We spent basically most of yesterday traveling, and arrived in Jaipur (the pink city) just in time to eat dinner and go to bed.  Just to preview, this is a city that you MUST see some time in your life!  WOW, is the word to describe it!  We met our guide (we are not big on hiring tour guides, but we are SOOO glad we did today) at 8:00 and made a beeline for the Amber Fort.  Some quick history, the Amber Fort is located about 20 minutes outside of Jaipur.  The old city of Jaipur was built about 300 years ago, and the Amber fort is about 500 years old, and is built in a mountainous region.  As the population grew the old city could not support the population so the Maharajah moved the capital to Jaipur.  About 150 years ago the Prince of Wales was coming to visit, and the Maharajah ordered the city painted pink to honor him.  All of the buildings are still required to be this color. 

Jaipur

Amber Fort

So we crossed a couple of things off of our bucket lists this morning.  The first one started the morning off right, and this was an Elephant ride up to the Amber fort!  The kids had a great time, and it was a treat.  We had seen pictures of the Amber fort, but we really had no concept of how fabulous this place would be.  The Maharajah who owned this palace, the Fort on the mountain above it and the wall that surrounds the city must have been fabulously wealthy.  The architecture of the building is beautiful with a combination of Hindu and Islamic architecture.  The had a system to move water up from the valley below to provide not only drinking water, but water for their fountains, Turkish bath and 99 toilets. 

In case of danger there is a tunnel running from the palace to the fort on the top of the mountain.

Water Palace

After leaving the Amber fort we headed back towards Jaipur, and crossed another item off of our bucket list, riding a camel.  Cindy and all of the kids rode the Camel, and I went along side and took pictures.  This was all took place on the road around the lake that the water palace is located in.  Unfortunately, the Water palace is closed so we could only take pictures from across the lake.

Astronomical Observatory

This was one of those things on the itinerary that really made me Yawn, like really we are going to an observatory?  But how cool was this place!!  They had like 15 different machines that they had built, and they were all amazing!  The worlds largest sun dial, it keeps accurate time to within 2 seconds.  Very cool things that track the suns azimuth, latitude longitude.  12 different structures one for each sign of the Zodiac, that  tell you all kinds of cool astrology things!  Keaton just lit right up after our guide started describing all of these things, and it was easily the highlight of the day for him.

Palace

For the last place of the day we went to the current palace in the Pink city.  The last Maharajah died last year, Prince Bubbles as he was nicknamed, and his heir is his 13 year old nephew I believe.  Anyway, they still live in the palace and own huge tracts of land in this area, making them very wealthy.  Pretty much everything that we have seen is owned by the Maharajah.  Between us, we took about 800 pictures today, and they all need to be seen to get a true feeling for this experience.  

Last Day at Rising Star

Goodbye

Some of Cindy's fan club

The sweetest girl in the World!

Veera and his sister Veralakshmi.  He and Carson were inseparable!

Today was very bittersweet.  For our last day at Rising Star they had a schoolwide science fair, and we got to be the judges.  It was a tremendous amount of pomp and ceremony with myself and the father of the other family Eric giving the words of wisdom and advice to the gathered students.  After the opening ceremonies, they gave each of us a flower lei, put a bindi (red mark) on our foreheads, sprinkled our heads with water and gave us a piece of rock sugar to eat.  The halls of the school had been decorated with intricate designs that were done in colored rock salt.  Following the science fait they had the big cricket match featuringthe sillyAmericans who had no clue what we were doing.  Despite the fact that we made fools of ourselves, we all had a good time.  The rest of the day was play time with the children, nighttime prayer time, dinner and then a movie with the children (The Forbidden  Kingdom).  Makenzie had many of the girls give her little gifts, bangles, a ring, necklace and one girl gave her two books.  It is almost impossible for me to talk about the children without getting emotional. This was the easy part of the trip!  It took zero effort to fall in love with these beautiful children.  They are all so loving and open with everyone they meet.  They have had tough lives!  They come from families with Leprosy that have been cast out of society.  They only get to see their families for 30 days a year.  And they are the happiest people you could ever hope to meet.  With all we have in our lives, the simple gift of love and happiness that they so fully own somehow seems beyond our reach.

