We got up at 6am to start painting because once the sun comes up and reaches over the roof of the front building, forget it! too hot.






finishing touches



and one last thing before I go, Anitha puts henna in my hair, Roja takes picture.







aches over the roof to the wall, we're done for. Tooo hot.

First there was a class with the older kids to make masks, then a couple days later we had 10 women from Hyderabad and the older kids to help the almost 40 younger ones with the paper maché..  There were more younger ones than I even realized so I had only prepped for 30 masks...so there was some scurry in the beginning to get everyone their materials.
Here's from the first class:

masks drying

Santosh jumped in to the first class, he doesn't like chaos with the younger kids...plus his buddy Vishnu was there.




the boys

the girls
  





Post Chaos


Then the decorating part, easy .

5:30 am we are off to Ghandi hospital with a bus load of kids for their checkups. A two hour ride on mostly a dirt road, speeding through bumps, bypassing bicycles, villages, cows....there is a rather large barf bucket on board that gets some use.....not a fun trip.But the government is now providing free meds for them, a very big deal.




This is on the way back, a very long day and we are making stops for groceries. This was the last stop before home. We are waiting at the side of the road while the driver is picking up supplies.


Sylvia, the house mother, sitting by the bus door.
The center of town starts to crowd up with cows and waterbuffalo....








I could have touched this one passing by my window





Then, on another day we take it easy and relax with a reflexology class

So, one class we practiced painting the sky in different moods. Here are some sunrises with the Banyan tree and then also monsoon season with the Banyan tree. I think they are great.


sunset soufflé

How about some sky....










Santosh observes class

















Chasing me with their landscapes.

Sad goodbyes at Prem Kiran, but I will have to go back, and with some new art itinerary.... just need to figure out some  logistics .
So, on to Hyderabad after spending a night in Mumbai at Umale's . I got to spend an afternoon with Vanitha and Moni, who drove me there and had lunch at Leonardo's nearby the Taj Mahal. That was fun to just have some visiting/hangout time.
In Hyderabad I met up with Joseph and Machelle and had a day to go around with them, pick up new art supplies for the kids at the  Chandrakal orphanage for kids infected with HIV and go to Gotukunda, an  old muslim fort .



At the top of this Muslim fortress there is a Hindu temple built now, Joseph called this 'poking the bear'.

Hyderabad is growing fast with new Microsoft and Google headquarters. High tech and low tech city.

Driving out to Chandrakal...

the orphanage .



....first class, making their names so I can remember:



Madam teacher ...

The Indian government has come out to visit to see what they do because the kids are doing well. They get free meds now from a  government agency, a big relief. There is a hospital/clinic across the street . A few years back there was a handful of children that just  started living in the hallway because they lost their parents to AIDS. That is when some action and fundraising happened  to build the  orphanage, and now there are 57 kids there. HIV education is difficult in the villages. There have been songs made for people that don't  read (there are tribal peoples in the surrounding villages, many languages) , but the virus concept sometimes just does not compute so  well. the orphanage also has more boys than girls because girls are more often kept to do housework by relatives.

They fed me with the traditional banana leaf style-papdom, greens, plaintain , chapati, curry cauliflower. Jeba feeds me and what is missing from this picture is the pile of raw carrot, beets, turnip and cucumber that comes with every meal. They know i am veg, and I appreciate it. Most of there meals are vegetarian, but it is nice to eat some raw food-
And in case you are wondering, I haven't gotten sick the whole time, except carsick on the ride out from Mumbai the first day. There's a lot of start and stop driving , those water buffalo really don't care about getting out of the way on your clock. And then there's the guy who just stops his car in the highway lane to get out and pee on the side of the road.  And coming back to Hyderabad last night, there was a roundabout that connected to another roundabout and an unfinished part of the highway that turned into a makeshift one lane dirt ramp onto another highway.
well anyway, I ate well and all is well in that department.

They also dressed me in a sari:






The balloon scavengers..

After all the mural work, we had a day to go for a hike to the mountain. It was a hike into the hot afternoon as well.... 3 km to the end we all broke down in the shade and got rides back.

girls line up to go

it started out well




We came upon a hindu temple

it had this statue... a rock god?

We go to the water.
Kathy, Balla, and Neha check the parameters.


Well, we lasted a little while longer after leaving the water, but not much longer. We got rides back with 3km still to go.

This was a feat, and I'm happy to report , no one was hurt in the making of this mural. I was a little worried with Santosh scaling the wall to paint the sky, but all went well.









And that is that

This is something I wrote over a week ago, but couldn't post....don't have time for pictures yet, more later!

So, I have no internet access here at theTransformation Center, but I have been here for four days –ish.  I arrived in Mumbai on the 9^th and stayed one night at the Grand Central Hotel where I met up with Rabbi Joseph. It was a fine landing spot.  We we repicked up by Umale, who is one of the founders of the Transformation Center and we went downtown to pick up art supplies for the workshops I would be leading.

Ok, driving in Mumbai is an experience you may want to see for yourself. Beeping is how you get by, literally, the trucks have signs painted on them that say Horn OK Please. They want you to honk if you are coming up behind them. Beeping is a way for people to know where you are , so speak up.  Beeping at people oktoo. And cows. We drove through a sea of people in the downtown where we wentto a wholesale shop for paints , etc. Just tell the guy in the shop what you want and it appears from one of the shop workers, or from a hand coming through a hole in the ceiling  from the upstairs supply room. 

