Parentless

42 Days left. We were packing last night and as we packed my wife and I began to laugh about all the things that would be different in India. Things like turning on a water heater 15 minutes before you wanted to take a shower. Remembering to turn it off when your done. Boiling milk before you drink it. Boiling the water before you drink it. The list goes on. No matter what country your going to culture shock is a possibility and if your not ready for it, it can knock you off your feet. I wanted to take some time today and look at some of the things I did before or during our last trip. Perhaps the most important part of Culture Shock is knowing that it exists and being prepared for it. Culture Shock to me stems from the your expectations and prejudice. You get into a situation in another culture and for some reason expect that things in that culture will be like they are in your own culture. Based on the presupposition of similarity you began to act and react similar to how you would in your own culture....

I was recently asked about colleges and orphanages. I wish I could go back and take all the classes I think could help in the work set out before me. The first class on the list would be Psychology 101 and then if possible Child Psychology. The majority of parentless children are psychologically scarred. Many have been physically or sexually abused if they haven’t been abused then they’ve likely been scarred in other ways by drugs or alcohol or other ills. Without parents or other guardians they often ran wild for at least some time and the results can be devastating to their Psychology.

            In the first orphanage my wife opened a set of twins was placed in our care. Their father was dead and their mother was dying of HIV. Instead of waiting till she was dead and not knowing what would happen to her children she put them in our care. These two little twins were the wildest two children we had ever encountered. They bit, they scratched they would through fits. The vile stream of curses and profanity...

   Obviously as the time draws closer to our departure finances get tighter and tighter. I recently had someone ask if they could help. I spent the better part of the day yesterday scouring through India's legal system and in the end the answer appears to be a little confusing. So far our airfare and shipping costs have been covered. At the moment we are working on the $4,000 we are going to need for a deposit on the home we will have to rent. We are hoping to rent a two story building with 3 bedrooms on each floor. Initially the first floor will contain the living area for our family as well as a guest bedroom. The second floor will be for the orphanage. I am then hoping to get a job with a local company that will pay enough to support my family and between 8 to 12 orphans.

   So why don't we just raise the funds we need from friends, family and interested parties here in America?

India has a law called the Foreign Contributions Act of 1976. This law states:

"Whereas no association having...

   For those of you reading along you'll remember that we have been fighting with Jaundice in one of the first two girls that we intend to bring into the orphanage upon arrival. We got word a couple days ago that the eldest of the two sisters has been released from the hospital. Originally when we found out that the girl was sick we also learned that they were trying to cure it with homeopathic herbs and spices. We sent some money over and told them to get her to the hospital. 

   It seems over the last couple weeks we've several unexpected drains on our finances. We ended up delaying our departure by almost a month because of several obligations and now we find that none of those obligations are required any more. It seems the old adage is true trouble come not single spy. My current employment contract will end two to three weeks earlier then I had hoped. A 2 week short term contract I was going to do has become a one week or less contract. Several medical bills have come in that we weren't anticipating....

            A couple posts back I referenced that I was planning on booking our airfare. Things got delayed for a variety of reasons but today I finally got it done. We leave the second week of August. I spent about 5 hours bouncing around the web trying to find the best deal. We talked to a travel agent out of Chicago that quoted us $900 per ticket.

If you do much research on travel to India one of the first companies you'll find is Air Indian. FLEE!! Run like the wind. Avoid Air India at all cost. We have had a variety of problems with Air India but we never seemed to learn our lesson. Most recently when my wife went to fly to India her flight was scheduled to leave at 1:00 pm. We checked in and everything said it was on time. So I left and started driving the 6 hours to get back home. Shortly before 2:00 my wife called and said they had been delayed. At 3 they were delayed again. Then again, then again finally about 10:00 pm they canceled the flight entirely and said that it wouldn't leave till the next day. 4 hours later around 2:00 a.m. I finally got a call that my wife had gotten to her accommodations for the evening. She had to fly out in about 6 hours. The next day as my wife was eating breakfast she got a chance to talk with one of the crew. The crew member acted surprised that the passengers hadn't been informed till 10:00 pm that the flight was canceled considering the crew knew the moment they touched down into Chicago. It seems an instrument had failed during the flight and a new one had to be ordered. They knew it wouldn't arrive until someone could bring one in and that wouldn’t be till the next day. The crew knew the flight was canceled 9 hours before they told the passengers. Needless to say we decided to NEVER fly Air India again.

