Visiting Another School

After our late dinner back in Vellore Thursday night, I asked Father Xavier if I could use the internet to seek word on my suitcase. He left and soon a beautiful but sleepy looking young woman came in. He had roused her from bed to help me. It turned out she was the principal of the school next door, Sister Elizabeth.

An email from Emirates said my suitcase had been found. It had evidently never left Tel Aviv. Since everything that went wrong went wrong in Tel Aviv, I wondered fleetingly if divine or human payback was involved, payback for scolding an Israeli security guard for detaining two of our young men and taking the casual approach to setting them free more than an hour later. He said it was for security reasons; I said it was not security but harassment. There were many more things I wish I had said about arrogance, about hospitality, about things that are done every day in the no-longer debate-stopping name of security. But if my suitcase could tell its story, it would probably be rather dull. It lay for days in the bowels of Ben Gurion airport; it traveled via assorted capital cities in Europe or Asia to Delhi; it was flying to Chennai and would meet us at our next stop.






Sister Elizabeth invited me to visit her school, Sneha Deepam Matriculation School, at 9:00 the next morning. Like the motorcycle trip, this invitation would not have come had the suitcase complied with expectations. I was late coming because we had a meeting, and when I arrived she scolded me gently for missing the opening assembly. I joined some of the teachers in her office for opening devotions, received a ceremonial welcome shawl, then listened in on what appeared to be an impromptu faculty meeting. Then she invited me outside where various classes of children were practicing their dances for an annual sports day that was coming up. Like the children the day before, these danced exuberantly, joyously.

Then we walked around to various classrooms to talk to the students. When we arrived at the highest class, the plus two’s, she told me they had just taken a national mathematics test. She invited me to introduce myself and answer questions. They asked the perfunctory ones, where do you live, do you have children, what do you do, how do you like India, what are you doing here. When I said I was on a meditation pilgrimage they asked me to teach them meditation. So that’s what we did. It was like taking ice to Alaska, but we sat with our feet on the floor and closed our eyes and concentrated our on breathing for a few minutes.

It was clear Sister Elizabeth wanted to tell the school’s story. It had been open 7 years, and had grown to be a large building with 1500 kids, half of them on financial aid. They were crowded and needed more building. She also gave me information for raising funds for the school.

These kids were talented, smart, and disciplined. We walked into one classroom when the teacher was elsewhere, and instead of swinging off the light fixtures and hurting one another these kids were standing in the aisle between the desks, calmly following the lead of one student in some group activity. With very few resources and on a salary of about $120 per month, the teachers were managing classes of 45 students. Our money can do so much in a place like that. If you would like to help me give a gift to this school or the one in Randham, please let me know. Education is certainly a necessary pathway to a more stable life for so many of these beautiful children.

Vellore and Randham

(By the way, I have finally added pictures to this and other entries below.)

We arrived in Vellore Thursday at the Sneha Deepam Retreat House, which is run by the order of Foyer Charity of France. Another spare but pleasant place, built like the last one around a square courtyard--with doves and parakeets in cages and flowers to delight.

We doubled up. The room was big, there were screens on the windows and a nice ceiling fan, but no toilet seat, flush, shower, or hot water. It's still several steps away from tent camping, which people do for fun. I think it lends us the illusion that we are ascetics, even if only in a few matters for a short time. The priest, Father Xavier, was white bearded and white robed, very twinkly, like a happy saint.

We dropped our luggage there (that didn’t take me very long, no suitcase yet) and went on to Randham, a little village where Father Nelson was priest seven years. We had lunch in the parish house with the priest and two assistants from the seminary. About 120 families of Catholics live there, and the other 2/3 of the town is Hindu.

We went to visit the school Father Nelson had started, 500 students from all around, Hindu and Christian. A special program had been planned for us. Like the two retreat houses, the school was built around a square courtyard, with a veranda all around the inside, virtually doubling the size of the classrooms behind it. The children were already sitting on the concrete all around the veranda, and we were seated in the shade in a central platform in the plastic chairs of honor. The sun scorches, but the breeze seems always to be blowing and the shade is quite comfortable.

