – Sister Act. They know three secrets that I think more non-governmental organizations could learn from:

Know your purpose and reiterate your purpose over and over again. Although most volunteers who walk through the doors of Missionaries of Charity either in Kolkata or in Nairobi are not Catholic, they know it is a Catholic institution with faith as the foundation to their mission. You do not have to be Catholic to be served, but rather to respect those around you and be open to God’s blessings. The Sisters are here to give and to serve with all that they have. Each volunteer knows that he/she will not be able to give what the Sisters can give, but it does not matter to the Sisters. Their purpose is to help feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and educate the young. Whether it is in India, the Bronx, or Nairobi, the Sisters are among the strongest movers and shakers of our time.

Accept all Volunteers and run it like a Business. The Sisters have mastered the capacity to absorb volunteers, locally and internationally. They never say no to help and they put volunteers to work, immediately. The Sisters do not care if a volunteer works for a day, a week, or a year – they will treat them with the same gratitude and expectation as they do with each other. If more NGOs had the capacity to attract volunteers and allow them to, as Mother Teresa termed, “Come and See,” more NGOs would be at the worldwide status as the Missionaries of Charity. When you ask many of the volunteers about how they heard of the place or of the work of the Sisters, many of them simply say, “Well, we know that there is a Missionaries of Charity in almost every major city in the world, so we just look for it – it gives us a chance to serve while also on vacation – doing and seeing, that’s what we like to do.”

This sort of volunteer-tourism environment initially made me uncomfortable. But in the end, the returns are much greater than the costs. More people spread the news of Mother Teresa’s mission. More money comes as a result. In addition, the constant flow of volunteers keeps the Sisters accountable in many ways to their practices and treatment programs. Volunteers, in a way, have become a sub-mission of Mother Teresa by allowing the average student all the way from Vermont be able to experience and witness humanitarian action on a whole new level than any textbook or documentary could ever be able to capture.

Never get too Cozy. The Sisters’ greatest strength is their motivation to look for new ways to help serve. Instead of keeping the men’s shelter at Prem Dan simply a men’s shelter with improved facilities, they saw the old facility as a chance to create a new service – a school for the street children surrounding the compound. “Never get too cozy,” said Sister Corina in Nairobi, and her words echo throughout New York and Nairobi. The Sisters are always pushing for ways to expand and to improve upon their existing services. I think many of us who get into our comfortable routine could learn a lot from the various means by which the Sisters constantly move into the uncomfortable, the area in which you begin to take risks, begin to experience the unknown, and as a result, grow because of it.

As I was walking out of the compound, Sister Alexandria came rushing up to me with a huge smile on her face. She said that one of the letters I had delivered was for her.

I wanted to ask what the letter was about, but I decided it was better for me not to do so. I grasped her hand again and walked out the gate, back into the swarming doldrums of humanity.

A metal latch sounded behind me and Sister poked her head out. “Brother Andrew, you didn’t ask what my letter was about.”

“You’re right,” I said, “It’s good enough I actually got it to you.”

“My Sister had a baby!”

Smiling and I leaped into the air and said congratulations and ran back to her and clasped her hands. She was smiling wildly as was I. The rest of the street looked on from their huts and charcoal mini-stoves – they watched as a 6’5 white, red-headed American rejoiced with a 5 foot-Asian sister about the greatest miracles on earth – life.

If only the streets of Nairobi could be born again.

Mother Teresa's Sari and Arrival in Kenya

July 7, 2006

This will be short as my flight for New York leaves soon. However, I needed to update the blog with a brief reassurance that I am fine. Actually, I am more than fine. I am the most pumped I have been in my entire life.

Traveling around Kolkata on my last day was one of the most moving and challenging experiences thus far. It was the toughest thing to say goodbye to those who I have come to love dearly. On my last visit to Sister Corina, the Sister in charge of volunteers, she asked me to wait for a moment downstairs while she got something from the convent.

A few minutes later she returned with a small card in her hand and told me that it was for me. I looked at the card and it was a small prayer with a piece of cloth laminated on the front.

"This is a piece of Mother Teresa's sari when she died. A dear friend gave it to me and now I want you to have it." Tearing up, I did what is not allowed with Sisters. I gave her a hug. I did it quick before she could stop me and I told her that this was the best gift I have ever received in my entire life.

Traveling with Mother's sari through the airports on the third and fourth of July, I felt safe and renewed. Although my ears and nose are still congested, my stomach is perfectly fine. My fevers are gone. And I am now in Nairobi visiting the Sisters and living with a family that has proven to be even more amazing than I ever thought possible.

I cannot wait to return to Nairobi with Rachel Gartner, a student from Washington University and a high school calculus study-buddy. We will be working with the Sisters for the first week, but guess what? We're going to be traveling to the rural village of Muhuru Bay and begin our Dream Big sessions with the community members, girls, school officials, and other stakeholders to begin the process of building a school for girls. I just typed the agenda to be given to the members involved today and I am overwhelmed with excitment, anxiu\ousness and pure energetic bliss.

Kenya is more beautiful than I ever imagined. Nairobi is incredible. And well, I am now in love with the country that I am luck enough to be returning to for 5 1/2 weeks on the 16th. The African landscape just puts the Lion King to shame.

Now, I am off to New York for the Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Program where we will be meeting with leaders from the international community such as Kofi Annan, diplomats and President of Goldman Sachs among others. I am thrilled to have this opportunity, but unfortunately will not be able to update the blog until I am back in Kenya.

Thank you for all of your support and if the last days of Kolkata were a little low in terms of sickness, I have rode the roller coaster of life back up to the top and am ready for an amazing time with the next set of twists and turns lined up ahead.

