Tuesday October 21
At 6:00 a.m. it's very peaceful. A great time to sit and enjoy the cool of the day. A great time too, to collect ones thoughts and journal what's been happening...the highlights of the previous day, and look forward to the day to come.
This morning I went down to the dining hall for tea with the boys. Well, sweet water if anything. Then the process began for preparing breakfast. A huge wok-like cauldron was placed on a gas-fired stand and the fire lit. Oil was added, then some beans as it came to temperature. A steel paddle was used to mix the beans as onions were added. Then came the curry powders and salt. Earlier some boys had been breaking up the now stiff rice from the previous evening and crumbling the chunks into a finer mixture. Now this huge barrel of rice was pushed over to the sizzling wok on a steel-wheeled cart and rice was added and mixed up with the steel paddle. Breakfast was ready to be doled out at the counter after the rice mixture was dumped back into the squat barrel and wheeled to the serving counter. The cleanup bay is a tiled, sunken floor with taps about 4 feet off the floor and it is literally a walk-in sink! It is about 10 x 20 feet in size and sunken about a foot below the rest of the kitchen floor. It makes it easy to drag those gigantic pots into the "sink" for cleaning, and it generally takes two people to manhandle them and clean them. All the eating utensils are made of stainless steel making them easier to clean. The boys get their plates filled at the counter and sit in order on the floor. It was quite a production for 50 boys and it was hard to imagine feeding 500, three times a day. And yes, it is rice, three times a day! Sometimes potatoes and vegetables are added for a little variety, but that's it.
This Boy's Refuge and Girl's Home goes through 120,000 kg of rice in a year and 30,000 kg of vegetables for four servings a week, and 20,000 kg of lentils and 15,000 kg of wheat for making chipati's and 20,000 kg of miscellaneous items. This feeds 510 boys and 625 girls. Then there is over 100 staff members to factor in. The annual financial commitment approaches $450,000. It's amazing how much this has grown in less than 40 years and the number of lives that have been impacted and changed that are also now having an impact in India.
What a joy to sit with Frank and listen to the agony and the ecstasy over the years of development of this place. It's really inspiring.
Some of the children have sponsors who provide monthly support. So today we helped by handwriting their letters in English to their sponsors. The children wrote letters in Hindi which were translated on computer into English. Carsen and I, plus another dozen children who could write English, transposed the letters to the sponsors in handwriting. With that many helping, we waded through that stack of letters in less than two hours. Whew!
At 6:00 a.m. it's very peaceful. A great time to sit and enjoy the cool of the day. A great time too, to collect ones thoughts and journal what's been happening...the highlights of the previous day, and look forward to the day to come.
This morning I went down to the dining hall for tea with the boys. Well, sweet water if anything. Then the process began for preparing breakfast. A huge wok-like cauldron was placed on a gas-fired stand and the fire lit. Oil was added, then some beans as it came to temperature. A steel paddle was used to mix the beans as onions were added. Then came the curry powders and salt. Earlier some boys had been breaking up the now stiff rice from the previous evening and crumbling the chunks into a finer mixture. Now this huge barrel of rice was pushed over to the sizzling wok on a steel-wheeled cart and rice was added and mixed up with the steel paddle. Breakfast was ready to be doled out at the counter after the rice mixture was dumped back into the squat barrel and wheeled to the serving counter. The cleanup bay is a tiled, sunken floor with taps about 4 feet off the floor and it is literally a walk-in sink! It is about 10 x 20 feet in size and sunken about a foot below the rest of the kitchen floor. It makes it easy to drag those gigantic pots into the "sink" for cleaning, and it generally takes two people to manhandle them and clean them. All the eating utensils are made of stainless steel making them easier to clean. The boys get their plates filled at the counter and sit in order on the floor. It was quite a production for 50 boys and it was hard to imagine feeding 500, three times a day. And yes, it is rice, three times a day! Sometimes potatoes and vegetables are added for a little variety, but that's it.
This Boy's Refuge and Girl's Home goes through 120,000 kg of rice in a year and 30,000 kg of vegetables for four servings a week, and 20,000 kg of lentils and 15,000 kg of wheat for making chipati's and 20,000 kg of miscellaneous items. This feeds 510 boys and 625 girls. Then there is over 100 staff members to factor in. The annual financial commitment approaches $450,000. It's amazing how much this has grown in less than 40 years and the number of lives that have been impacted and changed that are also now having an impact in India.
What a joy to sit with Frank and listen to the agony and the ecstasy over the years of development of this place. It's really inspiring.
Some of the children have sponsors who provide monthly support. So today we helped by handwriting their letters in English to their sponsors. The children wrote letters in Hindi which were translated on computer into English. Carsen and I, plus another dozen children who could write English, transposed the letters to the sponsors in handwriting. With that many helping, we waded through that stack of letters in less than two hours. Whew!
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