Leprosy

Probably the most difficult thing to convey to others is the emotions and feelings I had working with those who had been afflicted with Leprosy.  Frankly I was a little creeped out by the idea of not only working with someone who had leprosy, but how I would react to them. Dealing with blood, and big open wounds is also not very high on my list of things I am able to deal with.  But, I will tell you that working in the Leper colonies and those people was by far the highlight of the trip for me.  Frankly that even sounds weird for me to say, but it is one of those things that you have to be there to understand it.  The love that they give back to you and the true appreciation that you receive from them for the service you render is unmatched.  Truly a life changing experience.

Visit to a small colony today

This morning we headed out once again to one of the Leprosy Colonies.  Although this one is not that far away they took us on kind of a round about route so we could see some of the countryside.  We thought that we were in just about the most rural and poor place in India, but once again we were wrong.

The Trip

We went by several small mountains and lots of farming communities.  It is not uncommon to see people still plowing their fields with water buffalo.  In fact the farm just down the road from us does this.  Far and away the majority of wagons that we see on the roads are being pulled by cows.  The cattle they have here look like the Brahma bulls that we have back in the U.S.  I guess this makes sense as Brahma is one of the Hindu gods, and the American Brahma were bred from the cows in India.  Anyway, along the way we stopped by a Hindu temple as some of the others with us had never seen one.  Bala, the Indian director who was with us showed us around, and gave us a good background.  Inside the temple two men started playing their drum and some kind of wind instrument.  It produced a fantastic amount of sound!  They were playing for our benefit and expected a small donation (50 rupees, or about $1).  One of Cindy's favorite sites was seeing several motorcycles just piled high with fabric, the equivalent of a traveling fabric store!

Walajabad 

Once we arrived it was easy to tell just how poor the community was, all of the homes had thatched roofs, and many of these were patched with plastic bags to keep the rain out.  We met the patients in a small Church/community center they had, probably 25X40 feet in size and the largest building in the town.  Although we saw most of the people in the town who needed treatment, there was only about 15 people who came through.  Not everyone in the town actually accepts treatment, and some of them do not have any wounds or sores that need treatment.  After we finished I was chatting with a man who came out of his home to just say hi.  He was missing most of his fingers, but he walked just fine and his feet looked to be in good condition.  We also saw our first younger patients today.  Two different ladies in their 20's or young 30's came through to be treated.  Everyone else that we have seen has been older than 50.  A sad story: many of the children in the school come from this small poor village.  One of the girls who was in the school for several years dropped out of school and now has a 1 year old baby, and she is only 15.  Arranged marriages with very young girls is still very prevalent in India.  Can't really see much of a future for someone in those conditions.  As much as we do here, it is impossible to just change peoples culture and way of life, some times you just do the best that you can.

Vedanthangal Bird Sanctuary

On the way back from Walajabad we stopped at the Vedanthangal Bird Sanctuary.  Really was not expecting much, but was favorably impressed.  The first thing that we noticed when we walked in the gate was the monkeys!  Oh how my kids love the monkeys!  They were quite friendly and we probably got too close to them, especially the babies.  Makenzie was getting her face about 12 inches away from theirs, despite the warnings from the locals that they were dangerous.  Fortunately they behaved themselves.  The birds were really amazing.  This is a swampy area with lots of trees, and the trees were just filled with birds.  At first we did not notice how many there were as they would blend into the background.  But, we had some binoculars and were able to spend some time seeing them up close.  Stopped 2 guys on a bike selling cotton candy on the way home, 20 cents for a bag of it!

The School

Peery School

Today was the first day that we worked with the children tutoring them.  Each of us either worked singly or in pairs to work with the children on either English or gave them special help on specific subjects.  They have 223 students in the school currently and they are a mixture of kids.  It is split 80/20 with 80% of the children coming from families where someone if afflicted with Leprosy, the other 20% are children from the surrounding area.  This gives the children who typically would not even have the opportunity to attend school to get a great education, and integrate themselves with the children in the local community. The locals DESPERATELY want their children to attend this school not only because the general education is much better that what they would get in their local school, but with the addition of all of the American Volunteers ALL of the children have a good opportunity to learn english.  In India all children to to school through 10th grade.  Upon completion they take their 10th standard competency test.  If they pass it they are then sent to a school to complete 11th and 12th grade and have a chance to go to college.  If they don't pass they are done with school.  Some subjects like English and Penmanship are very important portions of these tests.  Last year 100% of the students in 10th grade advanced on to higher education.

