1. I wake up one Sat morning at 7am. The kids are supposed to "sleep in" till 7 or 7:30am, so I tiptoe to the outdoor bathrooms so I can have a few more min of peace and quiet until the chaos of being "mom" to 17 children. The door to the boys room creaks open and Santosh, our youngest boy who just turned 6 comes out. As I walk out of a stall and return the bucket to the water tank, I notice that one of the bathroom doors is wide open. Santosh was standing there with a pile of softened yellowish brown poo on the bathroom floor.
"Jesus! Help me!" I cry out. This is when my love is tested. Can I help him clean up? I've changed plenty of diapers, but this is a whole new level of child care. I take a coupla deep breaths and laugh out my disbelief at what I'm about to do. I grab some newspaper and walk back to try to pick up the poop. Darn. It won't drop into the toilet because it's too soft and gooey. I end up cleaning up as much as I can with newspapers and then using water to flush the rest down the drain. I guess we're lucky we have a drain on our bathroom floor. It's there because that part is supposed to be the shower. I survived the test.
2. The electrician wires the bathroom lights on the right to turned on by the left switch and the lights on the left to be turned on by the right switch.
3. One of our boys (grew up without a mom & herded livestock to help make a living) takes off his shirts by ripping it open. Guess what happens to all the buttons?
4. 1:42am. I wake up with a start from a dream in which I'm in a cave and I'm half immersed in water. I feel this wet sensation on my legs and touch my sheets to find that they're all wet! Half asleep, I gingerly feel the floor around my bed to discover it is dry. Forcing my eyes open, I got on my feet to close my windows to the howling wind and torrential rain. After I plop back into bed and try to sleep again, I hear this periodic "drip drip drip" and feel it on my sheets. Groaning, I get out of bed again to turn on the lights. And, to my amusement, I find a hole with the diameter of 1cm in the 6-month new--or shall I say, old?--ceiling and water leaking onto my bed. Angling the bed doesn't help. Sticking tape on the hole doesn't help. Finally, I get a brainwave and open my umbrella. I propped it between the AC and the ceiling fan to redirect the dripping rainwater onto the floor instead of the bed. Leaving the children's home and coming back to the town for 2 days was supposed to be a peaceful break for me with no kids waking me up to accompany them to our outdoor bathroom. Little did I know...
5. We have 2 brothers who have herded cows and sheep as well as washed clothes to support themselves because their dad was seriously ill and the mother deserted the family. Although they're around 8 and 11, I often feel like I'm dealing with giant toddlers in the terrible threes.
The younger one tears into the bedroom with his towel wrapped around him and his dirty and wet clothes in a heap on the outdoor bathroom floor. Great.
"Akash! Put your clothes in the basket!" I call out. Akash pretends he doesn't hear me and continues doing his thing in the room. I quickly dump some lice shampoo into the hands of one waiting boy and stride into the room. I grab Akash's hand and guide him to pick up his dirty clothes to dump in the laundry basket. I then go to his room to help him find a set of clothes. Reaching onto his shelf, I groan in disbelief. Not again! All his clothes on his shelf are rolled into balls and 75% of the clothes is wet or damp. Fantastic. Akash and his brother always put washed clothes that are still damp on their shelf or they just dump their dirty clothes back. It's a never-ending battle to keep their shelf organized and hygienic.
6. A private English-immersion high school cancels a day of school because of heavy rains. Apparently the school was flooding.
7. We receive our school account's bank statement for July (that means from the 1st to the 31st) on Sept 3rd. A quick look at the stamp on the envelop tells us that they mailed it on Aug 28th from the capital of the state, which is only an 8h bus ride or 1.5 flight away. How does one of the biggest banks in India take 28 days to mail a simple bank statement that has only 1 entry on it?
8. "Noooooo! STOP!" I yell as Kiran (the older of the 2 brothers aforementioned) pees right onto the ground in front of 3 kids. The kids were all walking a little ways away from the veranda to rinse their plates before dinner and 11-year-old Kiran decides that the grass is a better place place to take a leak than the bathroom in the back. He's already had the consequence of cleaning toilets several times from doing open-air all over our campus in the past. What's the next level of a consequence that suits the misdeed?
9. It's impossible to get gas cylinders quickly refilled here. In Jangareddigudem, we ran out of gas yesterday. It's been 24h and still we have no cooking gas. All the firewood is wet from the incessant rain. Luckily the pastor's aunt lives close by, so his mom just cooks there. We'll be fortunate to get gas tomorrow. The gas cylinder at the school was taken from the senior's home, and we applied for gas on Aug 3rd. It's been over a month and we have yet to get gas to cook with. Apparently our account with that cylinder got deactivated because we didn't purchase butane for a few months and it's taking over a month to reactive our account. After it's reactivated in the headquarters in the state capital, Hyderabad, we still need to wait to actually get it filled.
