Mass Email - On a Lighter Note...

Namaste again (to those of you who asked, Namaste is the Hindi word used for hello as well as goodbye. Literally, it is translated as "From my soul to yours." VERY Indian!)

I realize I have been writing quite frequently, and I apologize to those of you who dread my long emails (wong!), but I was so overwhelmed by the responses from all of you about the last email. So much of what you all said was so insightful, and truly helped me affirm my values and beliefs surrounding this experience here in India. It really means the world to me to have all of your support, or even contact, and I feel so lucky to have such extraordinary people in my life such as yourselves.

Last night all of the volunteers went out after Satsong to have some food and talk about some of our frustrations and concerns. It was comforting to know that we all shared the same perspective on the situation. Some of the volunteers who have been at Ramana's for many months now shared some other concerning stories. We talked for quite a while, and at the end we all agreed on one thing: that the only way we could all prevail and continue giving all of ourselves to this is to continue focusing on the kids.

Fortunately, the day's events seemed to fuel us all, as this morning we were all busy devising new plans to directly help the kids (while somewhat bypassing Prabha's involvement). All of the volunteers are so creative and compassionate. It is quite humbling to be working with such amazing people.
The issue that stood out the most to me was that the children have never received any kind of consistent, PROFESSIONAL psychological and emotional support (outside of the passing volunteers). I am currently working on a VERY grassroots plan to get a full-time, live-in professional psychologist to come work with the kids. Stay tuned, as I will definitely need ALL of your help when everything is in order....

On a lighter note, last night a few of us went to go see a documentary screening put on by a college student from Mumbai on the water crisis in Gujarat. Very abridged synopsis: dams are being built (by state and now federal governemnt) along the river in Gujarat to supposedly "fix" the drought problem that has accumulated over many decades (which could have been handled when the problem arose 30 years ago). They claim that these dams will provide electricity and water supply to the large, urban areas in the state. However, as a result, millions.....yup, MILLIONS, of rural farmers (who's very existence relies on living by the river to irrigate their crops which are their only source of monetary support) have been flooded out of their land. 98% of the animals (both domestic and wild) were killed because of this displacement. The governement promised these people replacement land, but most never received the land, OR were given land a fraction of the size of their original property that is not fertile. As a result, these people have lost their homes, their means of survival, their crops, their land, their animals, and their culture, all so the government could put a band aid on a bursting problem that was never addressed at the source. AND the worst part of it, is that the dams are only capable of providing electricity to 2% of the people in the effected areas, and water to only 5%.
It was a very well done, and powerful movie. It was touching to see that conservationists exist everywhere in the world, and brought a feeling of connection to the people of India to see them protesting and fighting for their rights when I know so many of us in the states feel the frustration of not being seen or heard by our governemnt.

On an even lighter note....some funny little Indian antecdotes I thought I'd share with you beacuse they have been a major source of our humor and entertainment:
Even though all of the kids and most of the staff at Ramana's speak English pretty well, they have their own kind of dialect that is quickly rubbing off on all of us volunteers. Apparently, none of them know any form of tense, so every verb they say ends in "-ing," usually following the very popular Indian-English phrase "very much."
Example: every day when we give kids medicine, they point to a body part and say "very much paining!" When it is raining outside (which it has been quite often) they say "very much raining!" We have all taken on this dialect, and find ourselves cracking up every night when we all go out and sit around speaking English to one another saying things like "I am very much hungry."
Another popular Indian-English phrase is "Same, same but different." I am still figuring this one out, as it's used in many contexts. I actually saw a T-shirt at one of the local shops with the phrase written on it.

Anyway, it seems that the struggles we face here only drive us to do even more for these awesome kids. (I called one of them "awesome" the other day and the whole class was rolling on the floor laughing "You very much funny, Cassi-ji. VEEEERY much funny!" Easy crowd, I guess.

Also, I will hopefully have some pictures up soon. We have to buy discs to put them on and then upload from the internet cafe's, so it may take a while, but I will definitely have some up soon.

Thanks again to all of you for writing. I hope you are all well, and I'll be in touch.

VERY MUCH loving!

Cass