All my best from Kenya and the airways between here and NYC.

Best,
Andy

Being Admitted into the Intensive Care Unit

Friday June 30, 2006

“I need to go to hospital,” I whispered to Dillip, as I wobbled out of my bedroom after throwing up another five times. I could not stop. Nothing was staying down. Not water. Not tea. Not toast. Nothing.

“Are you sure?” He reached over to his TV tray with his crosswords and pulled out a cigarette and lit it up. He puffed it quickly.

“I’m sorry, but I need Diya to be here, now.” I sniffed the smoke and felt like I was going to throw up again. I quickly ran back to my room and over the toilet. How could there be anything left to throw up? And yet there was. My stomach was sore, my eyes felt heavy, and I felt like I was going to pass out.

I heard Dillip call Diya and say something quickly in Bengali. Now you have to know that Bengalis are known for being over-emotional and very sensitive to anything that goes wrong in the family. I could just picture what Diya was thinking as she got the call while watching the Germany v. Argentina game in a bar with Stephan, the German student staying in the flat above me.

Within less than five minutes, I heard the front door open and slam shut. Footsteps. She opened my bedroom door and saw me laying on the bed in my Addidas shorts and nothing else. I definitely had a fever in addition to a stomach that was just vicious. She put down her purse and came over.

“What’s wrong, Andrew? What’s the matter?” She asked it in a pretty frantic manner, but one that felt like a Mom or a Gramma rather than a stranger.

I told her that since four o’clock, my stomach had been acting up again. And ever since she left for the bar, I have been in the bathroom heaving over the seat of the toilet.

She immediately took her Nokia phone and dialed up the doctor. Hanging up the phone she said, “Ok, let me call Muni (her daughter). We’re going to bring you to the hospital.”

Diya rushed out of the room. She yelled for Bulti, Baboo and Dulshi, the maid and her kids to help me in the room. They rushed in with glasses of water and stripped the bed of the old sheets. They took a facecloth and put it on my neck. They switched on the fans and air conditioning. Nothing, though, helped. I felt like I was going to pass out.

“Andrew?!” Diya snapped.

“What?” I barely remember asking.

“We’re going now,” and she motioned towards the door. I grabbed my red EMS shirt and slipped on my Nike blue slippers. I hobbled down the stairs, feeling like I was going to throw up again in the stairwell, but Diya had given me this spice that was supposed to stop the nausea. It tasted like shit.

I crawled in the back seat and just sprawled out. The digital clock in the front seat read 10:40 pm. Muni was supposed to be packing to go to Bangkok the next morning. Diya had asked me earlier what it meant to wear “Formal-Casual” wear to a conference. Now, Muni was driving me to Bellvue Hospital.

The car pulled up and I was lifted up by Diya and escorted to the Maidon’s office where I remember sitting down for a few minutes before being lifted up again and led towards the elevator. I sat on the little red stool that was in the lift and when the doors opened, all I could see was one big sign in bronze letters against white marble.

Intensive Care Unit.

The doors opened and three nurses came forward. They talked to Diya for a brief moment and all I heard was, “Yes, I am his legal guardian.”

“Where would I be without Diya?” I thought. They wheeled me into a private room that looked like any American hospital bed. Three nurses scurried around my bed as I curled up and began shivering on the white sheets. It must have been quite a scene – a tall red-head crawling into their hospital in the late hours of the evening with brilliant red shorts and a red short. I did not exactly blend it at all.

I felt like I was going to throw up my entire stomach. I sat up, feeling my abs convulse and again out came green and yellow bile. I was no longer throwing up food. It was bile, straight from my stomach. I was exhausted and all could think was how yesterday I was playing God, telling the curious boy to trust blindly in me instead of venturing into the forest.

I slammed my body back on the bed, still shivering from the fever that had grabbed my entire body. I didn’t know what was happening. Never had I felt this sick. Never. What was it?

A doctor dressed in a yellow-checkered shirt and with a cleanly shaved bald head walked in and took my pulse and looked at my face and eyes. He then asked me to open my mouth and show him my tongue.

“Completely dehydrated, we’re putting you on drips, now.”

He then firmly said a few directions to some nurses and they quickly scurried to get the IV and drip together. I felt the puncture of the needle and it slide into my vein. I don’t think they put any pain killer before it. Then I began to feel the drip going into my arm. I still shook. I still felt like I was going to throw up. But at least I knew I was not going to die of dehydration.

A second doctor came into the room accompanied by Diya and Muni. They all gathered around my bed. Since I had arrived, I had been hooked up to a heart monitor with three patches on my chest and stomach and the drip. I was, after all, in the ICU. The doctor took my wrist and told me they were going to take some blood tests.

“What is it?” I asked between shivers.

“Well, I don’t know yet, but we’ll get you back, we’ll get you back.”

“Quickly, please.” I asked.

Diya took my right hand since my left one was on the drip. She squeezed it and said, “Ok, Andrew, we’re here, we’re fine.” And then walked out with the doctor.

He came back after a few minutes and said he was putting in medicine to calm my stomach.

“Not yet,” I asked, “I think I have to throw up just one more time.” The feeling right below your rib cage and above your top ab felt like it was rumbling to release one more round.

“No, we’re going to send it through the IV, now, you cannot lose anymore fluids.”

“But,” I argued, “I need to throw up one more time. Just wait for a few minutes.”

“We’re putting it in.”

Damn-it! I thought. I was in pure pain and the doctor was not listening. I knew my body. But nonetheless, the medicine was put into a syringe and then transferred through the IV.

