I woke up Saturday morning with tons of energy. Breakfast helped me maintain an even happier attitude because it was one of my favorites, chopati and potato curry. Chopati is a flat bread very similar to a tortilla made with wheat flour, water and oil and cooked on a flat surface. The potato curry is really the best part of this breakfast because it contains all of the things I love about food: heaps of garlic, onions cooked until they are almost mush, mustard seed and small pieces of potato throughout. The resulting curry actually reminds me of a hearty, traditional German potato salad. I then asked Mariamma Kochamma if I could pray at evening prayer and she said yes! So, while I lingered in heaven post breakfast, I actually sat and re-read one of my books called Praying in Color. The author outlines a way to pray with colored pencils and markers that really speaks to me. It is especially relevant for me to resort to this child like stage of “coloring” as I teach and learn from kids. I did a drawing in my journal based on a verse from John Phillip Newell’s new book of prayers and then went next door to the children’s hostel.
I brought a set of “I Spy” cards and played a memory game with the girls for hours. I forgot how fun it is to sit and play a game that really makes people of all ages think. At the end of each game when we counted up our pairs, none of the girls pointed to the person with the least amount of cards and called them a “loser.” One of us came in first place, one came in second, and the rest were in last place. There is such a huge difference between those two concepts, and they recognized that. It was such an amazingly inclusive philosophy, essentially pointing out that there are no winners and losers. We all deserved credit for playing the whole game. We took a break for lunch and when we came back there was a bit of a distraction from game playing. We had a snake in the bushes. The girls reactions were priceless and hilarious. They took turns shouting “pamba, pamba, pamba” (the Malayalam word for snake) and pointing so I could see it hiding in the middle of the bush. I did see it, but it didn’t seem that scary all hidden and tucked away. It looked like it was kind of….happy just relaxing in its natural habitat. The girls however, wanted to kill it. Reshmi and Anu were the funniest. Reshmi stood on the other side of the bush throwing handfuls of dirt toward the snake. Once it was out of sight Anu took matters into her own hands. She grabbed a long broom handle and started poking in the bush. I tried to tell them that these actions were probably not a good idea and may make the snake angrier, but most of it was lost amidst the screams and my broken efforts at Malayalam. When I said “Snakes isch ta mayi,”the girls looked at me like I was crazy because I had just said “I like snakes” in Malayalam. It was my feeble attempt to get them to back away from a bush that contained unknown danger. We also had a visit from a millipede that Anu could and did kill. We then had a funeral for the millipede and Kunya, Anu’s sister, acted as the wife in mourning. She pulled her hair and fake cried and placed flowers on the milipede’s grave. We were all rolling with laughter. We danced and sang and told the older girls later of the snake and the defeat of the millipede. I love spending time with the younger girls because I think at heart I am approximately 12 years old.
Later I went over to K.N.H. Hostel. I would like to correct one of my earlier blog posts because the hostel is actually financed by donors in (once again) Germany. There are actually K.N.H. Hostels all around Kerala. I went over and spoke with Jolly the child care coordinator about what day is convenient for me to visit and play with the girls. I noticed that in the corner of her office there was a nice computer with a wireless internet connection that was turned off and looked as if it hadn’t been touched in forever. I asked her about it and she said she can never remember how to do anything on the computer. That is one thing that I told her I could easily teach her. She was grateful and said we should work out a time to practice her skills. We went outside with the girls and played a name game, freeze tag and Badminton. Fun fact: Badminton is called “Shuttle-butt” here. I have no idea why, but occasionally I let out an immature giggle when it is mentioned. I hadn’t exercised or been out in the sun for that long since I got sick with my infection, so I went back to my room to drink water and relax. I came back to find the girls at my hostel pulling weeds and singing songs across the yard to each other. Not two minutes after my return, I heard a knock on my door. It was Joshmi and Lindu, two girls I have really bonded with since they are second year students and live on the bottom floor of the hostel with me. Joshmi said she needed to go to Aksa’s Studio and that they needed my help finding materials for teaching to put on a CD. I jumped at the first opportunity I have had to go anywhere outside the hostel with the students. Since it was a necessity for their school work it also didn’t come across as playing favorites, which I am thankful for.
We walked to Aksa’s and found that the website they were given didn’t work. I worked the keyboard as they told me what they needed for their lessons on animals. They needed photos of omnivores, lizards, horned animals fighting, carnivores eating their pray and the life cycle of a frog to name a few. They laughed at some of my squeamish reactions to animals brutally devouring other animals and oohed and ahhed at the results of each image search on Google. Each time a page came up they said they wanted all of the photos. We copied around 110 photos onto their CDs, so I almost fully obeyed their request. I then showed them my Facebook page and some photos of my time here in Kerala, family and friends. Lindu then shyly asked me if I could search a movie she wanted to see. She tended to focus on one very popular Tamil actor named Surya. She gasped, fanned herself and told me that he was her favorite and that she thought of him as a brother. I couldn’t help but love seeing this girl all wrapped up in her idol. It was so endearing to think that girls all across the world react to their favorite movie star this way. Josh Hartnett used to get a similar response from me when I was her age. I told her I could take some of his pictures on my USB drive if she wanted, and she jumped at the idea. We left happily and parted ways because K.N.H. had invited me to be part of their evening prayer.
At K.N.H. the girls used tambourines and drums to sing two Malayalam songs. We read Bible verses and I taught the girls “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”. I prayed and ran back to the Buchanan Hostel to make it to my scheduled evening prayer. I ran in a little late, but only into the first song. Kochamma thanked me for my prayer and then asked in her very small amount of English, “You pray for me?” I responded that I did every night, which is true.
It was a day truly soaked with prayer. I am so thankful that God sent me the gift of a day filled with rewarding worship. Maybe God is telling me that I am worshiping every day without even knowing it. I feel so blessed to be here sweating, singing, laughing, praying and playing. Tuesday until Thursday night I am traveling to another state with the 10th grade class. We are going on the class tour to the city of Mysore in the neighboring state of Karnataka. I am told it has nice gardens and a beautiful palace. I am excited to experience something new with this wonderful community. Who knows what thrills await on the trip! I am ready for another adventure in playtime.
“Play is honest. You can’t play unless you are yourself. When we pray, God wants us to be ourselves, not some image of ourselves, but the real thing. Playfulness can take us to a place of honesty and allow us to temporarily drop our external persona.” – from Praying in Color by Sybil MacBeth
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