Week Ending December 2

Its been another busy, interesting week here in Delhi.  On Tuesday evening we met with our girls at the Udayan home in Mehrauli.  

  They are cute and pleasant and we are looking forward to having Family Home Evening with them on a regular basis.

On Wednesday night Sister Nirmla Dass and her grandson Elias and I went to visit Aman and Vivek Kumar at their one room home.  The parents are on the left, Aman is standing and Vivek is kneeling between him and Nirmla.  The "mosi" or auntie is on the right.  A little neighbor boy came in and joined us.  He is sitting in the front on the left. Elias is next to him.  See the scripture bag on the wall!

Here we are by the door with the kitchen behind us.  They fed us a delicious dinner of paneer with green peppers and puri, a fried bread.  It was excellent.  The family is delightful.  They were laughing and joking the whole evening.  The whole experience made me ache to understand Hindi.

Thursday morning we along with Sister Hansen, the mission president's wife, drove south and west of Delhi about 65 km into Haryana state with representatatives of Sulabh International  to visit some villages where Sulabh has been providing toilets and improving the lot of rural women.  In the village of Marora these women were sewing and crocheting "torans" or Hindu decorative door hangings.  They learn and then use their skills to supplement the family income.  When they contribute economically, they have more of a voice in family and village life. 

Sulabh provided 95 toilets here, one for every household.  Toilets benefit everyone in the village but especially women who find it difficult and embarrassing to  go the the fields or along the roads to relieve themselves.  The toilets also serve as a way to build trust and to introduce social programs, like the skills development mentioned above, to the village.

Our next stop was the village of Nizampur.  All the villages we visited were mixed Hindu and Muslim although they seemed to be mostly Muslim.  These people are know as Meos, or Rajput Hindus that converted to Islam between the 12th and 17th century when Muslims ruled north India.  Their religion is Islam but their ethnic background is Hindu.  These girls are sitting in class in the government school.  The village would like to benefit from Sulabh's toilets and social programs.  They were also asking for desks, chalkboards and clean water for the school.
                   

Here is a view from a distance.  This school is for grades 1 to 8.  There are rooms with some desks behind the arcade.  Girls study separately from boys.  After 8th grade, school is far away so most don't continue their studies.  

Here is a sparkling clean family kitchen.  You can see the cooking fuel, dried cow dung, stacked up in the corner.  We saw these discs drying along the side of the road everywhere.  

This local woman was very interested in us and what we were doing in her village.  Because these people don't eat a lot of sweets, their teeth are beautiful.

Hand stacked hay drying in the fields.  There are some very rich landowners in Haryana who have sold land to developers as Delhi expands into the countryside. 

But all the people we met were agricultural laborers.

Our last stop was at Hirmathla, a larger village than the first two and closer to Delhi.  This is a Sulabh "Skill Development Center" much like the first place we saw in Marora but larger.  It offers training for women in sewing, basket making, crocheting, cosmetology and massage.

The woman on the right in the gold sari is what sociologists call a "positive deviant."  She is trained by Sulabh to introduce new ideas into the village.  Here she is singing songs about public health and sanitation with the women and young children.

 They invited us to dance with them.  Notice the woman leaning against the pole with her back to the camera.  She was a little shy but eventually joined in.  We became instant "friends."  

 

She led me back to her home.  Here she is (on the right) with some of her family members.  Behind and to the right of them is a toilet.  In the bottom right of the photo is a charpai or a traditional woven bed. 

Snuggled in a scarf tied to the end of the charpai was this beautiful two month old baby girl.
 

These women turned their backs when Grant pulled out the camera. 

We saw this woman on the sidewalk back in

Delhi.  Its been said and we think its true that Delhi is not a big city as much as a large conglomeration of villages.

Saturday evening December 1 we held our annual interfaith and opinion leaders' dinner which we called "Lighting the World Together."  We invited about 31 of our friends from various faiths and service agencies

Meanwhile on the other side of the world, Seohkee Burningham asked Gena to marry him while they were visiting Vancouver, B.C. with Philip and family on Saturday.

                                             

The next day, Sunday, Philip blessed this little angel boy, Charles Eugene Hurst.

God is good!