I felt it travel through my arm into my system. After fifteen minutes, it still felt like I needed to throw up and I would push myself up from laying down and hover over a bed pan, but I could not physically even burp. The medicine was working, but it was dulling the feeling that I needed to throw up.

Over and over, it felt like I needed to throw up but could not. It was about 1:00 am and Diya and Muni had gone home, telling me “to be a good boy” and that they would be back in the morning. The doctor said to try to rest and he would see me in the morning. He said the medicine should start working soon.

It was 3:00 am when finally I felt that familiar tingle in the back of your jaws and beneath your ears indicating you are about to throw up. The medicine must have worn off and sure enough, the last batch of bile came up. The nurses rushed in to see what was going on when they heard me choking up green and yellow crap. I finished and literally collapsed. I don’t remember anything afterwards except the nurse opening the curtains and seeing a pink sunrise.
I grabbed my stomach and the pain had subsided. It was sore and definitely tired. But the sensation of soft-balls passing through my intestinal tubes had stopped. I also didn’t feel like I was going to pass out. By no means did I feel completely better, but if I had to put it in a percentage, I had gone from feeling like 4% to 50%.

The doctor walked in and sat next to me on my bed. He looked down and took my wrist again. He told me that the blood tests came back fine except an elevated level of an enzyme in my liver and that he wanted to monitor that, but no big worries about that. He said that I had a case of heat stroke combined with food poisoning.

The food poisoning had caused me to start throwing up and the heat stroke and caused me to continue and added the fever symptoms as well. He said I was lucky to have come in when I did because dehydration and heat stroke can take a severe turn for the worse very quickly.

I could not believe what I was hearing. What if I wasn’t at the Sens’ house? What if Diya didn’t know of a private hospital which had a room in the ICU? What would I have done if I was staying in a hotel alone?

The doctor said he was ordering an ultra sound just to make sure my liver looked alright and he was putting me on an antibiotic plus some lactobasil which should continue to calm down the stomach.

“Is this going to calm down quickly?” I asked.

“Hopefully,” he said and let go of my wrist and stood up to leave.

I watched him move through the curtains out into the marble floored and fluourescent lit hallways. Then I noticed there was a frame on the wall with something written on it.

I squinted my eyes because it was fairly far away from where I was seated and with the IV and my exhaustion, getting up wasn’t really an option.

“Make….me….an…instrument….of …. Your….peace.”

“St. Francis of Assisi.”

No. That couldn’t be. I looked at it again. Sure enough, “Make me an instrument of Your peace. – St. Francis of Assisi.” There was only one mantra that I used throughout my life when things got tough – when friends or family passed away, when tasks got too stressful to handle or if I felt just lost or overwhelmed, and it was just that, “Make me an instrument of Your peace.”

I stared at the frame for almost a full half hour when the nurse came in to check my blood pressure and heart rate. Every hour, to the minute, they came and updated their charts. “Normal,” they would say with a sweet grin and a nod of the head.

It turns out that Bellvue is a private hospital that is only open to exclusive members that are recommended by only a select few of doctors. All the nurses are actually Catholic Sisters of a special order where they are trained as nurses in addition to committing themselves fully to the religious life. I was literally in the best hands, possible.

Strange, though, how it felt that the tables had been turned. Instead of bringing urine bottles or commodes to men at PRem Dan, now I was asking for such items and waiting for a nurse to pass by to ask for a glass of water or to rearrange the curtains to keep the sun out. I had been put in the shoes of those that I have been working with for the past two months at Prem Dan.

The commode, of course was freezing as was the urine bottle. But overall, I could not complain. I had gone through five bottles of drip so far and according to the doctor I had another four, at least, to go. “By the look of your tongue and your urine, you had almost nothing left.” The room was clean and cool and I felt like I was being treated royally. I wondered what all of this was going to cost. But before I could think of that, Diya stepped into the room with her bare feet. They make you take off your shoes before entering the ICU.

She came around to my bedside and asked how I was doing. I said that I felt a ton better, but still exhausted. “You will not go to Kenya,” she said in her motherly tone.

“Diya,” I told her, “I think I will be able to go to Kenya, I’ll just rest there, we’ll see, it’s only Saturday. I’m leaving on Monday. Let’s just focus on now and we’ll see.”

“Ok, ok,” she said. You could tell that she had not slept well the past night by the look of the bags underneath her eyes. Visiting hours was from 9:30-11 am and 4:30-6:00pm. I looked at her watch since I didn’t have one. It was 9:31. She came right away to see how I was.

“Here, I brought you something else.” She took out my cell phone from the purse. I had given it to her when I left the house along with credit cards and wallet. It turns out that she needed the passport as well when I got to the hospital, but she made a white lie through her teeth saying that the doctor already had it just to get me admitted as soon as she could. She smiled when she told me how sly she had been.

I smiled back. Who was this woman? How did I end up in her house? She asked the nurses if I could use the cell phone to call home and after shutting off my heart monitor they said, “Go ahead.”

I called home and it was great talking with my Mom, but as strange as it sounds, it felt as if she was already in the room with me with Diya around. She also did not sound as alarmed or upset as I had expected. It seemed that almost every fourth of July when she was up at our cabin in Vermont, something like this happened. But at least she had the support of my other cousins, uncles and aunts. I hated calling her when something was wrong because seriously, what could she do but worry some more? And I hated worrying her anytime. But, as I said before, I think she felt much more at ease knowing Diya was there and that she had put me in a hospital not only with clean floors and facilities but a framed quote from St. Francis of Assisi.

