Calcutta Day 8 - August 4, 2010

We started off our morning by me locking Grace in our room. She harrumphed in the corner praying incessantly for Tammy to realize that she had locked her in. See, once we are inside the room, we lock from the inside; but once outside, we lock from the outside and set a padlock on the locking bracket. I’ve actually been doing that quite a bit – closing and bolting the door without locking lately as I go and fetch water from a nearby bath while Grace fills up water in our bathroom, but this time, well, I wasn’t thinking. I left earlier to get Rob, and Grace was to meet us downstairs after filling up a bucket of water (in prep for the lack of water in the evening). I totally did not realized I closed the door behind. After wondering why she was taking so long, I went upstairs to get her, and realized enroute that I had closed her in. WOOPS!

Afterwards we were enroute to EMC where we were to jump on the school bus with the older children (7-18) for the NFE program. With these older kids, it felt more like a traditional school, with teachers that were exceptionally engaging and animated. The morning assembly which included praise time, skit, games, prayer, etc., was awesome. The children and teachers were so excited to be there, singing loudly and lifting up His name with so much joy. We then observed their classes, and helped take class and some individual/small group pictures of the students. We play whatever role we can do support them, whether that be consultants observing their programs and identifying opportunities to improve, teachers and past students with ideas and activities, adults who help correct the student’s English classwork, interrupters who wander in and out of classrooms to observe, photographers (Rob is the professional with a nice camera and we are his assistants) to capture precious moments and memories for ourselves as well as the teachers and children, or simply as friends and supporters of the program and love the teachers and children. We are happy to support them however makes the most sense for them.

We headed back to EMC with the children on the school bus and then went up for a quick lunch, followed by our debrief meeting and discussion with the teachers of the program we had just observed. We are so thankful that again, the discussion went very well. We are always cramming to debrief our own observations of what we saw and heard, and preparing our questions and such for the teachers tends to happen on the fly despite the fact that we’ve said a couple times that we need to prep before hand. Oh well. Thankful that it all works out in the end. Our session with the teachers actually went way over time today, so we felt bad about that but they seemed to enjoy the session, and we definitely enjoyed our time with them. What an amazing group.

We are never really sure where these discussions will go since we have to translate questions and answers, and given our cramming and limited prep, it truly is by God’s grace that we were able to have such productive meetings. The teachers in all of our meetings this past week have expressed their gratitude in the work that we were doing for them. Honestly, we’ve shared this with them, but I hope they realize just how much they are teaching each of us on our team and how much they are inspring us by their lives and their love and compassion for these children and the communities. What a blessing it has been for us.

Celebrity photographer Rob
to give you a sense for how he is
able to captivate audiences.  This pic is with
CSS clients but you can see how they are truly captivated by him.

So what’s next for us is to compile our observations, summarize them, and do some brainstorming and research around what we might be helpful to support them. We are thinking both of the short term and the long term. The short term being activities, games, and teaching strategies for the teachers based on what we observed and discussed. The long term being what tools, resources, and potential seminars we might prepare and build for future engagements. I’m excited to bring others here to see, participate, and support EMC. I hope that Grace and Rob will come back with me too – it’s been cool to see Grace grow more comfortable in this environment, and it’s so neat to see her bring her experience and knowledge from her teaching experience to the table. And Rob's insight has been really great, and he also serves as photographer to capture and captivate these children and teachers. That's what you get for bringing a nice camera.

Tomorrow we meet to look at the microfinance work that EMC is doing. Hopefully we’ll be able to help support them in that vein as well.

So after we finished up this evening, we decided to hit KFC for dinner. So we walk in, stare at the menu for a couple minutes trying to decide what to order, and a manager or someone comes over and asks if we want to take a tour of their kitchen to see how they make their chicken. Just for kicks we say yes, and into the back door we go, put on a hair net/cap, and he shows us how to properly wash your hands because there is bacteria everywhere, then shows us where the chicken is kept and at what temperature, where it’s deep fried and how, and even the walk-in fridge and freezer where certain products are kept. It was quite entertaining. Anyhow, after getting my chicken, there was a small piece of hair on it, but whatever. It’s probably cleaner and more hygienic than most other KFCs in the US. Hilarious.

Then Grace and I decided we’d attempt some laundry by hand. I think we need more practice. Well, at the least we’ll have some clean pants and tops. They may be a bit crunchy due to left over suds (remember that daily water problem we have, well, yeah… limited water), but at least they’ll smell nice.

Alright, gotta to get some work done in prep for tomorrow. Goodnight.

Here's video from the group assembly time at Creek Road today with the older kids.