crows

The title is crows, because there a bajillion crows in this city. Just so you know, crows are ugly birds. They look like little demons flying around and pooping all over the place.

Ok, so I have officially done two mornings at Kalighat and I pretty much love it. It is so much more intimate than Prem Dan and I feel like I come here to work at Kalighat so I am doing what I came here for. The days will typically go like this: First, we get there are do laundry, hand washing all the patients clothes/rags, etc... and then after hanging up the laundry on the roof to dry, we will go hang out with the patients. This means bringing them water, massaging them, shaving them, clipping their nails, whatever really. Also, for the patients who are recovering, we can help them walk some. Today I got to help a blind guy walk and it was really cool because he was just laying in his bed and he seemed really happy when I got him up to go walking. I guess it was encouraging for me to see that I was making this guy happier by helping him out.

This afternoon I am going to Beth (my leader)'s house and talking about Guilty Without Trial, a book about the sex-trade in Calcutta. Reading that book totally opened my eyes because before this, I always just tucked prostitution into the category of "bad people" and moved on. But now I've been forced to look it in the eye and love it. The truth is (in India anyways) that these prostitutes are not there for the glamour hardly EVER. They are there because of poverty or because of sex traffiking. To know that calcutta is a hub for sex trafficking all over India is pretty disturbing. So, when we visit the gach it is going to be really cool to meet some of these ladies and offer them hope through SariBari because the contract has been given to us! Sorry, I totally forgot to update and say the we got the contract, and this is partially because I haven't gotten to help out any with the building process, and I am doubting that I will because they will just hire some Indians to do it all. Nevertheless, it is extremely exciting to know that a new branch is going to be starting up that targets one of the biggest red light districts in India. I love going to SariBari because I feel like I get to be a very small part of something that is so beautiful.