Something amazing happened today. I feel so ridiculously blessed, and I don't know how to thank God enough. When I was first at Kalighat, there was this woman named Barka. I'm not sure whether I ever talked about her. She's pretty young, maybe 35, and I didn't really understand why she was in Kalighat for so long. She seemed healthy, except her foot was always bandaged. We got to know each other pretty well because she used to sing, all the time. Like, she would see me and start singing. In Hindi. And she sang beautifully! She'd follow me around the room with her eyes and sing until I sat with her. When she was tired or upset or in pain, I would sing Sufjan to her, and then her mood would lighten, and she'd sing a Hindi gan (song) back to me. She was super. Then I walked into Kalighat one day, and she wasn't there. I assumed she had been released, because really her foot was the only thing medically wrong with her. She never came back. Weird. ...I'll come back to this in a few paragraphs. :-)
Today, I went to the leprosy center about an hour outside of Kolkata! Woohooooo!
Yesterday, I realized that the trips to the center are the third Thursday of the month, and suddenly was like "oh crap this is my last chance!! Aaaah oh no!" So I went to registration at three, and the sister told me that registration for the trip had been in the morning. I asked if she could add one more. She said absolutely not, because only 25 are allowed. More than 25 is just too many people for the leader of the trip to handle, and the trains are really crowded. I pouted, but understood. No trip for me.
...and then I found out that Peter and his parents (P.S., Peter's parents are here, and I adore them) had registered, so I decided to go anyway, prepared to be sent away if anyone found out I hadn't registered.
Peter and I woke up super-early and walked to Motherhouse. We were supposed to get there for a pre-departure meeting at seven, but we got there near the end of the meeting. My friend Jeff (not Jeff who left [but he's back again], a different Jeff) was briefing everyone on info about the center. Two minutes later, Jeff walked over to me and said "hey, you can lead this, right?" I said no, I hadn't been to the center before, but at the same time Jeff quieted the entire room, pointed at me, smiled, and said "this is Stephanie, she'll be your leader! She knows where she's going, so follow her." What? As everyone began to talk again, Jeff turned to me and said "it's okay, no one I appoint as leader has ever been there before. Don't worry about it." Then he gave me the list of people registered to go to the center, and said "you don't really have to check this, but theoretically you should, just to make sure everyone's here." I checked it. Everyone was here...plus me, the only one not on the list.
At that moment, I kind of felt God laughing at me a little. The reason Sister said I couldn't go was because more than 25 was too many for the leader to handle. And I was the leader. So I had to deal with the stress of keeping track of too-many-people. Plus, I was the only one with the list, which meant only I knew I never registered. Whoa.
I head-counted (27, Sister had let two extra people register, and there was only one no show) and we all hopped on the bus to Sealdah station. I head counted again and we all bought tickets. Then to the train. Counted as they went on the train. While on the train, I suddenly realized that I know Bangla. Okay, I really don't, but what little I know is extremely useful. People in the group asked me to talk with men on the train for them, to purchase fruit and figure out the location of our stop. It was craziness. While on the train, I talked with Jon, a guy from DC who is TEFL certified and taught English in Korea for awhile. Cool.
Forty minutes later, we arrived, head-counted, crossed the tracks, and walked to the Brothers' House. Brief intro. The center is a place for people who have had leprosy to live and work. The center seems fully self-run - there's a giant cloth factory, gardens, huge dorms, a school, etc. Even though leprosy is now fully treatable and curable, it's still a disease that, in India, completely outcasts people from society. The lepers / former lepers need a place to live, so Momma T started a center for them to work, make money, eat, sleep, etc.
