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Charity City
Rich Galen Tuesday January 11, 2005
From Hyderabad, India
It is five AM in Hyderabad, India on Thursday, January 6, 2005 as I type this. India is 11 and-a-half time zones away from Eastern Standard Time. That brings to mind the very excellent line from an episode of M*A*S*H when Hawkeye asks what time it is in Chicago if it's 11 AM in Korea.
"April," someone answers.
We left Cincinnati on Monday evening, flew to Cyprus where we arrived at about three in the afternoon. We re-boarded the plane at about one in the morning Tuesday morning for the six hour flight to Hyderabad, India.
The stop in Hyderabad was to drop off fifteen or so high school students from the Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy who will spend the next seven days setting up beds, unpacking books, installing washing machines and whatever else is necessary to prepare the Charity City children's home for the intake of Indian children orphaned by the tsunami in Southeastern India.
The Cincinnati Hills operation is no stranger to missions and no stranger to orphanages. Many of the American children have been involved in similar trips to orphanages in Mexico.
Although Charity City is billed as being located in Hyderabad, it is about 60 km outside of the city proper. It is reached via a two-lane highway which is shared with everything from heavy trucks, to three-wheeled taxis, to loads of sticks pulled by mules.
As the British held sway here for a long time the driving is more-or-less done on the left. "More-or-less" because passing is not just a driving maneuver here, it is the national sport.
For a full description of this activity, I direct your attention to Chapter 5 of the India Travelogues (Currying Favor) which describes my first trip to Charity City in 2001.
Charity City, then, was new and housed about 125 children. There were only three buildings - a dormitory, a building of classrooms and dining facility, and the administration building.
After a ninety-minute drive, the two busses pulled into the compound at about five PM. The kids from Cincinnati poured out of their bus, the grownups and the media poured out of the other and everyone stopped in their tracks.
We were greeted by over 1,000 children all dressed alike, clean, eager to see the Americans, lining the main drive up one side and down the other.
We approached and began two walk between the two rows, shaking hands and greeting the children. Being showered with flower petals in return.
A thousand young voices broke into a haunting melody. "Swagetum su swagetum" the song started.
I asked Dr. K.A. Paul what the words meant. "Please be welcomed," he said. "Your coming here is so sweet."
The American kids and the Indian kids do what kids do - they high-fived, low-fived, took pictures, had pictures taken practiced saying strange names - on both sides - laughed and teased each other.
The whole process took about an hour after which the Indian children went to eat and the American children went to unpack for their week-long stay.
Many of our group stayed the night at Charity City, but I did not. I braved the ride back into Hyderabad to organize some paperwork for the trip to Sri Lanka on Saturday.
I stayed in a hotel which was perfectly fine, but it wasn't as warm and as comfortable as it would have been had I stayed in a dormitory with the other grown-up visitors listening to the wind in the night whispering, "Your coming here is so sweet."
Keep in mind, the Mullings subscription page has been turned over to taking donations for Charity City. Please click on this link if you would like to help.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A Mullfoto of the arrival ceremony and a wonderful shot of two kids from very different backgrounds.
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Copyright © 2005 Richard A. Galen
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