Vatsalya

And your own life while its happening to you never has any atmosphere until it becomes a memory.
       -- Andy Warhol

I was paired with Vatsalya, www.vatsalya.org.  The organization was initially created to help street children but has since expanded to other projects as well.  The organization runs a clinic around the truck rest stop in Jaipur, where doctors test long distance truck drivers for STIs (sexually transmitted infections).  Although HIV awareness activities are conducted around the area outside the clinic, the clinic does not have a lab so patients are referred to government facilities for testing.  Vatsalya also runs a "sex workers project" in Ajmer, 3 hours west of Jaipur.  This project is more awareness oriented, as educators go out to sex worker hot spots and teach prostitutes to protect themselves from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.


The other volunteer and I were first taken to the orphanage in Acherol, called "Udayan".  Both middle men had failed to inform the parent organization that we would be coming, so we kind of just showed up.


It was cold.  The orphanage was placed far back from the main road.  It was peaceful and quiet.  We arrived right before prayer time and met another volunteer who was on her way out, also American.  We watched the children say prayer.  Beautiful.  Singing and lots of repetition of the word "shanti", peace in Hindi.

After dinner we went into the kitchen to get chai.  The kitchen staff mostly just spoke Hindi, but we stayed and socialized.  The big aunty in the kitchen said something in Hindi about me being a boy, or boy hair (my Hindi isn't good enough to really know) and I replied indignantly, "Meh lerki hu!"... "I'm a girl!" and pretended to look upset, which they all thought was hilarious.  I started talking with one boy putting ghee on chapati.  He told me he was from South Africa.  Apparently, there are no elephants there, but dinosaurs are a common sight.


Both nights I stayed there there was a traveling group of musicians.  Good evening entertainment, but I was so jet-lagged I fell asleep and the singer was making fun of me in Hindi and Urdu.  oops.  


From the other volunteer, we learned more about the organization and got some useful tips.  She had a lot of pent up frustrations and most of what she said was pretty negative.  I told her that night


You are going to get home and find out that you experienced a lot more than you think


After that she had a much better attitude and realized, despite how awful and frustrating some things were, she really had experienced India.  Some things, the only thing you can do is laugh.

I only stayed at Udayan for 2 nights.  Most of what I saw was all smiles.  Playing with the kids and trying to learn Hindi from them at meal times.  I picked up a book in the dorm I was staying in, written by Jaimala, one of the founders of Vatsalya, "Eighteen million question marks: The street children of India".  She had written about the children of Vatsalya, changing their names.  It was hard to believe what these children had been through before coming. 


In particular, I learned of one little girl who was less than 12 years old but had learned how to take care of herself on the streets by giving sexual favors.  Mistaking this for love, she continued to "sex play" and to try to get the other children to engage.  As a result, she lived separate from the other children and had special counseling.

Despite their pasts, children are children.  They have the same needs for attention and my interactions had been the same as those with American children and the children of Tanzania.  My favorite memory is ballroom dancing to Hindi music with some of the little girls on my last morning before they went off to school.


We met the founders of Vatsalya on the second night who had come to see the music group and discussed our goals for volunteering.  Despite not knowing about us until we had showed up, they were very accommodating and we arranged to go to Jaipur the next day.