After saying goodbye, two nurses came into the room and said I was being taken down for my ultra sound. Diya said she would go with me. As I was being rolled out of the room on a stretcher that was two sizes too small as my shins and feet dangled off the end, Diya said that Stephan had also come to visit me and was waiting downstairs.

“What?” I asked.

“Stephan came,” she said, “he wanted to make sure you alright.”

I had taken Stephan with me to the Lady of the Queen of the Missions and Nabo Jibon, but besides that, we had not really even hung out. He worked all week at the German-Indian Chamber of Commerce and was 28. I constantly teased him about getting married after being with this girl for 6 years. But to hear that he had come to visit and see if I was alright was not just a kind thing to do, it was moving to know that someone who I barely even met would take the time from his job to see how I was.

I was backed into a crowded life with Indian men and women on all sides of me. The door opened after lowering four floors. It was the lobby. I should have known this. Just like the last doctor’s office I went to, all the special instruments and x-ray machines were on the first floor. I was rolled out the door and into the crowded lobby of Indians.

It was surely being wheeled through the sea of people, trying to get appointments, medicines, or even a room in the hospital. I looked up and saw the two nurses and then just dozens of Indians pushing here and there to get around the 6’5 obstacle. Then Stephan’s face poked out and as silly as it sounds, it was reassuring to see a foreigner’s face.

“What the hell did you do to yourself?”

“Congratulations,” I said in return, “Germany beat Argentina. What a game.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, “But are you alright? Why are you in the ICU?”

“Actually, Stephan, I’m pregnant,” I told him coolly, “I need to go and get an ultrasound.”

“What?” he asked.

I knew I was confusing him and not answering his questions but that’s the way I get when I feel that I am the sick one or hurt one – avoid serious conversations because it wasn’t worth it when you had someone to joke around with.

Stephan and Diya had to back away from the bed as they wheeled me into the room with the ultra sound. What a surreal experience being able to see your liver, pancreas, gall blatter and other organs in the black and white screen. No kids, though.

They wheeled me out after cleaning off the gook they put all over my stomach.

“How was it?” Stephan asked like a big brother.

“Twins. Fraternal,” I said.

He hit me over the head. I thanked him for coming and said that I’ll be better hopefully soon. Though I felt exhausted and that my stomach felt like a bomb had exploded inside of it, I knew that somehow things were going to get better. Heck, they couldn’t get much worse!

Visiting hours finished and I was left alone back in my room. The nurses offered me the newspapers and I did a soduko for the first time in my life. I nibbled on a few biscuits, but mainly tried to begin sipping water. It’s incredible the things we take for granted when we are healthy.

I remember promising myself, when I am healthy again, I will always be thankful to drink water, eat bread and simply swallow and not feel my stomach hurl it back it up.

A gastric specialist and his two assistants visited me and spoke about my results from the ultra sound. My liver size was normal but that I should really check it out once I get back to the states. Nothing to worry about now, though. I asked him if I would be able to fly on Monday.

“Yes, yes, of course.”

I thanked him for the help. He said that all I needed to do now was eat a bland diet and stay on the medicine as your stomach tries to reassemble itself. Right now it’s pretty torn up, he put it. Torn up? Well it sure felt like it.

I stayed over the night and the next evening Diya came with the car. I felt well enough to get off the drip and out of bed. Boy, does your hand feel like it’s reborn when they take that two inch needle out of your vein! Amazing!

I slipped on my “Big-Red” outfit that I had picked out a couple of nights before. I still felt sort of weak, but now I was at least 85-90% better. The 10% would come with another night’s worth of sleep, more fluids and a few more foods except just biscuits. My jaws began to hurt again from all the throwing up, but compared to the stomach and feeling of passing out, I could deal with sore jaws.

I stepped in Diya’s car and she gave me the receipt for the hospital visit. I was just going to pay with the credit card and cash to able to get my records instead of going through insurance and not getting my records until two months from now. But I would still be able to claim the visit with my insurance once I got home. The total came out to $473 including all the antibiotics, various doctors’ visits, ultra sound, blood tests and two nights over in Intensive Care. Amazing, wasn’t it? How expensive American health care has become in comparison.

We arrived home and I looked into my room to see if I could find some new clothes. I found that all my stuff had been moved. Moreover, it had been packed! Turns out that Stephan had actually gone through my room and packed all my stuff in my suitcases and bags. Diya had washed any remaining clothes in the closets and anything they were confused about, they put into a box for me to sort out the day before I left. Was I in heaven? Because it sure felt like it.

I walked out to the living room and thanked Diya for everything. She asked me how I was feeling. I told her that my body felt a lot better besides my jaws and ears, but other than that, I had taken to the medicines well and was feeling like an entirely new person than a few days ago.

“Not exactly the best way to leave India, is it?” I asked Diya.

“Hey, think about it if this happened in the beginning of the trip – you didn’t know us then.”

“So true,” I said.

“Tomorrow, before you leave in the evening, why don’t you just stay in the house and rest?”

I hesitated. I felt horrible because I had not said goodbye to any of the men or students at Prem Dan or my girls at Lady of the Queen of the Missions. I hadn’t even said goodbye to Sister Corina or Liliana or any of the Sister who had helped me so much over the past two months. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I’ll do,” I said to Diya.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

I told her that I really wanted to say goodbye before I left but now because I had been so sick, I was not going to be able to tell. I didn’t even have any pictures with any of the Sisters because I thought I would leave that until the last weekend. That last weekend turned into a two-night stay in the hospital.

“Andrew, how about this – I’ll hire an AC car for you and you can go around and hop out at the different places to say goodbye and the car will just wait until you’re finished. Then you can take the same car to the airport at night. It’ll be about forty bucks, but nothing more.”

