Daya Dan (Darjeeling, India)

Up in the sky

I'm now here in Darjeeling, you might know it for its tea. Its also where Tenzing Norgay is from. He climbed Mt. Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary. Anyway, after a very long train ride, almost catching a cold and a curvy jeep ride, I made it. I don't know the exact elevation I'm at, but I'm quite high up. The Himalayan Mountains are the backdrop for this quaint and geographically confusing town.

Hopefully in a couple of days, Melissa, Emilie and I will be going on a 3 day trek through the mountains. Emilie right now unfortunatley has gotten a case of what they call "Delhi Belly"... diarrhea. Poor girl. So hopefully we can leave in a couple of days. At the summit of the mountain where we hike to, we will be able to see Mt. Everest and Kanarchurng (sp?), which is the 3rd highest mountain in the world.

I've decided not to go to Nepal anymore, there's 3 reasons. First one is that I'm a little scared of the politcal problems going on right now. Maoist terrorists are doing periodic bombings, even in the Kathmandu valley. Its getting too cold there to do treks (I didn't realize this until recently). Thirdly, I was going to go there after Delhi, but I've decided to go south instead and see some more of India.

Kolkata

Since I didn't talk about it much my last entry, this is my short experience while in Calcutta, or the real way to spell it: Kolkata. I do plan to be there during Christmas and volunteering again for the Daya Dan House.

Daya Dan is a home where there are 57 orphaned children. Most of them do not have mobile skills, nor do they talk very much. Some are in wheel chairs, some are blind, some are only skin and bones, autistic, cerebral palsy, etc. Each one of them is adorable. At first I didn't think that I would be able to handle doing this sort of thing. Normally I get a little freaked out, but once I got there, there was no turning back. Basically I just went with the flow.

I only did it for 3 days, but it was nice to get into a routine. I hope to do it for at least 10 more days at the end of December. My daily schedule went kinda like this:

Get up at 4:45am
Leave at 5:15 and walk to the "Mother House"
Pray with the Nuns until 6
Mass until 7 (each day there was a different priest, one from Rome, a Canadian who's been there 35 years, and an Indian from out of state).
Breakfast (bananas, bread and chai tea) until 7:30
Take a very bumpy and scary roller coaster bus ride and then a motor rickshaw to Daya Dan, arrive at 8am.

(The first day we realized that there's not very much organization to the place, especially for new volunteers. We (Melisssa and I) just had to kind of figure out what to do. Learn the ropes I guess you could say.)

Clean the beds
Make the beds
Playtime - this is my favorite part of the day. Just going around and talking to the children, exercising their legs and arms. Making them learn how to use their hands, etc. 2 days I just sat around in a circle and sang to them. I couldn't remember kids songs at first, but it all came back to me. There was an older Indian woman who was singing the first time and I wanted to hug her, she was like the stereotypical grandmother/kindergarten teacher type. The other day I was all by myself in the room.
Tea time - 15 minutes to have biscuits and tea
Feeding - this was difficult. 2 days I had this boy named Rajju. I'm not sure what his diability was, but he wasn't very co-operative. It was like basically force feeding him, the resident lady who was there showed me how to do it, but she was very forceful with him and I didn't like doing it that way. Unfortunatley, that's how a lot of the things are done around there, with a lot of discipline and force. Not only is it hard to feed them, they each have a huge plate of food. Its like a 8" pie plate filled with rice, potatos and a banana all squised together. I would hardly be able to finish it. Now think of trying to shove this all down a little boy's throat. Poor Rajju, I think that he is knowledgable of what's going on, he's not stupid, but the ladies are so strict that they finish the whole plate of food. At least they have food.

Feeding would generally go until 12 and that's when shift change comes into effect. The sad thing is that sometimes there's not enough volunteers during the day and hardly any during the afternoon. Its no wonder the ladies (their nicknames are "Mozzy's" and the volunteers are called aunties and uncles) aren't very patient with the kids, not enough time in one day I suppose.

Anyway, I dont' have much time left here. I am happy to be spending Christmas there, it will be a meaningful Christmas for me. I guess that all the volunteers go around to all the homes (there's like 6 different ones) and sing carols and put on a play of the story of Christmas. Its a nice community to be involved with, each Wednesday all the volunteers gather and have discussions. Lots of the volunteers are Japanese and Koran, don't know why that is. I asked this one Japanese man who's in my current dorm and volunteered in Calcutta for 1 year, he said that Mother Teresa is very famous in Japan.

Okay, wish me luck on my 3 day trek.