I’m not a fan of plastic, and on balance I don’t think the western world has done the developing world any favor by introducing billboards, disposable junk, and trash issues like they never had before and can't cope with now. On the other hand, where space and funds are limited and humans do most of the toting, good use is made of stackable plastic chairs, stools, buckets, etc. There are even plastic water carrying urns, designed just like the heavy brass ones of old (still in use in Kathmandu, for example), the kind you balance on the hip and sling your elbow around. They come in any color you can paint your home or business, i.e., any color at all.





The carefully planned and well-rehearsed program consisted mostly of children of all ages performing wonderful Indian dances, including an interesting rendition of Jingle Bells (I think to remind us of home--seven degrees and snowing, right?). They were extremely impressive, not to mention adorable. Even the littlest ones had memorized hundreds of steps and movements, and danced with no hesitation or coaching. And they smiled and smiled as they danced, knowing they were stars doing what they love to do. It gives some perspective to the ubiquity and skill of dancing in Bollywood movies. Besides the dances there was also a karate exhibition with some visually impressive poses.


We were absolutely treated like royalty, and all because of Father Nelson, who had done so much for the villagers. (He is now serving in Birmingham, Alabama, because of the shortage of priests in the U.S., but he said he misses being in his home country, where he could do so much more good. The fact that he is serving in America because of a lack of American priests, and that he can't do as much good there is really worth a lot of pondering, though I don't know if it is a commentary on the state of the U.S. or the state of the church in the U.S., or both. It just raises questions.) Being completely undeserving recipients of this outpouring of favor was very humbling. We were the American companions of an Indian priest of rock star stature and all we had done was show up, not even knowing the day before where we were going, ignorant of the care and time that had gone into their planning for the last month. Each of us ceremonially received a beautiful shawl. There were several speeches. Afterward came the extremely fun part, when we were encouraged to visit the various classrooms and talk to the children, who all wanted to practice their English.



Afterwards Father Nelson wanted to take us to see a milk project the parish had started. They loan poor families the money ($125) to buy a cow, and when the cow calves and begins to produce milk, a cooperative buys it from the farmer, coming around to measure and collect it twice a day, and pays the farmer for the milk, taking out some to pay back the loan. When the loan is paid, the cow and any calves belong to the farmer, who then has a source of income. It’s like Heifer Project. It was great to see it in action up close and personal with the cows. I even got sprayed with a little milk.

We walked around the village and visited with families there, often in their homes. Many are extremely poor. The huts are made of mud, which is stacked a foot at a time, dried, and then built up some more. The floors are also of dried mud. The roofs are made of layers of palm leaves woven together, topped with what is left of the sugar cane stalks after harvesting, and then all tied down. One roof lasts three years and then must be replaced. The roof eaves are about three feet from the ground—-you have to stoop under them. But this creates a cool, breezy outdoor space—-to sit on in front, to cook under in back. The house door itself is full height. We sat in one room that was combination bedroom, living room, and dining room. It had a bed, a mat, a small wall shelf with metal dishes, and a TV on a stand.

Father Nelson told us many stories of people in the village—of girls too poor to come up with dowries so they could marry, of young deaths, of widows raising many children. Life there seems very tough, especially for those born into the lower castes (and I think we saw all castes in the village, from the richest to the poorest, or at least their homes). He said the church attracts many of the poorer people and lower castes. There had been lots of sad deaths recently and he especially felt his heart tugged by the people’s needs.



Throughout the village, any American who showed interest in the people around them (and we all did) was mobbed. The children again wanted to practice their English: “Good evening. How are you? What is your name?” I asked some of them to teach me some Tamil, their language (we are in the state of Tamil Nadu now), which they were happy to do so long as they reserved the right to laugh at everything I tried to say. Some of the older people wanted to bless and be blessed. Everyone enjoyed having their picture taken. Father Nelson bought flowers from a vendor to put in our hair, and the women helped us arrange them. The interaction was very intense.