It felt as if someone had just splashed water on my face. I lit up. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

And she dialed the number on her cell phone to hire a car for me in which I could say my goodbyes. The last few days have definitely been the best of times and the worst of times, if I may. I have felt like dying and afraid that I had caught some serious illness that would require me to stop my journeys this summer or even worse prevent me from flying for some time. But I have also felt the most supported and loved by friends I have made half-way around the world. I have learned what it was like to be in a hospital in India and you know what? It’s not that bad. It’s actually pretty incredible.

Most of all, I have been comforted by those I have come to call family over the past two months. Maybe it is not the best way to say goodbye, but going to the hospital is definitely the best way to see how close and real your relationships have become.

I sat in my bed thinking about the past few days. And all I could whisper was, “Lord, thank you for making me an instrument of your peace.”

Taxi Strike & Playing God

Thursday June 29, 2006

It was quiet. Really quiet. I couldn’t figure out what was different, but it felt like I was in a different city than the day before. The skies seemed bluer, streets more empty, and pace more relaxed, overall. I looked around and there was one thing missing.

Taxis.

I had forgot about it since the last time I picked up a paper. All the taxis in Kolkata were going on strike in response to the rise in gas prices. And it was phenomenal what a difference it made in the city’s atmosphere, character, and most of all its pulse.

It seemed more relaxed and inviting to the foreigner. I rolled up my sleeves and went to the Lady of the Queen of the Missions by foot, feeling the heat of the sun down on the back of my neck. Strange, I thought, because I had never really felt the heat before with all the exhaust swarming my body from the taxis. Did their exhaust really make that big of a difference?

It was Thursday, my day off from Prem Dan and although LQM was also closed, the girls had asked for a special practice – three hours, from 9-12. With special permission from the Vice Principal, we were given the space in the empty school grounds. It felt like taking a basketball into an empty church – it was allowed, but it just felt different. Without the school for slum children in session, it just felt so private when practicing with the team. Besides a few painters and a janitor, the place was ours.

We returned to our Pistol Pete moves and we actually began playing games. It was outstanding. There was no rain, just bright, brilliant, perfect sunshine. I sweat through my shirt within the first hour while miraculously the girls kept their pristine uniforms dry and pressed as usual. Unbelievable.

During our water break, Raissa, one of the youngest and shortest girls on the teams approached me with a package. I was taken aback by the gift. She had gotten most of the girls’ attention. They crowded around as I opened up the large green envelope. I pulled out a crayon-drawn portrait of me and two girls playing basketball underneath a hoop. It was an incredible drawing for a fifth grader.

“But, Raissa, what is on my hand?”

“Oh, sir, that is a glove,” she said coolly.

“And why do I have a glove on?”

“Um, well, just in case,” she giggled and smirked while craning her neck backwards to look up at me.

I crouched down and thanked her for one of the best gifts I could have ever received in India. Glove and all, this portrait will most definitely be framed and hung right next to my Duke degree, if and when I get it. J

Usually, my day would be over, but I was casted by Sister Corina to play “Shaddai” in a play for Volunteer’s day at the Archbishop’s house at 3:00 pm. Never could one say no to a Sister, but I hesitated about this one a great deal before saying yes.

Before I knew it, I was standing in front of the total 100 volunteers and Sisters wearing a golden robe with a staff that was made out of two duct taped canes playing the role of Shaddai, a carpenter who builds a village for the children and a wall to protect them from the dangerous woods beyond. However, Paladin, the curious boy, finds a hole in the wall which Shaddai had also built and decided to leave Shaddai’s village and venture out in the woods. Although it felt good at first, when he turned back to the wall, he found that the hole was gone. Lost and confused, Paladin realizes that he did not trust Shaddai and calls out his name. Shaddai hears the boy and makes another hole, ventures out, and collects the lost child.

After the play, one of the Sisters approached me and asked me my name.

“Andrew, Sister,” I said, still standing with my golden robe flying underneath the fans.

“You know, Andrew was called before Peter, are you being called to the priesthood?”

Believe it or not, this was the first time anyone has ever approached me about my religion, and I guess, well, I had it coming when I starred in a play where I was representing God, Himself.

I told the Sister politely, “I think I’m called to serve in other ways, but you never do know, do you.”

She laughed and continued on her way. When I was little, I must confess, I did play Priest dressing up in a black robe and using Necco wafers as communion and grape juice as the wine. I guess the play was just a chance for me to return to pretend time.

I headed back to the Sens’ house at around 7 pm after the mass. And something in my stomach was just not agreeinig with my body. I felt like I was going to throw up with every step I took. Normally, I would just get in a cab and be home in less than two minutes. But now, with the strike, I found myself hobbling back to the house stopping every ten steps to see if I would vomit something, anything on the side.

Sweat dripped down my nose and I felt like I was going to pass out. I would have been willing to pay 10,000 rupees if just one taxi pulled up. But there none to be found. Funny, isn’t it? Although I hated taxis almost as much as I hated eating liver, I depended on them. I was lost, with sweat dripping from my arms and legs and feeling like I was throwing up, hobbling back down the uneven streets and crosswalks.

Today I played God and couldn’t even find a taxi back home. How ironic situations sometimes present themselves.

Five Things that Make Me Smile in Kolkata

Wednesday June 27th, 2006

For the past two months, I have spent a lot of time being serious, focused and concerned about those at Prem Dan, in school or on the court. But I have also spent a lot of time smiling, laughing and simply have an amazing time here in Kolkata. Here are a few things that I might not have included in my descriptions of my work with the Sisters, but nonetheless have made me smile just as much and sometimes even more.