Next, to the party shop across the street for balloons, glitter, shiny things, ribbon for decorating the paper mache masks we will make.

Back at the hotel, it is cocktail hour, so we go and chat. Then dinner, a special Chinese New Year menu. Rabbi gets the grouper fish. I am suspicious that this is the same type of fish I saw in the Chao Phray River in Bangkok,,,..they were enormous in the Chao Phray, big mouths. And not so appetizing I have to admit, swimming in that city river…. I had a bite, not bad, but Rabbi went to it.

     Anyhoo, next morning it was off to the center, a couple hours drive outside of Mumbai.   We get there and are served chai tea or coffee, walk around to see the boys dorm, the girls dorm,the womens’ place , the big church center, the grounds and where I will be staying as well, a house down the street that is being lent by an ‘Aunty’ while she is away.  BTW, as soon as the car arrived in the center , the children are all vying to greet me, touch me , catch my eye and smile. They know Joseph so are saying hellos, and Shalom,which he taught them last time he was there.

  Rabbi has to get back to Mumbai for his flight, and I end up going too so I can stay one night with Umale’s family. I didn't pack much clothes so I wanted to  go to some shops for some Kirtans so I can fit in a little bit stylewise. Umale’s daughter Priya is nice enough to bring me around to some shops.Btw, on the way back to Mumbai I was carsick , the stop and go and airconditioning and being in the back seat got me. So at night I am feeling a little shaky, but nothing serious.

Next day we go back to the center and basically jump right in .  The kids are gathered in the main building, we talk about what we will be doing , and I mention I want to learn Indian dancing , which the girls were very excited about. Then I am asked to teach them a game. The only thing I can think of that is easy enough on the spot is Duck Duck Goose, which goes over really well except that I am the goose every other round…..

But pretty funny , the kids are really excited. Afterwards we broke into some dance moves, one girl, Pooja , has got the pop and lock moves and mixed with Indian bollywood style, some very good dancers. They are showing me some new moves. Boys too.

   

Next day we begin the mask making.  All the materials are not gathered yet….still the cardboard is missing, which is too bad because it would have been much better to have it prepared, but oh well, going with the slow flow at first. The cardboard is collected from boxes around the center and cut into the basic mask shape. I show how to build the underlying structure and let them go to it.  Pictures show better.

 

The fun part of doing the classes is that they really pay attention and then, when you say go, they  start making the thing and  it is like a quiet buzzing  of busy hands.  Other times it is 'Oh Dee Dee, oh Dee Dee' (they are calling me sister). 

I am fed on a regular schedule, they know I am mostly vegetarian, so every meal I am served a plate of sliced cucumber,beets, radish and carrot, along with chapatti, dal and some other cooked veggie dish.  I don’t even eat this much raw veggies at home, but it is  nice. Also, the Indian diet tends to be a bit starchy, so the roughage is a good thing. ….but funny to eat a pile of rabbit food for breakfast lunch and dinner.

In general I am served up more food than I am used to eating and the refills just keep coming. 

Vanitha is a staff member assigned to be my manager and translater, she also stays with me in the house down the street.She is very smart and funny and the rolling of eyes and Indian head shaking is quite amusing. I had to ask Rabbi about the head shaking , because  it often looks like they are annoyed , but it is not so much that , it is sort of just happenimg for many different expressions.

    I live a couple hundred yards from the center, yet I am chauffeured each time I go back and forth, and everytime it is a production, the driver, the guy who guards the house , grandpa who helps with the keys who  often carries the grand baby all crammed into the front, then me , Vanitha, and Priya or some conglomeration of helpers in the house piling in and out of the back seat. The locks on the front gate , the front door and the inside door all have keys that look like cartoon keys. One night we were given the wrong keys and the driver and co. had to come back, I think that is when grandpa started coming on these trips to make sure the locking and unlockings went smoothly. Baby just comes for the ride.  In the morning , sometimes we walk to the center, like this morning, Vanita was tired of waiting for the chauffer service so we walked. We were just arriving at the center when the car came up to us and the door opened for me to get in so the could take me the last fifty feet,like they wanted to at least make the grand entrance with me in the car. But I didn’t get in I waved them off, and besides, they had to go down the road a way to turn around. We often share this road with the water buffalo , who really don’t care what you do, and don’t necessarily move when beeped at. 

   This weekend was nonstop, and by the end of the days, I am ready to crash,    there’s painting class , paper mache mask–making class, foot reflexology class, drawing class. We had ten more children just visiting this weekend. They really jumped right in  for the mask making. We also did a landscape painting class. I felt like that guy that does the oil painting on tv., Now,make a nice blue sky with some friendly puffy clouds….Then horizon line, treeline, fade it down, make a little river that flows to the foreground where it makes a lake that has lilies on it, a duck, some fish, a butterfly, and a water buffalo!

 

These kids are all children of sex trade workers. Some of the women are at the center too because they can learn new skills to get them other work and get out of the sex trade life and we are in the country side away from the pimps. It’s complicated with the caste system/beliefs . The children are living here now and going to school and having a schedule. It is very important especially for the girls who would otherwise be destined for the same life. It is a pretty amazing place, so I  don’t really get exhausted.  When taking pictures, once the camera is out everyone is trying to jump into the frame. I’ve tried taking some candid shots,but there’s usually some little face poking into the shot, or literally flying in to get in the picture.

Ok, signing off.

 

WAIT here's some pictures. It took me an hour to load them and then it crashed so

this is it for awhile.....