Every time we started for the van, someone else wanted to invite us in to give us food and drink they could hardly afford. Their hospitality was gracious and graceful. All of the few poor places I have ever been in the world, Palestine and Haiti and Nepal and now India, and every other place I have ever heard about, in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia—-all but pockets of Europe and the U.S.—-are characterized by both material lack, with the tragedies that ensue, and shocking amounts of human richness, faith, talent, love, and warmth—-and often much joy. It’s not that poverty makes one happy. Being able to achieve family and economic stability seems critical. But it appears wealth can hurt people’s spirits as much as poverty does. Only wealth may help us avoid seeing it, because we think it ought to make us happy, and leaves us wondering what is wrong with us that happiness is so elusive.

On the Road to Vellore

We left Bangalore on Thursday and drove to Vellore. The drive in the country looked much like Nepal, driving through busy little villages and past farms, animals, people walking and driving oxen, etc. We kept seeing cattle and oxen with their horns painted blue or green, and sometimes little gold crowns or bells on the tops of the horns. Nelson told us that the cow festival had just passed, the day people express gratitude for all that the cattle give them in work and milk (not food, since Hindus don’t eat beef). It’s the day they don’t beat them, and they decorate their horns to be festive. The paint stays until it wears off.

We got on a toll road on which we could actually make progress. Not like an American interstate, but perhaps like a state road. At the toll both was a sign that said:

ATTENTION PLEASE! DO NOT SPIT!

The highway was enhanced with many signs promoting safety, such as:

SAFETY GEARS ARE PLACED BETWEEN EARS

DON’T LEARN SAFETY BY ACCIDENT

SPEED THRILLS BUT KILLS

BE ALERT; ACCIDENT HURTS

SAFE DRIVING IS LIKE BREATHING. DO NOT STOP.

FAST DRIVE COULD BE LAST DRIVE

Every once in awhile there were randomly placed red STOP signs, but they didn’t seem to mean anything in particular as the driver didn’t even slow down. Sometimes there was a sign (also randomly placed as far as we could tell):

GO SLOW, ACCIDENT PRONE ZONE.

But the one that seemed to quarrel with all the others and gave us much food for thought was this one:

DEATH IS NATURE….YOU DON’T CAUSE IT.

We wondered which was true in India. If a reckless driver dies or kills someone else, was that nature, or karma? or is the universe structured around at least some cause and effect even in India? Do time and chance happen to them all?

At Jyotir Bhavan Retreat Center

Given the delays and changes in my itinerary, it’s not that surprising that my suitcase was lost. Unfortunately, the ticketer in Tel Aviv had mistakenly told me I had to pack absolutely all of my liquids and gels, so I arrived with no toiletries or medicines. But fortunately I had given a small bag of clothes and a few other things to one of the other travelers to bring for me from the U.S. rather than dragging extra stuff all over Israel.

So it’s an odd assortment of stuff I got here with: no toothpaste but three containers of mosquito repellent. No blue jeans, but two Nepali curtas. The French press I had bought just before going to the airport, but no coffee. An ipod without a charger; a camera without a cord. No prescription meds but a big pile of mail for Claire and Sajal. At least I don’t have to think hard about what to wear, and it doesn’t take long to pack.

The airport is on the north end of Bangalore and the retreat center is on the other end, with traffic in between. So the driver and three other people who came to get me were very kind to make the trip. We arrived “home” about 11:00, so very ready to be here. The retreat center is built as a two-story square around a pretty courtyard, with a rooftop over, covered for sitting in the shade. Trees filled with birds are all around. My room is very plain but quiet and sweet. I fell to sleep immediately and never woke till I heard voices in the morning.


After breakfast one of the men who works here offered to take me to “Total,” a department store about 10 minutes away. He said “can you ride the bike?” and I thought he meant bicycles. That’s fine, sounds like fun. But he meant the motorbike. So we were off. It’s about like riding a motorcycle in the dark in Kathmandu, except you can see the pedestrians you are swerving around, and on the open road instead of the city the trucks are bigger. Definitely worth the lost luggage.






We came back and several of us took a walk around the area, meeting some Franciscan nuns along the way. We also met four pharmacy students from Kathmandu.
We watched women winnowing a grain called “ragi,” with which rotis are made. They tossed forks of straw in the air and the grains fell to the ground in a pile at their feet.

