"It's a Volunteercation"

Went on a nightwalk through the homeless area of Old Delhi just outside the largest mosque in India. It was led by an NGO: http://jamghat.in/drupal-6.3/ From the website:

Night Walk: This free, monthly, 4-hour walk aims to sensitize the public to the needs, dangers, and fun of being a street child. We take a group of 25 people out from 8pm-midnight, walking through the streets, visiting shelters, and providing an experiential learning about life on the streets.

It was incredible. It's not that I hadn't already seen the horrible images- 5 year olds sniffing drugs, malnourished bodies lying at your feet, people tugging at your pockets and purses...I have seen them and experienced them since day one. But on this tour, I felt truly spooked and scared for the lives of these children. The men in the tour were asked to walk on the outside of the group- with the women (aka me) on the inside. It was a very unsafe area. Our guides were a beautiful woman who knew perfect English and a 20-something guy who was part of the center and spent his whole life homeless. He took us around, stopping every couple of minutes to point out children begging, sniffing, working or sleeping. Then, he pointed out his very own mom, lying on tattered bedspreads on the ground, looking probably twice her actual age. Children ran up to the woman crying Didi! Didi!, happy to see a safe, familiar face in the disturbing darkness. She spoke about how truly unsafe the area was for young girls and women- in fact, just recently a 5 year old girl was gang raped. She said girls at the center come to her all of the time with rips and tears in their clothes due to someone who had mistreated them in the night. I cried about that- surrounded by the actual young vulnerable girls who she may or may not have been referring to in English. We also saw a lot of young boys sniffing something which could be compared with rubber cement.

Anyway, the center provides informal education (like mine), health checkups, immunizations and apparently sex education so that they may try and defend themselves in the future.

N.J. was closed today because of Diwali, so Jess and I headed over to Jamghat with two volunteers who were placed there last week. It's a great center that tends to very disturbed, very dirty and very ill children. One girl cried for 30 minutes for no apparent reason and a good number of boys had open scabs and sores on their body. Just last week, one boy put his finger in a rickshaw engine and cut off his fingertip- but they had no first aid kit (even though they offer medical treatment there?) to treat it (Helen, a volunteer from the UK later provided one for them). It was a morning well spent offering hugs, playing games and teaching some colors.

So, apparently I only paid for this housing up until Nov 1, even though I didn't plan on leaving until Nov 7. So....I guess I'm booking a hostel for a couple of days in November. Should be another adventure. No worries though- heading to Dharamsala for 4 days and Pushkar for the Camel Fair(!) for 2 days. My last two weeks should be packed with chaos/fun/adventure.

<3 <3 <3
Erin Didi!

P.S. Just for fun, I've been calling my coworkers by their names at our center. Peter is now Peter Baya and Jess is Jess Didi. It gets annoying, though, even for me. But we practically are like siblings- exchanging friendship bracelets, teaching the kids in turns.