Friday we had a picnic on a mountain overlooking Pune. We brought PBJ's for a snack (they scoffed when we called it lunch) and Joy grilled chicken, pineapple, and some sort of sausage burgers for our real meal. Of course there was curry rice also - as with almost every meal, including breakfast. We took some of the kids on a hike and we could not believe how agile and tough even the tiniest ones were, making it all the way down the mountain and back up on their own. The boys all played cricket for a while and the young girls watched and jumped off of small rocks.
One of the girls, J, cut her hand while leaping from rock to rock, and the orphanage staff bandaged it. Another child who had helped J walk up to the tent, was rinsing some of the blood off of her own hand and the staff was quick to see that she had accidentally gotten J's blood back-washed into the group's drinking water when she was cleaning herself off. They immediately warned no one to drink the water and dumped it out because they didn't know if it was safe. Being one of the newest kids in the house, J hasn't yet been tested for HIV. The incident was a grisly reminder of the lives from which most of these children came. Lives of neglect, often of all kinds of abuse, and though some of them have loving parents who gave their kids up knowing that it was their only chance at a better life, most had awful parents - if any. These kids who pray with such fervor and who love Hannah Montana jut like other kids, are the children of prostitutes and beggars. Most of their parents end up contracting HIV, possibly passing it onto their children. The longer we are here the more often we see the brutal realities of life juxtaposed with the beauty of a people and a culture.
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