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SPRING STREET INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL |
Related pagesSpring Street International School Excerpt 9 - Calcutta and Mother Theresa’s Home |
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Spring Street International School "Dispatches" from the fieldSpring Street International School Travelers Kai Wilson, Chelsea DeCouteau, Alex Freeman, Sonja Anderson, Ingrid Carlson, Evan Anderson, Zack Milkis, Gabe Colburn and Grant Schwinge Experiential Education journals and tales from afar...
Excerpt Nine - Calcutta and Mother Theresa’s Home A flock of dirty barefoot children were touching us and begging for money. We watched a tag team of extremely thin, dark men in loincloths, graciously carry stacks of twenty bricks on their heads up a twenty foot bamboo ladder. They actually balanced the two stacks of ten bricks on their heads and climbed the bamboo poles with no hands on the ladder and no hands on the bricks. They looked to me to be swaying with the weight, but Finn said they might have carried more if they could reach higher, as they were making their own stacks on their heads. We happily piled into our chauffer driven, air-con van and drove around busy Calcutta, dodging bicycles, three wheelers, cows, and bicycle rickshaws, stopping first at Kali Ghat. This is a temple to Kali, the Lord of destruction. It was a special religious day so the line of people was too long to actually enter the temple. We were pressed in a crowd of Hindus worshipers and, before we knew it, we were witnessing the central attraction in the courtyard, the sacrificing of one black baby goat after another. They were systematically lined up in a little stone courtyard outside the temple. Serious men, standing barefoot in the pool of blood, were holding them one at a time on the chopping block, and whacking off their heads. The meat is cooked for the hungry who sit in the street and eat, and the hides, we saw later from the bus, are piled neatly on the back of a bicycle in stacks of one hundred and delivered somewhere. Curious people who came too close to the block were pushed aside by bloody hands, and red splatters were everywhere. Faithful people who could squeeze close enough between the sacrifices were kneeling and dipping fingers in the blood on the block, touching it to their foreheads. I am sure you know a kids scream sounds like one of our kids. It was a little much for most of our students, but it wasn’t easy to leave as were pressed into the crowd while trying to keep track of each other. We were definitely the only tourists. Finn was holding his day pack in front of him as we were coached to do for security. There were people on all sides of him so he couldn’t see what it was he was tripping over with each step, till the crowd parted a little and he saw a fresh baby goat’s scalp, horns and all. We visited Mother Teresa’s home for the destitute and dying and her orphanage, both of which were very clean and compassionate places. Many of our students were powerfully moved by seeing those rooms of dying people being lovingly cared for in a minimal environment. The Sisters sweep through the hospitals, rescuing patients who are going to die from insufficient care, so they can bring them home. A man we were introduced to had lost his feet, when they were run over on a railroad track. The hospital bandaged his feet, but since nobody came to pay them for his treatment, he was left with unchanged dressings for two months. Now he is almost healed and sits smiling very peacefully on his narrow bed in a room with thirty other men. The sisters all wear a habit like Mother Teresa did, white with blue trim. They have a special bed under a crucifix where they put the person who they think is most likely to die next. That person is never left alone. I met a Scottish man named Jim who is over seventy, holding a patient’s head up and giving him water. I thought perhaps he was a volunteer here for a week as he looked so clean and had such an angelic smile. Then he told me he has lived and worked here for 15 years. I guess I was surprised because he didn’t look exhausted in any way. Clearly the work feeds him. I didn’t have time to visit the women’s room, but Nikki and Peg said there was a really old woman close to death who lay there and sang to them. It moved Nikki to tears. The orphanage was really sweet. The children all packed in happily and calmly. It’s well organized but with a really low ratio of adults to kids. The one- and two-year olds were all in matching madras outfits, dancing to music! There were more than thirty of them in a room with two women. Cutest sight EVER! In the next room, we could see thirty iron cribs painted yellow packed so tightly together I couldn’t imagine how one could walk between them. Our students had fun playing with the older children in the playground. Again, we were the only visitors. Calcutta is so immense and intense, cacophonous and crowded, that we didn’t even stay the night; but took an all night bus to Varanasi. I hope all your kids are writing to you individually, but if they haven’t in awhile don’t be surprised...there is so much going on its a challenge just to maintain ones equilibrium and they are all doing fantastically well at staying clean and healthy and hydrated. We have hot showers in our rooms and a rooftop restaurant with safe food in a hotel for Hindu pilgrims. Outside the air is full of smoke from funeral pyres, the Ganges flows by, and wild and wonderful things are happening in every minute and in every square inch. The last thing I saw before returning to the hotel was Megan and Maria swept into a wedding crowd in the street dancing with arms overhead. Love, Liza Michaelson |
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