Orphanage in India Part 2 of 6

Mission Trip to Andhra Pradesh, India
Part 2: Teaching and Settling In

By Elizabeth Dewhurst

It’s supposed to be the monsoon season but the rain hasn’t really arrived in Andhra Pradesh yet. Apart from one or two short bursts of torrential rain it’s been blazing sunshine ever since I arrived at the campus.  People here are starting to worry about the rice crops.  I’m also slightly concerned that an army of lizards is planning to take over my bedroom…each night I see more pairs of little eyes glowing in the dark around the room. Well I suppose there’s no point worrying about it. If it happens it happens and I’ll find somewhere else to sleep!

Exams

This week the children have been having exams to find out how much they’ve learned so far this year.  I really hope my class do well! There are 16 of them in UKG, which is the equivalent of Year 1 in England. They range from six to ten years old, as the class allocations depend completely on your ability to speak, read and write English, not on your age.  Consequently I spend most of my free lessons trying to get Venkatesh, a ten year old rascal (who should not really be in UKG), to read to me in English.  He started off just grinning at me, pretending not to understand but today he has managed to read a whole book. I suspect he knows more than he lets on!

Hazardous Driving

So whilst the children have exams, we’ve braved the hazardous 4 hour round trip to the city quite a few times this week.  We narrowly missed killing a huge herd of goats on Tuesday.  Luckily Samuel is well practised at swerving to avoid oncoming traffic and pulled in at the last second. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to Indian roads!  The horn of every vehicle beeps constantly.  Their drivers seem to be permanently furious with everyone else on the road.  Pedestrians freely join huge roundabouts as if they were in cars.  They always look very surprised, when beeped at, that other traffic should want to use the roads.  I have come to the conclusion that everyone in India either thinks they are invincible or just has no fear of death.  So whilst I’ve been learning to ride the dubious campus motorbike this week, I’ve yet to venture out very far from home for fear of what else may be on the roads.

Memorial Service

One night this week we headed to a memorial service for someone in Samuel’s church.  Memorial services are quite different here though.  They are always held a year to the day after a person has died. At 7pm we drove up to a canopy that the dead man’s son had erected on the street opposite his house for the purpose. From the moment we arrived we were treated like royalty.  We were plied with copious amounts of water and the usual plastic chairs to sit on, as it’s widely assumed here that white people will not be able to cope with the heat and are likely to pass out if you don’t do this. Not long after we had sat down, a mosquito coil was placed between our plastic chairs to keep the bugs away. A fan was even put up in our honour by a man who used his teeth instead of pliers to attach it to the power supply for the light!  During an unusually quiet part of the service the mosquito coil managed to set the rug under our chairs on fire! Luckily there was no shortage of water and I was able to put it out without disrupting the service too much. 

Eating on the Porch

Not surprisingly, once service was over, we were served mountains of delicious chicken biryani.  Biryani seems to be the standard dish served at all Indian occasions and we’ve been lucky enough to be treated to it at least 5 times so far.  When you visit an Indian house there is no option but to eat with your fingers from the huge steel plates…no one uses cutlery.  And you must only use your right hand to eat with…using your ‘dirty’ left hand would cause great offence.  We ate in the house opposite the canopy. It was a modest but comfortable home by Indian standards.  There was no bathroom, just 3 small rooms; one bedroom for the family we visited and another identical bedroom for the second family of 4 who live there. The front room which they share was little more than a porch for the 2 bedrooms. It contained the kitchen sink and a few utensils.  This is where we ate.  As is customary here, the family served us and watched us while we ate, then tucked into the feast themselves afterwards.  Extended family, friends and other church members feasted on the street where we’d held the service. After dinner, the party continued and was still in full flow when we left to make the long trek home.

Baptism in the Sea

Later in the week we went into the city again for a baptism service in the Bay of Bengal. One of Samuel’s pastors (Titus) has a church on a hill across the road from the beach.  It was surreal seeing Samuel and Titus baptise the 4 terrified looking people as waves crashed against the rocks around them.  We even had a few hours before the evening service to go for a refreshing swim in the Bay of Bengal.  It was beautiful and you can’t help noticing that even halfway across the world the seaside smells exactly the same. Nicky preached about baptism in the evening.  Samuel translated.  As usual the church was adorned with various Christmas decorations including a ‘Merry Christmas’ sign behind the lectern. This seems strange when you first see it but we’ve now come to expect it in all Indian churches.

