Introduction: This report tells of the first 48 hours I spent with Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco in the twin cities of Hyderabad & Secunderabad, India, in the first week of February 2009. I spent my time with the Sisters looking to understand more about the incredible work they are doing with the poorest of the poor children in the area while also trying to get an idea of their most dire needs.

On Arriving

I arrived at Hyderabad airport at 8:30am in the morning. The sisters, Sister Rani and Sister Jancy were waiting for me; they recognized me from the description Paul had given to them... "Stuart Uncle!" they shouted. As we left the airport parking lot, I couldn't help but notice that the parking attendant demand250 rupees from the sisters; this seemed expensive. As we were whisked out of the airport, I saw the tariff board and noticed this amount was for 7 hours or more. A little odd I thought to myself, but I was so tired, after more than 30 hours delay and in my 4th day of travel, I fell asleep. It had been a very long passage to India.

The twin cities of Hyderabad & Secunderabad have moved the airport away from the metropolitan area, like they have done at Bangalore, so it takes about 1 hour to get in.

I arrived to meet a cheery group of sisters, and one familiar face. Sister Mercy, the administrator of the province (the Economer as they call her here). This was a lucky coincidence; she was passing through to greet an Italian volunteer.

The Auxilium

The Auxilium at Secunderabad follows what is the familiar Salesian formula. Based around the courtyard, which is smaller than say Pallaruthy, or the Provincial motherhouse, it is maybe only 5 meters square. When I arrived, I was greeted by the Mother Superior, Sister Alice, who kept me moving straight to the kitchen area, where we sat down. I filled myself up on Ickly and tea and she introduced me to all the sisters - who were surprised at my willingness to partake in all the local fayre!

Not a single vehicle

While filling myself up on Ickly and curry for breakfast, I realized that the sisters had been standing outside the airport for 7 hours (non-flying passengers are not allowed into the building for security reasons). Somewhat embarrassed, I asked why had they left so early, as we had been sending email updates on the delay of my flight. They told me they have no vehicle and it was hard to get a taxi for this time and even harder to change plans once they have been made, so Sister Alice, the Superior, said they should leave at 2:30am as was originally planned. As I am to find out, these eight sisters are running 2 orphanages and a school for 1,200 children without a single vehicle!

After breakfast, I was shown to my room, simple, but clean with a single bed, a desk, a mosquito net and an adjoining bathroom. Exhausted I fell asleep and did not awake until 5pm, 6 hours later.

The Orphanage at the Auxilium

They have started a little orphanage; I have just met each of the girls. The language here is Telagu. The girls names are (from right to left) Revathi, Swathi, Isharani (pronounced e-sha-rani), Chandini, Menaka, Santhoshini, means happiness.

Menaka, Santhoshini and Isharani are from the neighboring state of Orissa, the others are from the local state of Andhra. In Orissa there are big problems resulting in Christians being persecuted, therefore the girls have come here for refuge. A priest from the local Don Bosco for Street Boys orphanage brought them here (along with a boy who went to the boys home). Revathi and Swathi are from the street, they have no parents and Chandini's parents are deaf and dumb.

When the girls arrive here they speak no English and it is amazing to meet them now, they speak fantastic English.

The sisters are planning to have more children here. They could have more children, but land is a huge problem. This is a theme that I am to hear again and again on my visit. In the current Auxilium building they can house maybe 10 more children.

When the sisters receive the children, they don't send them to school for the first year. One of the Sisters, Sister Celine (the local economer and previously from Hassan) teaches them "from ABC to everything". Menaka, one of the older girls, "had no study at all when she arrived". She studied for one full year, and the Sisters were able put her directly into 3rd class of the local English speaking school! This is very impressive!

I asked the Sisters about the girls diet... the Sisters didn't seem too concerned, as simple survival seems the point. At this point, Sister Mercy talked about the need for a balanced diet. I mentioned vitamins, but this didn't seem to be a concern for the sisters. The children do have milk, it costs 28 rupees a liter, which is quite expensive.

The girls don't have a proper toilet or taps to wash their face, this is a problem that they would like to fix. (NOTE: I do have pictures of the current facilities, they are not good). Also, they would prefer that the girls have their own desks, they are currently working on the floor.

The routine

The school gets over at 3pm, and 3-4pm they are sat down to do homework in the Auxilium. They wash, have some snacks, play a bit, and they go back to study from 5pm to 7pm.