The owner also took us to get a stalk of sugar cane to eat, and pointed the way to his “club”—i.e., his weight training room. Then we saw his Mercedes.

After lunch I washed clothes, Nepali style, with plastic buckets. This place has a fabulous piece of equipment, however: a rough stone slab about hip-height, which serves as a washboard to rub and beat the soapy clothes on, tilted slightly so that all the water runs away from you. It really works. Clean, sweet-smelling traveling clothes.

Several of us sat in the shade on the roof in the late afternoon and watched the finches flitting around in the treetops, and listened to the cattle egrets begin making their weird, spooky sound. These are the same birds they call “bokula” in Nepal. Several of them were following a cow around.

Tomorrow we are going to the state of Tamil Nadu, to a little village called Randham, where Father Nelson used to be a priest, and where he founded a school.

More on Dubai

We flew into Dubai as the sun was rising over the skyscrapers. The female employees of Emirates airline wear red pillbox hats with cream-colored scarves floating down over the right ear, draping in a vaguely demure fashion over the front of the pinstriped uniform and over the left shoulder, disappearing somewhere in the folds. Very sheik.

When you come, make sure not to take the stall with the squat toilet even though it has paper in it, nor the paperless stall even though it has a Western toilet, or you may end up resorting to a spray nozzle, blindly aimed, without hope of drying soon. Not that it happened to me, I am just giving information.

Correction: Transfer to Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and THEN India

For the record, Istanbul (northeast of Israel) is not geographically on the way from Tel Aviv to India, nor, it seems, connectionally.

After we had been on the plane from Tel Aviv to Istanbul for a couple of hours, but before we left the runway, my seatmate told me that Turkish Airline does not really run on time. First we waited for late passengers to arrive, then we stopped to fix something. We took off about the time I had imagined we might land. But during our flight Turkish Airlines synchronized its watches and a dozen or two flights left Istanbul on time without us, including my flight to Delhi (in Istanbulese, "Del-Hee").

The transfer desk was tohu vavohu. For a short while I entertained fantasies of spending 24 hours in Istanbul, but this turned out to be off limits to Americans without a visa. The two Israelis next to me could have done it, but they were being routed through Khartoum, which they insisted was off limits to them at any time. An American businessman trying to get to Dusseldorf was quietly blowing his top, and an Indian businessman trying to get to Nigeria was loudly expecting the staff to rewrite the last few hours of his life. A woman also going to Del-Hee kept insisting that we were together. My new best friend didn't care for any routing offered, and was a little huffy when I said, "We're not together. I'll take it, whatever it is."

After an hour I went in search of a drink of water, and received two cups and a blessing from a lovely man and two women who worked for a different airline. After two hours my new BFF disappeared forever, but I remembered her fondly every time the staff asked me where she went and whether I could give her her boarding card. After two and a half hours I was given a fake boarding card to go upstairs to buy a phone card in a coffee shop. After the third hour I had in hand a real boarding card sending me to Dubai, and a scrap of luggage tag on which an employee had handwritten flight information from Dubai to Delhi.

Then I had a few hours to enjoy Turkey, or rather its airport. It was charming, from the sign over the toilet ("Please help us save water. Press the flush button twice"), to the sign Psalmically directing me to "THY Transit Desks," to the red British phone booths in the hallway. (Also, for good measure, I am posting a picture of the sign on my door at the Notre Dame. Evidently I have now sat "ex" the same "cathedra" as the Pope.

Fortunately in Dubai there was internet, which helped me to Google to find out what country exactly I was now in. Off now to Del Hee!

Transfer to India

For the past two weeks I have been traveling with a group of seminary students and others on my usual Middle East Travel Seminar in Israel and Palestine (see http://lpts2011mets.blogspot.com/). This morning I leave them to make their way home while I fly to Istanbul, then Delhi, then Bangalore to meet the others on the India leg of the trip. If there is internet available there I will tell the story and post pictures for friends and family at home. We will be staying in ashrams and guest houses in Bangalore, Tamil, and Kerala. My daughter Claire will join us in Kerala and travel back to Bangalore with me. Neither of us has ever been to this part of India before. We are very excited to be there and to be on a very different kind of journey.