Welcome to the World...

i have had one heck of a day today so far. it started off missing the bus, which made us late to school. Then we did some "growth cards" with the kids where we record their weight and height and stuff. I found out that our Pooja, the girl who can't learn things very well, doesn't have a mother. Thats why she doesn't regularly come to school. She started telling Bharthi all sorts of sad things about her life. Also, there's something up with one of our little girls, the one who told me in the beginning that she wanted to be a teacher like me when she grew up to help children. In the past couple weeks she has become very quiet-bharthi didn't even know she spoke or was smart until i was telling her about it. Now this little girl bursts into tears several times a day, sometimes if she needs to go to the bathroom or if she needs water or for no reason at all. It's so sad i can't take it. Newton, an IDEX exec. who comes around a lot, told us if we wanted to help the boy with the infection that we'd have to take him to the hospital right away. so Newton ended our school early and had us take the boy, i found out his name is Dolat, to his house to get his mother and tell her. Whenever people get really loud or something changes quickly, Dolat gets very afraid and starts crying, so when school ended early and i picked him up to bring him to his house, he just started balling and got really frantic. I sung to him to calm him down, and then we got his mother and he was a lot better after that. We walked to a small hospital, which was VERY dirty and medial. There was a bed and it had all sorts of stains on it from blood and medicine and other fluids. A woman sat him on the table, like a counter, and told ME to take his bandage off, which was covered in oozing yellow pus and blood :/ The bandage was stuck to his wound, which must have been so painful. the woman started cutting the bandage right on the burn wound, which would have been excruciating but i directed her to cut it on the other side, where it wouldn't hurt him. After that the woman smeared some iodine or something on another bandage and put that on without even cleaning the wound. They gave him some pills for his fever and sent us off, not cleaning anything up.
After that we started talking to his mother, who told us that her husband was a lazy alchoholic and spent over half their wages on booze. Sometimes he beats her up, and he has sex with her in front of the children, especially their oldest, 12 yr old son. No wonder Dolat cries when things get loud or change suddenly! Also Dolat's other leg is shaped a bit funny and he can't walk very well, and the surgery to fix it is 16,000 rps. which the husband won't pay. Dolat's mother's sister died of breast cancer, and she thinks she may have it also, but the husband said if she dies, so be it, so she hasn't gotten it checked out. They have 3 sons. Newton told the woman that she needs to hit him back next time he tries to beat her up. She said the worst that could happen is she'd die, and that would be what God wanted. I don't know what to say to this woman. Hit her husband back? Is she supposed to just take all the crap silently? What would Jesus tell this mother of 3 in an Indian slum to do? I have no idea. I just don't. We sat in her house talking with her while Dolat ate biscuits and mice ran around.
Then we went and talked with Galupsha, who has the mental disability and gets taken advantage of by men. We found out she's actually only 11 yrs old. Her own father also rapes her, and her mother knows about it. Oe of Galupsha's neighbors overheard her telling us and came in the room and told us she'd heard everything and Galupsha was lieing. This is really bad because if the woman tells anyone, then all of us could get rejected by the society for listening to Galupsha and Galupsha could get in a lot of trouble, whether t's true or not. I don't think that an 11 yr old could make up the things she explained to us though.
Next we went to a family's house with 2 girls and a boy. The woman said she didn't like the place they lived because the slum is full of alchoholics anf it's not safe for her children, but she has no choice. They can't get clean water she said, but they filter it through clothes. She sends her children all to gov. schools and is determined to get them an education so they can have a chance to get out of the situation. Also she said she wants her daughters to get married at 18. The only bed in their house was what looked like a flattened out cardboard box as the mattress and a very small pillow the size of a handbag.
When work was over and we were going to get a toot toot home like always, we found out the toot toot drivers are all on strike because the gov. raised the taxes for them to drive so we had to take a bike rickshaw, which brought us to the wrong place. So we walked awhile and didn't know which direction home was. I was starving so i prayed for God to provide some food and instantly i saw a place selling Kachori. They're like puffy fried things filled with dried daal. I bought 2 and while i was eating, a young girl with a aby came up to me and God told me to give her the other Kachori, so i did. I thanked God for providing my food and asked for Him to provide a way home. Again, almost instantaniously, a toot toot driver who wasn't striking came out of nowhere and asked us if we needed a ride. Thank you God for providing, because we were walking in the opposite direction of home.
So that's been my day so far, and it's only 3 p.m. :) better be going now!
Be thankful today for everything you have, and know that God provides WITHOUT FAIL.