Our kids were great and just jumped right into help out, as I am sure you can see from the pictures. The school is a tremendous bargain, it costs $120 a month per child, and to sponsor a child is only $30 per month.  If anyone is interested, here is a link. http://risingstaroutreach.org/products/sponsorachild.php

 After a full day of teaching we got an hour break to go and prepare our nightly devotional.  Keaton was paired with Jon one of the other volunteers, I had Mckay and Carson with me, and Cindy had Makenzie.  This is required by the government, and is 30 minutes of singing, telling spiritual stories, and trying to create a moral paradigm for the children.  Tonight the children sang 3 songs to us.  1 Christmas song in Tamul, The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning, and I am a Child of God.  Then we went back out to the playground from 4-6 and they ran us ragged.  We are beat, and ready to just crash!!

The Leprosy Colony

This was a very good day.  Highs and lows in many unexpected places.

The Leprosy Colony

This was the reason that we came on this trip, and frankly it was the part of the experience that I was kind of dreading.  Those of you who know me know that I am not exactly the greatest around blood and things like that.  So...I was not really sure how I would deal with this.  We went to one of the largest colonies today, and were able to meet with a larger group of Leprosy patients.  One of the first things that we realized when we came into the colony is that the majority of the people who live there are not actually affected by Leprosy, but they are family members and relatives of those who do have Leprosy.  In this town there is a small community center where we set-up shop.  There were 2 bus loads of people who went today, one bus was volunteers like ourselves, and in the other one was the doctor, nurses and medical staff who are all Indians.  The medical staff were all women with the exception of one person.  They were all dressed in beautiful Sari's, and had woven flowers in their hair and basically were dressed to the nines.  Not what I would have chosen to wear to work in the conditions that we were in.  

Community Center

In the community center we set up all around the interior walls with a number of stations.  The first place they would come to was registration, blood pressure, and glucose stations.  Makenzie worked in this location, and she looked just like an adult nurse!  She was totally in her element and thought it was the greatest thing in the world!  The next place they would go to was the medication station.  In this place they would get medicine, bandages and everything they would need to treat their wounds.  After this, any of the patients that had open ulcers on their feet would come and get them treated.  First they would come and one person would cut off the gauze and bandages they had on their feet.  Then they would come to the foot washing station.  This is where Cindy and I worked assisted by McKay.  We would fill foot washing basins 2 to 6 inches deep with water and then put in some antiseptic.  We would soak their feet in this for about 5 minutes.  Then we would take small squares of material (Nona these are the ones that you make) and scrub out the ulcers on the bottoms or sides of their feet.  Some of these were very large 3 inches or more across and as deep as an inch deep.  It varied between the patient, but some of them could feel nothing, and for others it was quite painful while we cleaned their wounds.  After this was done we put paper booties on their feet to keep them clean.  The next station they went to was to have an oil put on their feet and legs.  It was liquid paraffin oil, and Keaton would rub this all over their feet and legs.  Additionally, he would lightly massage the tops of their feet and legs.  The effects of Leprosy causes their skin to be really dry and sore.  As Keaton massaged their feet and legs they were so happy because of how good it felt to them.  As we finished up many of them just hung around and thanked us over and over for helping them.  The kids were awesome!

Micro-Business

After we finished with the treatments we went and visited some of the micro-businesses.  The first one was a Pearl manufacturing business.  To be specific, they take pearls they have got from the Phillipines and string them by hand in different designs and patterns to make necklaces, bracelets and earrings.  A full necklace and bracelet combination is $90.  The company that sells these in the US is http://pearlswithpurpose.com.  The next place that we visited was an Art School they have set-up to teach those who have the effects of Leprosy learn to paint, and to benefit from their efforts.  It is a very rough building and the artists have a view directly out the back of the building they paint from open air to a cattle pen.  The cows are only about 15 feet away from where they are painting.  We bought several paintings and had our pictures taken with the artists.  One of the men we bought a painting from had no fingers at all, but created wonderful pieces of art!  We also got to meet the barber, and the carpentry shop.

The Children

Today all of the children started to return for school tomorrow.  We went over to their dormitory area and they were all out in the yard playing.  We were literally swarmed by children!  For about 3-4 hours we played so hard that we are all just completely worn out!  The kids already have great friends amongst the children.  We met one girl who traveled 10 hours from her home to get to the school.  Her and Makenzie are already wonderful friends.  Spending time with these wonderful, wild, crazy, happy children was definately one of the highlights of our trip.  Part of the curriculum of the school is that they have prayer time every night.  Tonight the staff did the prayer and religious thought portion of the program and then the students wanted to sing us all a song.  The song that they chose to sing was "We Thank Thee O God For a Prophet".  Truly was a highlight of the night.