Giving Hope Foundation Orphanage

Jake with the CP boy at the orphanage. Cutest lil boy wanting to help too.

Me and one of the lil girls

The classroom.

Two days ago we traveled into Delhi with another aussie guy Ray that's working here at the ashram and Praseeda ( the mother of the 17 adopted street kids we have spoken of). We went to go see a small orphanage which is part of the hope foundation. We arrived and had to check the address...we were in a clean neighbourhood and the building was colorful and nice!
We were greeted by Wendy the manager who was so warm and inviting.
We walked into a mall room which was being used as a classroom for a group of kiddies, they were all well dressed and so so cute! One little girl who is unable to talk for unknown reasons babbled away using huge hand movements and even pulled a "hang loose" sign at me (thinking this was a mistake but kudos all the same).
Upstairs some smaller children played in a room with a huge hand painted mural of a scene from the bible of an abandoned baby moses being picked up by ladies at a river side. One boy with cerebral palsy was gorgeous. He smiled and laughed and his eyes were so playful. The other small kids loved attention and hugs and scrambled to take turns in hugging us.
One girl (who I am holding in a photograph) was found under a bridge. She has a skin problem where she bleeds into her skin so looks red and blotchy, she also has behavioural difficulties. When she was found and bought to the orphanage by the police she was so malnourished was just skin and bones, her cheekbones protruding. Now she is jumping around the room, asking for love and attention. My heart really broke for her, there is a very small chance she will get adopted into a family as she does not appear "normal".
So many of these cuties are abandoned in the streets, left not knowing who would find them, whether that be a kind or bad person, or hungry street dogs or rats. These kids are so helpless! Some parents are just so desperate and it is sometimes a question of if we let this new child live, then the rest of us die. I definitely struggle with this but I also know I have never been in a situation of absolute desperation.

We sat in the babies room and talked about the children's stories, who is adopting who and how the orphanage started. I love finding these places in Delhi. Sometimes you just feel like no one else cares and this city is just a massive survival of the fittest. which in alot of ways it is....yet there is still pockets of goodness like this orphanage. Wendy quotes "I do not want this to be a cliche orphanage, I want this to be a good time for them, in fact I want this to be their best memory". So cool.

Our neighbours the Rajastani nomads. Wanting to show us his prize bull-I took the photo and was outta there.

Chatting to a local family picking up some firewood.

Kaka-one of my favourite intellectually handicapped patients. So funny and lovely

Jake works hard so gets thirsty.....

Hahaha love some of the outfits worn here. All the clothes are donated so this sparkly number came from some kind American. I like to call him our ashram mirror ball.

Hanging out and coloring with the kiddies-Sara Gousty these are the ones you sent over! Rad.

Himalayas and good endings to munted feet..

Playing in the snow

The ski slopes when we arrived (apparently covered in 15 feet 3 days later although inaccessible!)

Mountainbiking in the Himalayas

One month to go.
4 and a half months have gone by and it seems like so much longer when we think of what we’ve experienced and seen in this time. There’s been hard times when we’ve missed home and it felt like it was still so long till we would be back there, but now we’ve only got 4 weeks left and we’re starting to worry about how we’re going to be when we have to say good bye to this place and all the faces.


We had a week away in the Himalaya’s in northern india at the beginning of Feb with some of the other foreign workers at the ashram. It took us 15 hours to drive there (one little missed turn makes a big difference). We were hoping to get some snowboarding in but when we drove to the ski area there wasn’t any snow so we ended up doing a 40km mountainbike instead. The next night it started to snow heavily (I’ve never seen such big snow flakes!) and didn’t stop really until we left. We were so stoked with the snow until the power in the town went out, the roads were all closed and we were stuck in a budget hotel with no heating or hot water for 3 days. It was still heaps of fun and nice to have some time away from the noise, dirtiness and crowds that are delhi.

So we left still not able to snowboard at all as it was impossible to get up to the ski slopes and we were lucky to be able to drive home. To get out of the mountains it took us 5 hours to drive 30km’s due the snow…the shovel (brilliantly nicknamed Novel the shovel) we brought before leaving was so needed!


We got invited to another wedding the other night. The Dr from the Ashram’s good friend was getting hitched in a rare love marriage. We were to meet the Dr at the wedding venue later that night. We got all glammed up in our Sari’s and the boys in their suit jackets. This wedding was SO so flash. Cant even describe it! Millions of fairy nights, massive flat screen projections with film crews documenting the whole wedding. Dance floor with DJ and lights,waiters bringing around mocktails with umbrellas, and most importantly row upon row of food stands from all around India.…..AMAZING!!!
We worked our way upstairs to yet another food area which we had to sample and mingled some of the curious guests (wondering why the pales faces were eating all their chilli paneer). When we hear the band starting up outside signaling the groom has arrived on his horse drawn lighted cart.

The fun drum and brass band plays while you dance like crazy while men throw 10 rupee (about 30 cents worth) notes in the air which are quickly snatched up by lil street kiddies (check out the video at the end of the blog). We danced for about an hour wondering where our Dr friend was…..Got a phone call from him asking where we were, which we said "with the groom"……which apparently he was too-we searched around but couldn’t see him anywhere. Our friend finaly comes around the corner cracking up as turns out we were at the totally wrong wedding!!!! I could hardly make the run out of the wedding as I was doubled over laughing. The rest of the right wedding was wicked though…….hmmm the food. We are planning to crash another wedding tomorrow night actually…..

Vishisht

Vishisht is a cool story. If you look back at our earlier blog called "another day, another dhal" you can see a photo of when we found him outside one of the Delhi hospitals. He had such a munted foot with bones and raw flesh overflowing with maggots. Finaly got him to agree to come with us and then to consent to get operated on to get the foot amputated as he was in sepsis (massive body infection) and a little crazy.
We thought the doc's would have to amputate his whole lower leg but they managed to just amputate the fore foot leaving a wound that would normally need a skin graft to heal but which wasn't available. We were worried it wouldn't heal but he is making massive progress every day with the wound healing beautifully. He’s still a little crazy but seeing him singing and drumming away with a massive grin today shows how far he’s come.

Had lunch at Jakes friends house a few days ago, sat up on his roof of his grandfathers house (which has been passed through the generations and now will be his) and watched the colorful neighborhood. The village sky was littered with homemade kites that the kids flew by jumping from roof top to roof top. Felt like I was in a scene from the kite runner.
Some of the cute shy kids hopped over to see us up close as we would have been the first white people they had ever seen in real life.

kite runners

So many mixed emotions about leaving in 4 weeks…..Taking it as it comes but already feeling like each day left I want to make the most of.

Lots of love. Ruth and Jake

Video of the girls dancing at the wrong wedding