There is much to catch up on…
We took all the children out for a meal on Christmas eve – all the children were very excited about this adventure. 2 busses were due to come but one had a puncture so we ended up using one and did 2 round trips. The restaurant was awoken when the food was served by all the children giving thanks to God for their food in their normal fashion of one child standing to say the prayer and the rest of the orphans repeating bit by pit. Once the meal was finished we crammed all 70 children onto the one bus designed for 30 and returned back for them to get changed out of their smart dress and then off for the park.
Christmas day, well, it will be the only Christmas day I will be awoken at 6.30am by someone dropping off a family of 4 goats in an old ambassador car! Christmas dinner was chicken biryani, eaten in true Indian style with my hands sitting cross-legged on the floor with all the children! We were able to give some Christmas gifts to the children which included footwear for all the children, a head torch and bible for the older boys, a new school bag for the younger boys, goodie bags for the girls and we got a few gifts in return from the children, it was the last day for us and it was full of mixed emotions we each had to give a goodbye speech and Joseph who does the day to day running was very effected from us being there and living exactly like they do.
On the full bus!
We had to leave Early morning on 26th and it was all a bit of a rush after 2 months it was good bye to the children we had been fathers, mothers and friends to and now it was time to leave. The little and big children had tears in their eyes as they hugged goodbye. Each one of us had far from dry eyes too. We zoomed off to the busy railway station and only just got there in time as we had to walk miles to get to our coach – each train is about 25 coaches long. Two of the orphans came with us on our visit to Mumbai and one came to wave us goodbye at the station, it was a final goodbye to Joseph and the orphan ‘SMS’ as I jumped on the moving train you could just see two arms waving above the crowds of people at the station before the train was on it’s way to Mumbai.
A photo from before on the dogem cars
One child packs away his new gifts into his suitcase.
Christmas day, christmas and leaving gifts and christmas hats!
Goodbye from the christmas day goat.
A final goodbye.
Typed on 26.12.12
