Ami Kolkata Kay Palo Bashi

What an incredible journey...I felt the need to squeeze out one last blog from myself, post 18+ hours of travel back to the States. As my title suggests, in Bengali of course, I know I don't speak alone when I say I have come to love Kolkata and the people and culture it encompasses. It may have taken me almost 3 weeks to get used to the heat, the streets, the noise, and the general chaos; but now that I did I am smack in the middle of creepy quiet USA...a chilly 70 degrees and not a car horn to be heard! I think one of the hardest parts for many of us post-India will be accepting what will happen to those we have come to love back in the City of Joy, and the idea that we have now have no control over their futures. I know all 12 of us attempted to pour as much love and attention as we could into all of those whom we interacted with these past weeks, and now it is time to turn them over to the other volunteers and people who will come in and out of their life.

I could not help but think of one girl, Mary, at ShiShu Bhavan, who must be 14 or 15 years old. She sits alone in bed all day long, the oldest girl there by years, with no one to talk to or play with as the younger kids attend school in the morning and play in the afternoons. I worry that the kids in my classroom will end up like her, in desperate need of peers and attention and more schooling. That, or worse, that they might end up back on the streets without even a bed or 3 meals each day to look forward to. There is some hope, though, at the orphanage; a girl in our class was scheduled to be adopted the day after we left and we watched several children be adopted during our time there. It is hard to know they will look forward to seeing me and Claire's faces every morning and we won't be there anymore, to hand out the play-doh or give out all the high five's and piggy back rides that I know they look forward to. I will miss watching their daily progress learning to share their crayons, discovering more English words all the time, and learning we do enforce consequences if they hit each other! I must trust in the other volunteers they will encounter that they will continue what we did with them.

There are so many words and emotions I continue to feel about Kolkata and everyone we left behind there. We have all discussed how difficult it will be to describe our experiences to family and friends, so I encourage all of you to have open ears and hearts as we begin the struggle to find words to explain all we have encountered since we left. Thank you for all your love and support the whole time we were gone! :)

Love,

Christine