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46
WBM may 2013
I
t was two in the afternoon
in Kochi, India, and
Tracy and I were riding in
another air-conditioned car
on this, our well-appointed
and long-awaited vacation, once again
insulated from the heat and poverty
that surrounded us. Our driver told us
we still had a few hours of his service:
What was our pleasure; what would
we like to see?
Strange, isn’t it, what blurts out of
our mouths when we least expect it?
Something I didn’t even know was
welling up inside me.
“The children,” I said, “so many
children begging on the street, who
takes care of them?”
We had seen the magnificence of
India, but we had also witnessed the
horrific conditions of the street people.
The children especially haunted us,
those bundles of rags with dirty faces
begging at our car window, their eyes
hollow, their pride a distant memory,
if even that.
I don’t think it was a question the
driver was too often asked from his
clients. He hesitated, and then said,
“I could tell you, but if you don’t
mind, I’ll show you.”
We bumped along rutted Binny
Road to an iron gate. Thrown open,
a group of girls eagerly ran toward
us. It was an orphanage, Prathyasha
Bhavan, Home of Hope, adminis-tered
by the Salesian Sisters of Don
Bosco, Catholic nuns, and within it
were some 70 girls, aged six to 18.
At first, it looked like a perfectly fine
place, clean grounds, well-dressed
girls, but that was deceiving. The
girls slept on the hard concrete
floor of a school assembly area
because there was no other room
for them; the pantry held a pitifully
small mound of vegetables for that
evening’s curry; the tainted water
assured dysentery would remain a
normal part of life.
Sister Sophy took us around, all-the-while
providing tragic histories about
the smiling, seemingly happy girls.
With each story I could feel my heart
thumping, faster and faster.
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