How do they study? Do they have desks? No, they study on the floor. They sleep on the same floor as well.

At 7pm they join again for Rosary and they sing, then supper at 7:30pm. Then they have lively recreations, they sing, they dance. At 9pm, they sleep. Where do they sleep? They sleep on the floor with a mat. And they awake again at 5:30am. In the morning, they wash from a cold tap water, although the water is heated in the cold season.

After washing they have their prayer, and they clean their room. And then they join the Sisters in the church for daily mass. The children are all choir members of the daily mass. They do the reading for the mass. Everything is in English. I find this interesting; different from Pallaruthy (the Home of Hope, Kochi) where the language in use is the local language of Malayalam.

What we can do

I explained to the Sisters that if we can bring projects to the attention of people, we will be able to attract the interest, and therefore the funding, from generous and concerned individuals in the US. At this point, I showed them what is being done down at the Home of Hope in Kochi. The sisters really enjoyed seeing the "our recent work" leaflet, they all gathered around to see the pictures, including the one of Paul standing up against the cow shed at Hassan. This was the one they found the most interesting!

The School

Although there are 8 sisters at the Auxilium Church, I am not sure how many of them are involved in the school, certainly Sister Rani, the Headmistress and Sister Jancy (the deputy head), and 30 lay staff, and 1,200 students. The 6 girls in the orphanage at the Auxilium go to the school (there are also 65 girls at Navajeevana, but I do not believe any of these girls go to this school). The school is English medium. The school is just a few meters away from the Auxilium Church.

There is no assembly room at the school. During the hot months, they cannot have the children out in the direct sun (the sisters, and the Father who came to say mass that day, were regaling stories of how they have to bring children back from unconsciousness when they faint in the sunlight if they try to have assembly outside when it is too hot). A light roof on the top would be useful (NOTE: I am thinking, like they have at the boys orphanage and school in Kochi). They need play things for the children. Slides and climbing frames. There is a little bit of land adjoining the school where play things could go, but there is tension and dispute about what is allowed to be done with it.

Land is very limited, a constant theme of my visit! All the land they have is all they are going to get. As Sister Alice says, "15 years ago it was easy to get land, now it is gold". In this area there is no hope for more land, but both the school and the Auxilium have the foundations to allow for more floors to be added.

The entire school has one T.V. that looks like it is from the 1970s! The Sisters have heard about the LCD projector we got from Bangalore, and I can see in their eyes, they would love to have one here. It is much needed for the school.

The School Library

Sister Alice opened the door to the room, and announced, "We are not happy with this library, for example all these cupboards are locked up. The children only get 45 minutes in one period, by the time they open and the children take out, they have little time to actually read". "Why are they locked?", I asked somewhat naively, "Because somebody will take away the books", was Sister Alice's response.

More books for the library, this is Sister Alice's (the superior) dream. She is very passionate about the library. Sister Alice is trying to get a full time member of staff stations in the library so all the cupboards can be left open. But they need money to do this.

They also have just a few tables and no chairs in the library. They need sitting desks and chairs for about 30 or 40 people. The room can definitely take this.
Almost all the books are in English.The black boards at the school all need to be changed, or at least resurfaced. I asked if they use whiteboards. "No" said Sister Rani, "they are very costly, and the pens are too expensive to buy!".

Disputed Land

There is a small piece of land, L in shape which ownership/permissible use is disputed. It hugs the main school play area, and could be used to create a covered area for assembly and play things.

I do not fully understand what the problem is, but the Sisters seem like they would love to do something with this land.

Projects and Ideas from the Sisters

Distant Adoption

For about 4,000 to 5,000 rupees a year. A form of scholarship. This allows the sisters to go into the slum (about 1km away) and sponsor girls to join the school. The parents want their children to study, but they have no money. "How many scholarships could you do a year?" I asked. "As many as possible" was the response. They have room for the students.

Training

"Will you help for the training of teachers and children", I was asked. The children need leadership training; to go off for 2 or 3 days. They have done things like this before. Take 30 or 50 students to a center, and give them leadership training. For the teachers, they need English training, perhaps for one-week course.

If they had an LCD projector, they could do these training sessions here. This would save money. If they had a projector they could do more here. And of course, they need a hall, if they need more people. (NOTE: I did buy an LCD projector for them the following day).

They also need some teaching aid CDs and DVDs and Science, not stories, but teaching materials.