The cook has been cooking a lot outdoors despite the rain. We keep our firewood stacked on the veranda to keep it dry. We even had to buy gas twice on the black market out of desperation. Apparently what some individuals do is that they purchase extra cylinders and wait until there's a shortage of butane or when people get frustrated with the gas company. Then they hike up the price by 30% and resell it. "Gas, gas, please come. Don't wait another day." (sung to the tune of "rain, rain, go away")
"Jesus! Help me!" I cry out. This is when my love is tested. Can I help him clean up? I've changed plenty of diapers, but this is a whole new level of child care. I take a coupla deep breaths and laugh out my disbelief at what I'm about to do. I grab some newspaper and walk back to try to pick up the poop. Darn. It won't drop into the toilet because it's too soft and gooey. I end up cleaning up as much as I can with newspapers and then using water to flush the rest down the drain. I guess we're lucky we have a drain on our bathroom floor. It's there because that part is supposed to be the shower. I survived the test.
2. The electrician wires the bathroom lights on the right to turned on by the left switch and the lights on the left to be turned on by the right switch.
3. One of our boys (grew up without a mom & herded livestock to help make a living) takes off his shirts by ripping it open. Guess what happens to all the buttons?
4. 1:42am. I wake up with a start from a dream in which I'm in a cave and I'm half immersed in water. I feel this wet sensation on my legs and touch my sheets to find that they're all wet! Half asleep, I gingerly feel the floor around my bed to discover it is dry. Forcing my eyes open, I got on my feet to close my windows to the howling wind and torrential rain. After I plop back into bed and try to sleep again, I hear this periodic "drip drip drip" and feel it on my sheets. Groaning, I get out of bed again to turn on the lights. And, to my amusement, I find a hole with the diameter of 1cm in the 6-month new--or shall I say, old?--ceiling and water leaking onto my bed. Angling the bed doesn't help. Sticking tape on the hole doesn't help. Finally, I get a brainwave and open my umbrella. I propped it between the AC and the ceiling fan to redirect the dripping rainwater onto the floor instead of the bed. Leaving the children's home and coming back to the town for 2 days was supposed to be a peaceful break for me with no kids waking me up to accompany them to our outdoor bathroom. Little did I know...
5. We have 2 brothers who have herded cows and sheep as well as washed clothes to support themselves because their dad was seriously ill and the mother deserted the family. Although they're around 8 and 11, I often feel like I'm dealing with giant toddlers in the terrible threes.
The younger one tears into the bedroom with his towel wrapped around him and his dirty and wet clothes in a heap on the outdoor bathroom floor. Great.
"Akash! Put your clothes in the basket!" I call out. Akash pretends he doesn't hear me and continues doing his thing in the room. I quickly dump some lice shampoo into the hands of one waiting boy and stride into the room. I grab Akash's hand and guide him to pick up his dirty clothes to dump in the laundry basket. I then go to his room to help him find a set of clothes. Reaching onto his shelf, I groan in disbelief. Not again! All his clothes on his shelf are rolled into balls and 75% of the clothes is wet or damp. Fantastic. Akash and his brother always put washed clothes that are still damp on their shelf or they just dump their dirty clothes back. It's a never-ending battle to keep their shelf organized and hygienic.
6. A private English-immersion high school cancels a day of school because of heavy rains. Apparently the school was flooding.
7. We receive our school account's bank statement for July (that means from the 1st to the 31st) on Sept 3rd. A quick look at the stamp on the envelop tells us that they mailed it on Aug 28th from the capital of the state, which is only an 8h bus ride or 1.5 flight away. How does one of the biggest banks in India take 28 days to mail a simple bank statement that has only 1 entry on it?
8. "Noooooo! STOP!" I yell as Kiran (the older of the 2 brothers aforementioned) pees right onto the ground in front of 3 kids. The kids were all walking a little ways away from the veranda to rinse their plates before dinner and 11-year-old Kiran decides that the grass is a better place place to take a leak than the bathroom in the back. He's already had the consequence of cleaning toilets several times from doing open-air all over our campus in the past. What's the next level of a consequence that suits the misdeed?
9. It's impossible to get gas cylinders quickly refilled here. In Jangareddigudem, we ran out of gas yesterday. It's been 24h and still we have no cooking gas. All the firewood is wet from the incessant rain. Luckily the pastor's aunt lives close by, so his mom just cooks there. We'll be fortunate to get gas tomorrow. The gas cylinder at the school was taken from the senior's home, and we applied for gas on Aug 3rd. It's been over a month and we have yet to get gas to cook with. Apparently our account with that cylinder got deactivated because we didn't purchase butane for a few months and it's taking over a month to reactive our account. After it's reactivated in the headquarters in the state capital, Hyderabad, we still need to wait to actually get it filled.
The cook has been cooking a lot outdoors despite the rain. We keep our firewood stacked on the veranda to keep it dry. We even had to buy gas twice on the black market out of desperation. Apparently what some individuals do is that they purchase extra cylinders and wait until there's a shortage of butane or when people get frustrated with the gas company. Then they hike up the price by 30% and resell it. "Gas, gas, please come. Don't wait another day." (sung to the tune of "rain, rain, go away")
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