I. Talking Newspapers.

I am not kidding. On the front of the Metro newspaper which is an insert in the Telegraph, it always says, “Hello. It’s Thursday.” I find it comforting and amusing at the same time to know that my paper is greeting me in a sense when I read through the headlines. Coupled with the conversational voice of the front page, the international section has also given me an insight into the world of celebrities and Hollywood scandals. I know more about Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, and Brad Pitt than I have ever known in my life. Iraq? North Korea? Sorry, I’m a little bit behind the times.

II. Always Being in a Rush

When you feel the front fender of a taxi on the back of your legs, the usual reaction is not exactly a smile. When you are standing in a line to board an airplane with ticketed seats and all you feel is pushing from behind, smiling is not usually what’s on your mind. And when you are in line for food at a busy market with a slip of paper and a corresponding number of sequence, everyone simply crowds the counter and you at the same time, the usual reaction would be to yell rather than smile. But here in Kolkata, patience is not yet a virtue, at least in the general public. No matter where you are or what you are doing, the push is to get their first, get out the quickest and just simply not be the last one waiting, in line or through a doorway. At first I always got frustrated, almost annoyed at the people who always cut lines or pushed their way through. But then, I began to look at the situations with a different perspective – one that made me see it all almost like an ongoing comedy. And afterwards, all I could do was smile.

III. Getting a Haircut

During my fourth week in Kolkata, I got a haircut. And just the memory of it keeps me smiling today. When you arrive, you are greeted like royalty, being seated down next to a pristine sink where your hair is washed three times. And I thought all there was shampoo and conditioner. I guess there’s more. Next, you are escorted to your seat and then given a glass of cold water or soda at your request. Sitting down in the luxurious seat, you are surrounded not by one, but two men. One has the responsibility of cutting your hair while the second one brushes it off your chest, forehead or lap. At the end of your cut, the barber then continues to move your hair all around until the perfect shape takes from. In the end, you get a full head-massage that leaves you doing nothing except one thing: smile.

IV. Smiling Strangers

At almost every American college campus tour, the student guide always refers to the “smile test” that consists of trying to smile at another student on campus and see if they smile back. If they do, it is a friendly campus. If they don’t, you know otherwise. I tried this method almost every time walking down the streets of Kolkata and 9/10 times I received a smile back. Whether it was my red hair more than my smile, I’ll never know, but almost nowhere else in the world do beggars, businessmen, and students do the same thing when a stranger smiles in their direction: they smile right back. It’s comforting to know that in a city where most of the time you think of words like ‘poor’, ‘dirty’ and ‘sick’ the common denominator of almost all the people in Kolkata begins with an S and ends with an E and I am not talking about space. Smile. Try it.

V. Sister Act

Before beginning my summer travels, I always had images of what it would be like to work with the Missionaries of Charity – what I would say or do around the Sisters. And all I could think about was Whoopi Goldberg and Sister Acts I and II. Well, my thoughts weren’t that far off when during play practice for volunteer’s day, Sister Corina and Liliana, the two Sisters in charge of the volunteers, asked me to teach them the songs I have been singing at the school. They heard that the kids were actually learning them and they wanted to learn to teach to other volunteers. So for the next hour and half, I stood with these two Sisters “chopping bananas” to the banana song and “swimming like mama sharks.” The next day when I came to the Mother House in the morning, I walked through the front door where two Sisters always sit to greet new or old arrivals. And I was shocked to see them both put their fore finger and thumb together and start singing the baby shark song. They told me that the Sisters had taught them last night in the convent. All I could picture were 150 Sisters dressed in a pure, white sari just finishing their Hail Mary’s when all of sudden, they group together and start singing the Banana and Shark songs. If only I could be a fly on the wall during these hours. No matter, because as the day went on, every Sister I saw did the same as the two Sisters in the entryway: Baby Shark! Bananas Unite! I guess Sister Corina told them she learned the song from a tall red-head. And all I could was smile when I saw the Sisters singing and dancing as bananas or sharks. Forgive me Mother Teresa – J

Half an Inch & a Little School Vandalism

Tuesday June 26th, 2006

Half an inch and armpits. That’s what the man wanted at Prem Dan in the morning. He wanted a hair cut where I would leave half an inch of hair and then remove all the hair from underneath his arms. I felt like I needed a certain degree to be able to do the first of the two tasks.

Half an inch? What did that even look like? All that I had done before was simply shave men’s heads which proved to be pretty easy in the end. Just soap the hair, rinse the blade and go with the direction of the roots. And ‘vwala’ you had a shaved head. But half and inch?

I looked at the man and all he did was smile back up at me. He knew what he wanted and by the look of his hair, he had been waiting quite a white to get a cut. I asked him where I could find the scissors. He pointed to the same cabinet as the blades. No, I thought, not those.

Sure enough, he meant the shears. These scissors were literally as long as the distance from your forehead to your Adam’s apple and then some. To think that I would have to use these to cut hair was like trying to use a saw to cut your fingernails. It just seemed impossible. But I grabbed the shears and wheeled the man outside in the wheelchair to the garden – my makeshift barbershop.

I tied the apron around his neck pushed his head backwards to wash his hair. It was healthy. Unlike most of the men here, his hair was thick and now I knew why he wanted a half an inch – he cared about his hair. Then, I looked around his head and tried to think where I should begin. As strange as this might seem, I simply did what I had seen in the mirrors while getting my haircuts back home. First, I began with the edges and left the top until last.

Grabbing areas of hair and pulling them up to cut off an inch, it actually looked like I knew what I was doing. As always, I had audience of about six other men, just watching and waiting. I looked at one of them between cuts and he put his hand up in the “A-Ok” manner. Relief began to set in.