The Slum (Addagutta)

Some of the school children come from the slum. In the school they speak English, but when they go home to the slum they talk Telagu, so they don't get to practice English very much. There is a balancing problem the Sisters have with the slum and the school. The problem they have is the more children they get from the slum, the more they want to speak Telagu in the school with the other children. This is a problem, because there is a tipping point where the language in the playground no longer is English and when this tipping point is reached everyone suffers. I heard the Sisters talk about this struggle and balance many times.

The "slum children" also don't eat very well, they don't get good food, so they are often ill.

I did find it encouraging, that the pupils do all mix in together; it felt like that as I watched them play. i.e. I didn't see the slum children in one area, and the ones from better homes in another.

The school is mainly Hindu, about 90%, the rest are Christian and Muslim.

(NOTE: I have found a little bit of information about this slum, often referred to as the largest in Asia, here http://www.vikasini.org/)

The school computer room

There are about 17 computers... The main server would not turn on, nor would the machine next to it. The power supplies to both the network hubs had blown up, the speakers to the main server used for teaching did not work and was missing a wire. The mouse to 5 of the machines was missing or not functional. 4 of the other machines would not boot up. I went through many of the machines and began fixing them. Problems also with corrupt installations of Windows (all pirated of course). Most of the machines (all but 4) are running Windows 98, a very old operating system. The other 4 are running Windows XP.

The most worrying problems were with the 2 bigger machines, the server and the machine next to it. These machines would just freeze at boot up time and where unresponsive. "I need a screwdriver", I said, and we opened up the main server.
Getting the server working was essential because it is the single point of failure for the whole network (it issues IP addresses to the machines, it also is the only machine with a DVD-ROM player, which I knew I needed so I can install good copies of Windows on all the machines).

Once inside the main machine, I found the DVD-ROM was not even plugged in, no power supply and no cable to the mother board.

Missing memory

More worryingly, the main memory chip on the motherboard was in a strange place. There are 4 sockets on the motherboard, and the lone memory chip was in the 2nd socket, with no memory chip in the 1st socket. This was instantly recognizable to me as a strange configuration, and probably something that would prevent a computer from working. So I unseated the memory chip from the 2nd socket, and re-seated it in the 1st socket. We then tried to power the machine up, and halleluiah, the machine started up. I next went to work on the DVD-ROM, adding a power cable to it, and plugging it into the motherboard. Unfortunately this then stopped the computer from starting. So I un-plugged just the cable to the motherboard, and the computer would start-up. So it looked like we might have a faulty cable, these cables are called IDE cables. We went searching through the cupboards, and to our luck we found an IDE cable, the only spare cable of any type. We tried this cable, and success, the machine booted up, started, and the DVD-ROM played.

Now slightly depressingly, the Sisters just a few months ago had the DVD-ROM replaced by a computer repairman. It feels to me that he did not do his job right. The DVD-ROM was not even plugged into the power or the motherboard. And I think a conclusion we could come to is these two machines, which both had only one memory chip, resting in the 2nd socket, have had the memory chip taken from the 1st socket, rendering both non-startable and with half of their memory stolen! The good news is we now have them working again. But this underlines a very common story across the entire province wasting an inordinate amount of time and money for the sisters, and dare I say patience, although they do appear to have been blessed with large amounts of that!

"Most probably, every time we call somebody for repair, it happens" - Sister Rani (Headmistress)

"So what happens, we entrusted the work to them, but the people are not that trustworthy. So they do anything and everything, and we don't know how to cross check. They tell us the rate, and we don't know and we don't know what to believe. Very many times we are cheated" - Sister Rani

Because the computers are so old, all of the CMOS batteries have died, so the computers are unable to remember the time, or date and lose their individual settings. This is an annoyance, and means the teacher has to press F1 to enter setup, F10 to save settings at each boot. Sirisha seemed resigned to this and knew what she is doing. (NOTE: I have bought new CMOS batteries for the machine. They will be fitted by my friend Sanjay who lives in the area and has very kindly offered his time to help the Sisters with getting the remaining problems in this computer lab fixed.).

Blown power supplies

By the end of the first day we had got all of the computers working, but due to the blown power supplies for the network hubs, we couldn't upgrade the version of windows on the machines. (NOTE: We bought a new network hub and the old ones have been replaced. Sanjay has also donated Windows XP Licenses for all the computers in the lab, so they can be upgraded and made legal.)

