Mumbai, India June 2009

Part 4
by Emily Sernaker

I think that if you were to ask, India would tell you I'm getting the hang of things. I say go on India, lean on your walking stick, wash your clothes in the river, pierce your nose, burn your trash. Honk your horn before you turn the corner, let them know you are coming. India, I see you gliding down the road with all that spiky firewood, silver jugs of water up on your head; I am in awe of your balancing act. Ask me of my family and offer me sweets. Offer me spices and stories so strong they make my eyes water every time.

Well, I've moved from staying at the women’s center to staying at a center for little ones with HIV. The kids are happy to have a new playmate, as I have quickly become their very own human jungle gym. A good chunk of my day is spent learning about the program, meeting with their teachers, nurses, doctors, and program directors. The rest of the day usually finds me with at least three kids in my lap, one of my hands engaged in an outside thumb wrestling match and the other hand in a circle of down by the banks.

When I asked if there was anything I could do to help, the staff immediately said I could start leading devotion time, which is an hour of stories and songs each day. This particular organization I am evaluating is a Christian organization, and I did have some songs from church camp in my back pocket. I did decide to shake things up however, teaching them an NSYNC classic complete with dance moves: God Must Have Spent A Little More Time On You.

Meal time is my favorite. The kids will spend half of it staring at my blue eyes going "are those original?" and the second half asking me questions about America. "What kind of vegetables do you eat there?" they ask. I spend the rest of the meal naming every vegetable I can think of. When I say one they recognize they cheer for that vegetable. Avocados are met with silence.

Meal time is also special because I have started to help feeding the little ones. I was trying to think of the last time I fed something (I usually forget to feed Buckely, our dog at home). Looking at some of these tiny kids - putting each scoop of food on the spoon so carefully, watching it go in their mouth, praying that that bite might make them just a little bit stronger - it is a different kind of focused and concentrated love. I hadn't experienced anything like it before.

Lately, India has been reminding me of my own childhood. All of these houses made of bricks, some just of sticks, waiting for something to huff and puff and blow them all down. All of these chickens crossing the road to get to the other side. The bed bugs bite, now guess who's a walking game of connect the dots. You know you are culturally insensitive when the first man you see in a turban reminds you of Poonjab from the movie Annie. At least I wasn't wrong to think that some of these giant viney trees are the kind Mogley would climb; the author of the Jungle Book was from Mumbai.

Maybe I've been thinking more about childhood because there was a time when I didn't know what humans were capable of doing to one another.
Last night I was invited to the home of two of the aid workers who help run the women's rehab center. I asked if the women from the center have trouble adjusting to the program after having such terrible past experiences. Without taking a breath, both workers immediately started telling me about prayer time. They said that sometimes, while the women are praying together quietly, one will just start screaming. They said that she screams because she is trying to get out all of her pain, all of her suffering. Every level of her humanity had been attacked: physically, mentally, spiritually. They told me that the scream that comes out of those women has such violence, such sadness, a bottomlessness to it.

The workers went on to tell me more stories about how HIV/AIDS victims are outcast from society, how there is serious government corruption, how women are horribly beaten, and on and on and on. I wished I could go back to just naming vegetables.