Tour time. I quickly realized that I strongly dislike guided tours, and lagged way behind everyone the entire time. First tour place was the...gosh, what do you call a place where people make fabric? Loomery? I don't know. We walked in to the sound of "clickclackclickclackclickclack...". Women rolled thread onto spools, men wove thread into fabric on giant looms. I greeted most women - Nammashkar di. I stood in front of one weaving machine mabobber for awhile, trying to figure out how it worked. I asked the woman. She offered me a try. Absolutely. I sat down and spun and MAN it burned my fingers! I had to use my hand as a corner to brace the thread, and the thread spun super-fast, like a rope burn + paper cut. I yelped. The woman laughed. I asked to see her fingers. They were hard-core calloused exactly where mine were red. We Nammashkarred again, I thanked her, walked on. Took a picture of the giant loom, with permission from the men. They wanted to pose with Peter. They did. Hehe.
Walk walk walk...to a zillion other places. Dyeing room (fabric), nursery (babies!), gardens, prosthetics workshop, classroom (kids!), and a bunch of other rooms. I think I ignored every component of every presentation. I decided it would be better to talk with the people who live in the center. Yep. Definitely. During the fabric dyeing talk, there were four women sitting to the side, eating lunch. They greeted me first - Namaste. I said "kaemon achen," and we spoke for a few minutes. Omigosh, I know enough Bangla to have a conversation. Omigosh. I love Bangla.
Then to the kitchen...same deal. Some presentation, I talked with the people hanging around the kitchen. Then the nursery, and I talked with the women. Then the school..."namaste, chelemeye!" They sang a song. Shundor gan. Everyone was so excited that I spoke Bangla. It was amazing. I talked with approximately everyone I saw. Tours are lameskees. Communication is pandatastic. Granted, I know nearly nothing about the center, but that's okay.
At the end of the tour, we walked through the wards. I didn't talk with the men, 'cause they're men and it's weird for a woman to initiate conversation with men. I had been waiting the entire time for the women's ward, so I could talk with the women. I was jumpy. So excited. I walked into the GIANT ward - maybe 200 beds - and had no idea with whom I should sit. Actually, sitting with them wasn't even in the schedule. We were supposed to walk through and leave. The room was a giant dorm stretching to the right, so I looked to the left and gasped. I don't remember the last time I've gasped.
Barka was sitting on the bed two meters away from me.
I may or may not have shrieked "Barka?!" And she freaked out too. Not as much as me; she was tired. But I think we exchanged "Barka?!" "hya" (yes) about ten times. I sat down, asked her how she was, she showed me her scars from the operation. She had been transferred to here from Kalighat to have med work done. We talked for a few minutes, and I couldn't help gushing in English about how much I adore her. She gave me a "you're being a doofus, but it's nice to see you too" look. Llsdfjkaiosdfjalsdfjsdklafjklasdfjaiosjfklsdafjklsdajfl BARKA! ...and I totally broke the rules and took a picture. She said it was okay. She's raising an eyebrow at me in the photo.
And then I had to leave. I walked out completely dazed. Barka. Gosh it was good to see her. And she looked so much happier than in her last few days at Kalighat. The center is much more spacious. At Kalighat, residents have to stay in bed. Here, they're free to walk around the center, which is a bunch of rooms bordering an outdoor garden.
Wrap-up meeting at the Brothers' House, I gave a quick "here's how we're taking the train back and then the Metro blah blah blah" and then back to the train.
I now understand why having more than 25 people on the leprosy center trip is a terrible idea. Public trains in India are "fit as many as you can," standing. And they only stop for about ten seconds. So when the train came, we jammed everyone in the car. Not too crowded, but we left one Japanese girl at the station. Peter jumped off at the next stop and waited. After about twenty minutes on the crowded train, it got really crowded. Like, squished. Not even "I appear to be pressed in on all sides," but more than that. Like, close your eyes and think about what an orange through a juicer must feel like. Unfortunately, the train was mostly big sweaty men, and I am a woman. And yeah, I'm used to getting groped, 'cause it happens about every day, but that's usually little things, like a hand barely on my butt or a man's arm "accidentally" brushing my chest as he walks by. On the train (only once), I got full-on grabbed. If this had been two months ago, I would have felt violated, frozen up, but not done anything. This time, I punched him. ...not hard, because I'm not really capable of punching people. But he grabbed me, so I punched him, because it's MY body, not yours. Not okay. Rar.