For the next hour, I enjoyed cutting the man’s hair and actually shaping it. I knew why many barbers enjoyed their job. It was relaxing once you got over the fact you were using shears the size of Montana.

I washed his hair one last time and let shaved his armpits, left and then right. Thinking I was through the man then asked, “My face, brother, my face.”

“After I just used it on your armpits? I don’t think so, baba.”

“No, brother, use it, use it.”

“I will go wash it first.”

“No, brother, now, milk and crackers are coming. Now, brother, rinse the blade and go.”

So I rinsed the blade and began my usual sequence of shaving. If only he had asked me to shave his face before his pits. But it was his body. I finished and to be honest, I was quite proud of my accomplishment. Although a fat blister had developed on my right thumb from the small handles of the shears, no blood, cuts, or crazy empty areas of hair resulted from the cut.

I grabbed my phone in my pocket, took a snap shot and showed it to the man. I usually did this with the men I shaved to let them know how they looked afterwards since there were no mirrors in the facilities. The man was pleased and he said, “Thank you brother, now I have, what do you say, steel?”

“Steel?” I asked.

“Yes, stee-eel.”

“Style?”

“Yes! Yes! Brother, style.”

Wheeling him back to the compound the men looked at him with double takes. Usually they just see shaved heads and in some cases, horrible hair cuts with blotches of skin here and there (the worker boys are not very patient at times). But today they saw a man with what he called, “Steele.” And the smile he wore when being wheeled back to his bed was priceless.

I looked up at the clock and realized that it was time for me to go over to the school to begin teaching. I had something special planned for the day. I said goodbye to the men and ventured across the courtyard to my classroom of banana girls and boys.

I had brought a pack of cards today to have them match the numbers and suits to the numbers and shapes I drew on the floor with chalk. The kids loved it and were entertained for what seemed like forever. Interspersed in the activity, of course, a kid would shout out, “Bananas!” and we would sing the banana song.

After the first hour, I decided to do something different than keeping the sits in their seats. I gave a few students some chalk. They were mesmorized by it and the rest of the class just sat in silence, wondering what was happening. I then kneeled back down to the ground and wrote a letter.

I then motioned for the few students who had the chalk to copy the letter also on the floor. Until now, the children had only been allowed to write on the chalkboard. Now, I invited them to use the floors to be their new canvases.

The floors eventually became covered in letters and numbers and it actually looked like an elementary classroom rather than a cement holding cell with a few benches and a desk.

We sat back down I drew a big circle. We were going to learn “In” and “Out” and review “Right, left, hand, foot, knee, and head.” I would say “Right,”…. “Foot”….. “In”… and the students who got it right would put their right foot inside the circle. The students who made a mistake sat back on the bench to watch.

After a half hour, we began singing the “Hokie Pokie” song and the students began to just fly in their understanding of what they were singing. “Put your right foot IN, and put your right foot OUT, and put your right foot IN, and shake it all about.” We hadn’t learned shake yet, but they followed my lead when I shook my foot.

We were on our hands when Sister Corina and Sister Liliana walked into the room. Never had I seen them outside of the Mother House back on AJC Bose Road. What were they doing here at Prem Dan? Furthermore, in my classroom?

I leaped when I saw them and introduced the kids to them and them to the kids. The Sisters humbly said hello and sat down on a bench in the back. They were here to watch me teach.

I could not believe it. They had walked all the way from the Mother House which is a fairly long journey especially in the day’s heat to listen to my songs and lessons with the children. It was if my Mom had walked in because I just felt the most elated I have in almost all my time in Kolkata.

Out of all the places where foreigners volunteer, all the rooms in which they work, and all the other tasks these Sisters were responsible for, they made a decision to come and listen and be with me and my students. I wanted to jump up and hug them both. It seriously meant the world to me that they were there.

We finished our lesson and the Hokie Pokie song and the kids scurried out into the main hall for lunch. Then I rushed back to greet the Sisters and talk about what brought them to Prem Dan. But the first thing they said was, “Andy, what is this vandalism? What is this?”

At first, I got nervous. Maybe it wasn’t allowed to write on the floors. Maybe it was supposed to remain immaculately clean. But I knew the chalk would wash right off with a sponge and I was willing to do it myself.

“The kids needed to be able to write, and I needed more space than a chalkboard. It will wash off,” I said.

“No, we like the vandalism. We want more of it. We want to keep it! How did you do it?”

And I walked around the room telling them the order of which letters I wrote where and why. You could see the children’s squiggly handwriting next to my boldly printed letters. If I were to make wallpaper or carpets for elementary schools, I would definitely hire these kids to make the designs.

We sat in the back of the room with the letters and numbers surrounding us. Both Sister Corina and Liliana laughed as they recalled the songs they just heard me sing with the children. They said they loved being here and so did the students. And to hear that was like receiving a million dollars. It has been challenging in the school, don’t get me wrong. I must sweat off three pounds (which really, I cannot afford) every morning, but it’s worth it. It’s always worth it. To see a kid get it. To hear a kid gain confidence in what he or she has learned. To be there to introduce them to a new concept. To teach, yes, but to learn more everyday from the students and their reactions is what’s worth it.

Half an inch plus a little school vandalism has turned into being the perfect combination to a day that I have labeled as my best day yet in Kolkata.

“Uncle Andy ” – Becoming a Teacher of the Street Children

Monday June 25th, 2006

They just keep coming. Every day there are more. No one knows when they’re going to stop. Nobody knows when it will be time to say no. But as of today, there were 350 students at Prem Dan, with a whole new line of parents waiting with their children at their sides – waiting to be accepted by Sister Antionelle into their new school, their first school, their only school.

