« Sudder St. Mafia | Main | most epic journey ever »
June 12, 2008
profiles of different homes
now that i've officially seen all of the places where volunteers can work:
shanti dan - school for street kids and center for women who have either been abused, in prison, or have disabilities. the womens' building has 2 floors w a peaceful courtyard w a garden in the middle. we talked to the women, painted their nails, sang songs, washed their hair w lice shampoo, and gave them haircuts. the ones who are able to help out the sisters and masis w tasks like folding clothes and some are allowed to go outside if they want to buy fruit. one woman named mona seemed completely normal except that she shuffled instead of walked and didn't speak. but she understood the masis and vols and could even paint our nails, slowly and carefully, after we did hers.
sishu bhavan - orphanage for kids w and w/o disabilities. it is w/in walking distance from the motherhouse and probably the most popular site along w kalighat. there are about 20-25 disabled children and vols work mostly w the ones who are not as severely affected. using each child's binder, we did exercises w their limbs and made them sit/stand in certain positions. there were also toys for those who could play w them and we helped feed those who needed help.
prem dan - see 1st entry
daya dan - home for children w disabilities. there are 2 floors, and the 1st floor has about 20 boys, all w physical and mental disabilities. some have families but a few are orphans. there are toys and books for the boys, and the vols play w them, help them go to the bathroom, and pass out food at mealtime. when i went yesterday, there was one boy named mongul who may have muscular dystrophy but had one of the best english i've heard from any indian national. he is by far the smartest of all the boys and helps out the masis by keeping the other boys in line. they all listen to him when he tells them to do something in bengali (1 of them is even his special wheelchair-pusher), and yesterday he asked one of the sisters for candy which she gave to all the boys.
kalighat - the only home that i didn't find physically attractive at all. men and women, about 60 each, are separated from each other and vols work w the same gender. usually patients at kalighat don't recover and their conditions can range from severely ill and unresponsive to mentally completely intact and just physically affected. i met a woman there who used to be a school teacher and so knew bengali, hindi, and english and could speak easily. she was in an auto accident long ago and had been taken care of her husband until he died a couple years ago and has been at kalighat ever since.
i'm really glad i got to go to all of the homes, but i don't know how much use i will be at each of them. some places there were far too many vols and at others we were limited in what we could do so the masis mostly took care of the patients. shanti dan makes me exhausted after the mornings, too, so i don't want to over-commit myself only to have to back out again.
i learned something really bad about the adoption process at sishu bhavan. one of the other vols who works there regularly and was here 2 years ago doing the same thing said that the nuns don't tell parents who are adopting the full physical and mental histories of the orphans. there was a european family there earlier this week who were getting ready to take home a brother and sister and suspected that the boy was autistic or deaf b/c of his behavior and he didn't speak. but the nun denied that he was anything but normal and for an hour, she and the parents went back and forth about it. the vol who was translating thought there was something abnormal about the boy, and she said that a few times, adoptive parents have brought back orphans b/c they were disabled in some way but weren't told that. apparently, the nuns don't tell the parents b/c they believe that god will make the child better when he/she gets older. it's absolutely ridiculous that people would disregard science and facts b/c of religious beliefs and completely unfair to potential parents who have every right to know everything about the children.
it's also upsetting b/c actions like these make christianity seem like an outdated and hypocritical belief. obviously not everyone who is christian believes and acts like this, but it's almost as though you have to be careful from becoming too religious or else you go crazy. it's a perpetual war b/w religion (i really don't like that word) and science or religion and modern life.
Posted by Eunice Chyung at June 12, 2008 12:31 PM