For the rest of the train ride, I shielded the two Japanese girls who were next to me, so they wouldn't get groped. They were freaking out. I was fine, just extremely squished. And after grope number one I decided that no one else would grope me, so I elbowed everyone who inched closer to me. And they gave me looks of sheepish "I thought you wouldn't notice because you're a stupid American girl." GAH. And this guy next to me kept saying "next stop DumDum, move!" when it clearly was not possible to move. Jlsdfkja.
When we got to our stop, it was pushpushpush to leave the train. So I pushed. And four volunteers on the train didn't. Thus, we left two Italians and the two Japanese girls on the train. Fortunately, I had said in my briefing that you could either get off the train at DumDum and take the Metro to Sudder, or get off and Sealdah and take the bus to MotherHouse. There really wasn't anyway to follow them, and they were together, so we waited at the station for Peter and the other Japanese girl, who were on the next train. I felt awful. You know that camp counselor (or parent...) feeling when you lose a kid? Yeah. I had 26 kids. I lost four. They were together, and they're adults (I'm always the youngest one in every group - everyone is usually in their late twenties / thirties), so I figured they'd be fine. Sealdah's the last stop, and it's the station at which we started the day. So they knew where they were. But I still feel irresponsible and bad-mommyish for losing them.
Then we Metroed back to Sudder for lunch. And I napped. And now I'm awake and writing a lot.
I've been journalling a lot lately, trying to figure out exactly how I've changed in India. I've written on this blog before about little changes - working at Kalighat, for example. Before I came to India, and even during the first month here, I consistently said that I would never work at Kalighat. Ever. I said I just didn't have the ability to work with sick people, and especially not dying people. My mom's a nurse. I'm not. I can't do blood or wounds or IVs - aah!
But I've been at Kalighat for two months. And I love it. Not only do I love it, but not once have I thought "ew" or "I need to lie down now" or anything like that. And it's not that I haven't seen heavy stuff - my goodness, I have. There's Kamala, who I was with near constantly right before she died. Now I know what the "death wheeze" sounds like. There's Neda, who I saw dissolve in two weeks due to AIDS. There's this other woman, whose name I still don't know, whose husband poured boiling water over her head - so her entire scalp and chest are completely covered in burn wounds. And then there's Shanti, who Peter found on the street and brought in. She's the one who has wounds all over her body, to the bone. Yeah, that bothers me, just like all of this bothers me. But not in a "aslkfjasdoifj icky" way, rather in a "I hate that this is happening, now how can I help?" way.
My conclusion is this: since being here, I think I've started to learn the meaning of Philippians 4:13 - I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Strength has always been a sort of vague word in my mind. But after all that I've seen at Kailghat, I think I might get it. A little. I don't understand the strength that the men and women at Kalighat have - the sort of strength that causes a dying man to go "nope, don't feel like it today" and eat a ton, start walking, exercise, and leave healthy (true story). I don't understand that at all. Maybe it's something I would have to experience. I do, however, feel a little more in touch with the strength that God has granted me. In my life, strength is being able to do anything God asks of me, whether it's working at Kalighat, teaching a play in a language I don't know, or leading a group of 26 people who only partially speak English to a place I've never been. In India, I've been doing stuff I never thought I'd be able to do. I can't quite think of the word for what I've developed - resilience? No, I think strength is the right word. Yep. I can (apparently) do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And really it really is only through prayer and Bibling and faith and hope and recognizing God in everyone I see that I've developed the patience and endurance to do all this stuff.
Okay, dinnertime.
Oh, I forgot to mention - I talked with a lot of people at the center, which means I touched a lot of people - handshakes and such. Which means I've kind of achieved my goal upon coming to India, which was to hug lepers. Done. I can leave now.
...jk, I love my girls.
Going to the redlight district tomorrow night.
Faith, hope, and love,
Stephanie
P.S. Do I want this tattooed somewhere: আশা
It says "asha," which means "hope" in Bangla.
Hmmm.