I was asked the other day to start teaching longer and with more students. “With more parents and students coming, I need time to register them and so I cannot teach,” said Sister. So, now I teach a group of about 45-60 students (I’ve never really counted) from 9 to 11 and then help feed the children from 11-12.

Now, what can you teach for two hours when you don’t even know the language of the students you are teaching? Nothing, right?

Wrong.

If you’re willing to sweat from head to toe and make a fool out of yourself constantly, then you’ll find that you have more to give than you think, especially when you forget that language is a barrier.

“Good morning, sir,” the children said, as they filed into the classroom, sometimes pushing the other from the behind to get a seat closest my fuzzy legs and oversized hands. I looked down at them as they craned their necks to see my towering countenance. I could tell they were uncomfortable and so was I. The benches were arranged more like church pews than a friendly elementary classroom and the teacher’s desk and chair looked more like a life-guard’s seat than a focal point for children.

“Up,” I said as I stood up, motioning the kids the stand. I reached down and lifted each brightly blue painted bench and pushed them out to the sides of the room making one large pointed semi-circle. “Sit,” I told them, motioning to take their seats in the new formation. Now, I could see their faces and they could see each other’s. What a world of difference a small change will make.

I then crouched down and looked at them eye-level. This is where I would teach. Not at 6’5, but rather at 3’5. When I saw the kids getting fidgety (note that ages ranged from 7-12) I would just bolt upright and say, “Move!” and the kids would sit on the floor. When I said move again, they would sit back on the benches. It was the best ‘reboot’ I have ever seen. Focus was again re-centered.

For the first hour, I taught English songs and thus, words through the songs. ‘Peel Bananas’, ‘Joy to the World’, ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’, ‘Hokie-Pokie’ ‘Baby Shark’, and ‘Twinkle Little Star’. If you actually thought of how many words each of these song had, you would begin to understand just how much English you could teach.

Intermixed between the songs I would use the floor as my blackboard. Huddled around in their semi-circle, the kids would lean forward to see what I was writing. K, O, P, A, B…the students knew how to sing their ABC’s which impressed me, but none of them could identify the letters out of order. Between the songs, it was amazing how much the students retained.

After about an hour, it would be time for math. And back down on the floor I would go. Pulling students from the benches, I would draw a number and have the students try to draw the similar digits. Then, drawing three big circles, I called them “BURROW” HOLES meaning BIG HOLES. Inside these circles, I would place three arms of students, or three legs, or three whole students altogether to introduce the idea of an equation – adding and subtracting. Unbelievably, it worked. And the kids loved it.

Only twice did I have to pick up the discipline stick and only once use it. Just a little pop on the head and the students settled right down. This was what I had to give. Songs, words, and numbers and with a little bit of crazy facial expressions, constant jumping up and down and consistent routines, the kids learned.

I watched as the final group of kids got into their circles. Three in one circle and two in the other. I asked, “Missing?” pointing to the circle with two. The girl in the front yelled, “One! One!” And that was the final “subtraction” equation we completed before it was time for lunch.

The kids filed out, pulling a few of my leg hairs on the way – and immediately sat flat against the walls. For the next thirty minutes, we fed each child a bowl of delicious vegetable dal and bread. I can say it was delicious because the Sister said, “Try it. It comes from the states!”

One of the students in my class refused to eat. His name was Tafrin. Each student wore a white name tag that served as their uniform for school. You could tell from Tafrin that his family had washed him before school and that his clothes were relatively new. He was like many of the students in the school – you knew they were from the streets, but you more importantly, you knew their parents cared by the various necklaces certain girls wore, or the way a child’s hair was haphazardly combed. They tried to make their children look as presentable as possible. And I could see it.

I sat down next to Tafrin and took my bowl. He thought I was trying to give him more and he just shook his head. I then said to him, “Gabre,” which means eat, and took my hands, dug inside my bowl of dal and rice and swallowed. He looked stunned as did the other students around. Tafrin then looked down at his bowl and back up at me. I did it again. “Gabre,” and took another handful. He looked one more time down at his and then looked at mine.

“Gabre,” he repeated and took his hands and dipped them in my bowl, grabbing the food and swallowing it whole. He laughed. So did I. We sat for the next fifteen minutes, eating together making goofy faces in between each bite.

The Sister called the kids together and said it was time to go. They all pushed and shoved on their way out and just like the meal at Nabo Jibon, as quickly as it all had begun, it ended. I picked up the empty bowls and began washing them with a few students who stayed behind to help.

Everything was finished and I said goodbye to the Sister in charge. I looked at the school. It was clean. It was new. But it was also so bland. How could we make it a little more exciting? I would have to sleep on it.

When I opened the familiar steel door to the compound, I stepped out into the fields of garbage that surrounded Prem Dan. I began walking up the cement steps that followed the garbage shoot from the high way when I saw a bunch of kids running from the side slums.

They had no shirts on, only a small piece of loincloth or pair of shorts. “Uncle! Uncle!” they shouted. It was a familiar cry, usually followed by “chocolate,” or “money,” or “please” or “food.” But as the kids got closer, I took another look. They bounced up the steps in front of me and shouted,

“Uncle,”

“Andy!”

“Uncle,”

“Andy!”

“Peel Bananas, Peel, Peel, Bananas…”

They jumped up and down making motions that corresponded with the silly banana song that I taught that day. These were my students. These were not just the street children of Kolkata, but instead they were kids who had a seat in my classroom. They sang rather than begged.

And I was no longer just “Uncle,” I was “Uncle Andy.”