Hello once again. It has been a little while since my past entry, so this is going to be a fairly extensive update, even though I wont be able to cover everything. Quite a bit has been happening, so I’ll try to give you a little picture of what has been going on.
This is an excerpt of a journal entry of mine from a week ago. It will give you a little picture of what my days look like:
Today was an interesting day, with its downs but ending on its ups. I started out the day waking up feeling exhausted, having to peel myself out of bed. After doing my normal morning routines, I conversed with Uncle about going to the Victoria Memorial tomorrow morning, and then headed on my way to the church to try and get some school work done. I was tired and didn’t feel well, thus I contemplated not going to work. The battle within my mind was won over by the fact of needing to discuss with Poulami (the director of the half way house) issues concerning my time with CINI Asha this month. I left for the Half Way house and boarded the most cramped bus I have taken thus far in the city, which is saying a lot. It was packed like sardines in a crushed tin box (as the great Thom Yorke once said). I was back-to-back with a middle-aged woman (who was trying to save her two children from being flattened by the older gentleman that surrounded them) and stuck in the middle of four or five other men. This went on for the entirety of the journey to Sealdah Station where I finally was released from the fiery pit. I then ventured on to the auto-rickshaw stand to continue my daily route to Pottery Road for work. After sitting with four others inside the auto-rickshaw for nearly 15 minutes waiting for the driver, I and the four other no longer patient souls went our separate ways to find a different way of transportation. I ended up taking one of the buses that drives in the same direction, soon to find out that the driver had different plans and went off route to fill up the gas tank before moving on. Eventually the bus found its way to Pottery Road, where I finished my trek across the city in my routine walk from one end of the road to other, finishing at the half way house. Upon entering, I went up to have lunch in the cafeteria-esque room with my newly found friend Babu, having the traditional Bengali dish of rice, dal, potatoes, and curry. After the meal I went downstairs to talk with Poulami, which ended with me heading back to Sealdah Station with Babu. There I was to meet up and talk with my new supervisor Lopa, whom I met my very first day of being with the organization. She (figuratively) walked me through the process in which CINI Asha deals with each of the street and platform children residing at Sealdah. This was very helpful. Babu then (literally) walked me through the station and surrounding areas and described the ways of the children and families who find their home on the platforms and surrounding railroads of the station. Babu’s job description is to walk around the station and surrounding areas to find and talk to the street and platform children and encourage them to visit one of CINI Asha’s drop-in-centers (DIC). He is a gifted communicator and is well suited for the job. Babu was once one of them, a child living at Sealdah and on the streets of Kolkata, seeing no hope or future in life besides that of surviving day by day on the streets. He now is working on his last year of his bachelors degree in social studies, working for CINI Asha, and is a walking testimony of the organization’s work. After going through the station, we went back to Uttaran (the DIC for 5-9 year old boys) and talked for a little while before I left for my journey back to my host family’s house.
The first few weeks with CINI Asha, I was mainly stationed at the boys Halfway house near Sealdah Station. Now since last week I have been starting to be more at the station where a good portion of the field work is done with the organization. I have been involved with the outreach team, which consists of Babu, and two other new friends Sutanu and Shubhalakshmi, all around my age or a little older. They are the ones who have the most contact with the children that are still presently living on the streets and platforms in and around Sealdah. I’ve been and will be walking around with Babu and talking with the children and families that find their home at or around the station. Also on Saturdays I have started to be involved in what they call “Saturday Club”, which is where a lot of the children or even older men and woman that live at the station come and enjoy music, games, food, and other activities. Also during this time informational discussions are taking place with the children about life at the station, and other health information that would be useful for them. This time is also a place where the children can talk about ways that they have been abused or exploited by different people at the station… Being involved in this way has awakened my spirits and has given me a rejuvenation of passions within me for reasons why God has brought me back to this city. From the first day being stationed at Shealdah with the fieldwork, the children, and the staff, I felt a peace rush over me and a sense of this being where God wanted to use and teach me in my time with the organization.
I am gearing up now for starting my Global Study Project, which is part of my academic study here. The main research question that I have made in which will be spearheading the project is: Why, when children know about the supportive organizations that promise to provide health, educational, and other developmental benefits, choose to continue life on the streets around Sealdah Railway Station in Kolkata, India? In the following weeks I will be conducting interviews with street and platform children in and around Sealdah with Babu, as well as utilizing the research team that is located at the main office of CINI Asha for other resources to tie in with my findings. Alongside the fact of this being part of my academic studies, it will also (and much more importantly) be helping CINI Asha better understand what the children need and how to better reach them in the state of mind that they are in. It will also hopefully serve as a survey of sorts for the drop out rate of the children that have visited the drop-in-centers to later choose to be back on the streets… I am really excited to get this all going. It will be a lot of work, but I seem to have been placed in a perfect situation for what I am trying to do. I’ll have much more to say about this as I get farther along.
I have already passed the half-way point of my time here in India. For awhile when anyone here asked me if I was homesick or missed family and friends, I would for some reason always shrug it off in a way that denied even the possibility of the thought. I have now become conscious of this and am able to admit to myself that I do indeed miss family, friends, and other things of being at home, but at the same time I know this is where God has me right now and where I need to be at this given time. Even through all the challenges of being in a foreign land by myself and being alone much of the time, God is good and faithful and is continuing to reveal things to me that I need to work through right now. By no means is it easy, but neither is the life that God has called us to live as followers of Christ.
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