There are also two computers down on the first floor. With the computer in the prayer room, which is tied to a large TV screen, there was a small problem with the monitor, which we fixed. I also looked at the computer in the office of the school. This was a very old Windows 98 machine with an even old dot matrix printer. All of the school correspondence is done using this old printer! (NOTE: We replaced this printer with a new HP LaserJet the next day and upgrade the operating system to Windows XP)

Navajeevana (Home of New Life)


I met Sister Margaret and (Dr) Sister Ancy and Sister Alice (Mother Superior from the Auxilium Church) is accompanying me. The Mother Superior of Navajeevana was away. Navajeevana is about 3kms away from the Auxilium Church and School.

The only place

The main impacting theme to Navajeevana is the side effects of a government run project to end child labour which started 3 years ago. The government program is implemented all over the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. The government has 3 vehicles driving around the city during school hours. If they see any children, they pick them up: rag pickers, beggars, child labourers. When they see them, girls are brought here, boys go to one of many homes. This is the only place for girls.

When they get here, all their needs are provided, and their parents are counseled as well. They come in here very dirty, so the first thing is giving them a bath. They are often very sick. They are given clean clothes.

Tiny

This is the 2nd location they have tried for and it is a match box... just 2 stories, the bottom storey is storage, so they all live on one floor... probably no more than 5 meters wide, maybe 10 meters long and 65 children! They have put a light shelter structure on the roof (donated by a kind soul), which gives them some extra room, but this is not safe for use during the hot summer months because of the extreme heat in this part of the world.

I was taken upstairs to the roof, where the children where all waiting for me, and a rousing chorus of Happy Uncle ensued. I took my place in a row of chairs, seated in the middle, flanked by Sister Margaret and Sister Alice and I was introduced to some of the smaller children who told me their name. Baby Jama, who is front and center in the picture above is a real character, tiny for a 5 year old. I believe her name was given to her by the Sisters because she didn't know her name when she arrived. She arrived with a 'huge pot belly' from malnourishment. The Sisters have done a lot of work to bring her back to health.

Dancing

After the welcome, Soni, one of the older children did a solo dance. Soni is seriously good, incredible detail in her movements of authentic Indian dance. I am quite sure she could go on to do this professionally. I hope we can help her do this. Her father has died from AIDs and her mother is in 3rd stage of AIDs and probably won't last much longer. Soni has been instrumental in teaching the other girls dance.

Side note: Also I hear that the girl from the Bangalore Navajeevana that is clearly very talented at dance has been to Delhi/Bombay for a competition.

We had a show for about 30 minutes of much dance and local custom, some solo dance, some small groups and at the end a song about how they should be and behave. They seemed to know this one the best and sang it with pride. I then gave each of the children a wrapped sweet, as a reward for their show and gave them a little pep talk to let them know that many people care for them in America. A big shout of "THANK YOU UNCLE" came back in response. "Keep working hard" I shouted back!

The Sisters showed me all their clothes, their school bags and little container for their lunch which they have at school each day.

The Sisters gave me a tour of the rest of the building... they have 3 taps, cold water only of course and 4 toilets... they have to get all 65 children through this in the morning!! The smallest children are made to have a bath outside.

They have this tiny room, maybe 12 foot square... they get all 65 children to sit down in here and eat! They also have a small chapel, maybe 8 foot square. They get all the children in this room in the morning.... I cannot believe it! Apparently they have them hanging in through the windows and the door way.

The girls have written prayers to Joseph to pray for a bigger house (see picture). They are really out of room here. This is their biggest problem.

They have 65 children and they are completely out of room!

The government just started giving them kids... 700 people in the last year, and they are now up to 105 a month. The sister showed me the month-to-month enrollment book. 84, 87, 104, 110 was the last 4 months. 60 of the children are now permanent, their parents are not around any more to come and get them. Those who have parents, the parents take them away.

I sat down for tea and ice cream with the sisters. The government gives them 330 rupees a month for each child.... 10 rupees a day! And that is not permanent. It is probably going to go away. It is not even enough for pay for breakfast. The government is going to stop in March, although the sisters are working on changing this. Soni has been here for 2 years. She has no parents. She has a sister, 14 or 15 and a younger brother.

She does not want to go home. She is very grateful. She is in 5th class. She is 11. She will go to junior college. She will be with the sisters until she gets married. This will be her motherhouse for the rest of her life.