Afterwards we went to Titus’ house where we were treated to another feast of chicken curries, poppadoms and rice until I thought I would burst.  I can’t describe how humbling and often overwhelming it is to be treated so well and given the best of everything wherever you go, especially when you know the people serving it to you have so little. Titus’ church is a mud hut perched on a hill.  It has a cement floor and roof of palm tree branches. Apparently the rain comes in all the time during the monsoon season and electricity is an even rarer commodity on the coast.  Titus lives next door in a similar but much smaller hut, divided into two rooms, with his wife Ribca and 5 year old son Timothy.  We also met his brother, who, in a heavy Indian accent, said his name was John Smith – the last thing you expect someone in India to be called!

Malaria and Typhoid Fever are Common

We had a brilliant time eating and chatting with them before a late night dash to find a 24-hour pharmacy on the way home.  One of the Bible college students has been very ill, and after visits to several doctors he was diagnosed with malaria and typhoid fever. So we had to get medication to him quickly.  I couldn’t believe everyone wasn’t more concerned but soon learned that malaria and typhoid fever are so common in these parts no one even bats an eyelid.

Aruna’s Testimony

At chapel on the campus, people are often encouraged to share what God has done for them. Sometimes the children stand up, always holding a Bible in one hand, and talk about something they prayed about and got an answer to.  However, during chapel this week, Samuel asked Aruna, who is 26 years old and one of the teachers at UKG, to share her incredible testimony.  Samuel translated for us…

At the age of 14, Aruna was married and within 2 years, she and her husband had a son called Tarun. When Tarun was 2, his father died suddenly.  So, at only 18 years old Aruna was a widow.  The shock of his father’s death impacted so strongly upon Tarun that he didn’t utter a sound from that day onwards; Aruna felt disgraced.  As time passed she became increasingly despondent, feeling more and more of a failure.  Not only had she lost her husband…she was trying to bring up their child and nothing she did would make him speak.  She travelled miles to see doctors but no one could work out what was wrong with Tarun; they just said he must either be deaf or dumb, or both. 

Life Wasn’t Worth Living

Eventually, she was persuaded to go and stay with a family of some relatives because they lived close to a good doctor, meaning she wouldn’t have to travel as far to get help for her son.  This family happened to be Christians and took her with them to their church.  But she just became more disillusioned with life and her circumstances and nothing changed for her or her son.  At her wits’ end she decided the best thing would be to take her own life and that of her son too.  Life just didn’t seem worth living any more.  She resolved to poison herself and Tarun to end their misery. 

“Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!”

One day during this dark time she happened to read a few verses from the family’s Telegu Bible.  In that she read, God clearly said, “Come to my presence and I will hear your prayer.”  Prompted by this, Aruna, with Tarun at her side, decided to go to church one last time. As is customary in India, Aruna sat on one side of the church with the women, and the young boy was looked after by someone else, on the other side of the building with the other boys and men.  During the service Aruna prayed to God that if he was real please could he show her right there and then by healing her son.  And suddenly, right in the service, she heard a little boy’s voice shouting, “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!”  It was Tarun who ran to her across the church still shouting “Mummy” at the top of his voice. As she gave her testimony in chapel Aruna was crying.  At this point she shouted three of the few words I know in Telegu between her tears: “Deo niki Stortrum”, which means “Praise the Lord.”  All the people at chapel shouted “Hallelujah!” 

Tarun the Pilot

Aruna is now remarried to DileepKumar.  They both live and work here at the campus looking after the children.  It is their job to make sure they all wake up, eat well, stay healthy, wash and go to bed on time.  Tarun is now 10 years old and lives here too in one of the two boys’ rooms.  He is a happy, healthy boy who is top of 5th class at the school and is always first to jump up and give the answer.  He told me that when he grows up he is going to be a pilot.  I doubt it’s possible to train to fly only one route but Tarun said he will only fly from England to India and back, nowhere else.  I think he was probably just sucking up to the English teacher though!

Aruna is only one of many people here, adults and children alike, with amazing stories that have brought them to the EGFM campus.  I feel incredibly fortunate to be here, listening to what has happened in their lives and how they have come to this place.  It really is an unassuming site in the middle of nowhere.  We are surrounded by mountains and the only way to access the campus is to drive through the shallow part of the river which everyone uses as a toilet.  Quite how everyone ended up here, God only knows!