There are a number of good colleges close by. A school close by, is sponsoring a class called 'future kids'. They are trying to get a teacher to teach dance. They are looking at doing a TV program around this.

"Do you like publicity?" I asked, to which I heard laughs all around... they want to silently do their work, but they have a problem, Sister Alice said. "We must make noise, and tell people what we are doing. "

This place is run through a network of friends and it has been here since December 2005.

Longer term their goal is to have this house as the drop off house. And then to buy some more land, to be the middle place, and the Auxilium to be the end stage. It is good to separate the small, middle and big children from each other.

The building is made of lime, no bricks, so it crumbles! They have to patch it up every year.

They cook all the food in the kitchen. They seem to get a good diet. They get chicken and egg and vegetables. They also get a 7-grain powder substance from the government. I tasted it, it is a sweet flour tasting thing. I didn't like it that much, but apparently the girls like it.

During the holidays, they are in the house all day, and in the hot months, they can't even use the top floor. So all 65 children are in the house. This is also the time for chickenpox and measles, which means they have to quarantine some of the children, which makes it even more cramped.

Only in the last year have they had a water supply, a person donated the money for a bore whole. Before then they would have to go to house to house and ask for water. This is the only transit home for girls, there are many of them for boys. I asked "Do you ever get full, or do you keep taking the children in?"

The government wants them to have 200 children in the current building, to which Sister Alice exclaimed: "The children are not animals". The Sisters have begun to move some of the girls who have been in the street home the longest (and whose parents are never going to be coming to pick them up) on to the Auxilium church about 3kms away to free up some room in the street home.

As the Sisters have noticed, if you cram too many kids in a small space, every now and then a girl will run away, so they have built the walls higher. They took me outside to see the wall where the girls had jumped over. But the sisters ran after them and brought them back. When the girls run away the Sisters have to fill out an FIR, a First Information Report with the police. Sister Margaret was regaling stories of the girls escaping, only to be found rag picking a few hours later. And another girl, who ran away, and was getting ready to marry one boy 2 days later. This girl also took 2 young girls with her when she ran away.

Sister Ancy has a PH.D in child abuse. She bought me her PH.D thesis. All 270 pages of it, officially bound in leather in dark red cover with gold lettering. Sister Ancy is the first person to study the street children to this level in Bangalore. Sister Ancy started the Street children work in Bangalore. Sister Ancy does most of the counseling.

Sister Ancy is the quiet kind, sitting there listening, but you just know there is something going on behind those eyes. It was once we started talking about the stories of the individual girls, that you see the light go on, you can tell this is her life work, here in these Street Children homes. Page 267 of her thesis is titled 'Major Findings'. I did not get time to read through it all, so Sister Ancy kindly provided me a copy of the book on CD.

No photos

Sister Margaret talked more about why they have the "no photo, no film" sign. They keep on getting officials over here, who come over and take many photos of the children and then re-post them telling that it is all their own work. They even had people say, "move, move" to Sisters so that they get out of the picture the camera is taking.

The no photos allowed picture is because of Satayam. They took so many photos, "taking and taking", "they were asking the children their stories and this makes the children feel terribly".

I was asked to write in the visitors' book. Which I did, but I got confused because the date on the line above was 08.02, I always get confused with dates, I knew it was only 02.05 in American date form. So 08.02 was 3 days in the future or 6 months ago in American date for... but when I asked to clear up my confusion, it was actually 8th Feb 2008. 362 days ago was their last visitor to sign this book, but this does explain why the children are just so excited to see you, and why they dance so passionately when they perform.

One lady paid the money for all of the girls to have the full medical tests, so they could be tested for STDs etc. Very fortunately, all of the girls are clear, which is amazing considering so many of their parents have died from AIDs.

It is strange to see the names of the children on the official medical forms, i.e. just "Baby Jama" etc. Most of the children do not know their last name, and most do not know their birthday. So their birthday becomes the month of the year they arrive, and the day of the month is always the Virgin Mary's birthday, the 15th.

The police pick up the children off the street during the day and drop the girls off to this home (there are several homes for boys), however an interesting problem occurs. Because girls make better beggars, boys are often mistakenly brought to the home dressed up as girls. This has happened 3 or 4 times and it has taken a few days for things to be worked out! So, now to avoid complications, they make all the girls have a bath before they are allowed to mix with the others.

Once the police got it wrong in the other direction, and they dropped off a girl at a boys' home, for one week she was in the boys home before anyone noticed.