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   Don't have a lot of details as yet but one of the girls jaundice has relapsed. Lack of rest and lack of proper nutrition has relapsed her jaundice. She is headed for the hospital today. I'll update with more details as they become available.

From Wikipedia:

Jaundice, also known as icterus (attributive adjective: "icteric"), is a yellowing of the skin, conjunctiva (a clear covering over the sclera, or whites of the eyes) and mucous membranes caused by increased levels of bilirubin in red blooded animals. Usually the concentration of bilirubin in the blood must exceed 2–3 mg/dL for the colouration to be easily visible. Jaundice comes from the French word jaune, meaning yellow. Jaundice typically appears in a 'top to bottom' progression (starting with the face, progressing toward the feet), and resolves in a 'bottom to top' manner.

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 Not long after the last blog post the world started to spin on me. I spent 4 years in the US Navy and I can remember that sick feeling you'd get after a night of drinking when the world would start to spin just before the ground would suddenly get ripped out from underneath you and you'd find yourself face down in the dirt. Well thats about how I felt come Monday evening.  There is a lot going on at the moment with airfare and final plans, figuring out how well meet our budget since I haven't nailed down any work thier yet. Throw on top of that the fact that we are now expecting a new addition to the family in Dec and the world begins to spin.

   Starting an orphange isn't always skipping through flowers on sunny days hand in hand with gratful children full of love. Sometimes it's just plain scary. Scary is what it was when I finally decided to sit down and relax a little Monday night. I popped in the final installment of the LOTR movie. Watching Frodo struggle with his own inner evils as he climbs to mount doom seemed like a good distraction to take my mind off my own concerns. As I watched I remembered something from a book I once read by John Eldrige. John was talking about these Epics and why they are so popular. He pointed out that down deep inside we all want to be part of something larger then ourselves that there is a desire to take on a giant evil and overcome it.

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     Well this last week we got our boxes. 4 Large Gaylord boxes along with 8 international export pallets. Also got a quote for shipping the whole thing. As it sits at the moment the quote I got to ship from U.S. to India was $350 for the first Cubic Meter $150 for each additional meter. This is actually a lot less then we originally thought it would be. We have 3 pallets of items already packaged that we know we have to ship. Training materials books etc. We didn't think we'd be able to ship much else because we figured it would be cost prohibitive. In the end we found that we couldn't replace things as cheaply as we could ship them. We aren't exactly sure what customs is going to run us on all this. It's all used stuff that is going into the house or orphanage but we'll have to see.

   It's going to take about a month to get our stuff to India so we'll have to ship it out in the begining of July. Another lesson I stumbled across in this process was wood. Originally I planned on building some boxes out...

   Well 79 days to go and things just got a little more complicated. It appears my wife is due Dec. 5th. So shortly after we arrive in India my wife will be in her final trimester. Another little note. It appears that India doesn't have the epidural so my wife will have to do this all natural. I guess here in the states there are some women that prefer it however all things considered I think Mercy would have preferred to be drugged. From the sounds of it the doctor will try to talk us into a C-Section anyway. Seems that Indian women are much more prone to complications then American women. At least thats what you'd have to assume from the reports since the majority of Indian women have one complication or another that requires the doctor to cut out the baby. This might have something to do with the fact that the doctor make more money if they have to operate then if the baby comes normally. Of course if you ask about that you are assured that things like that only happen at someone else's hospital and it's a life or death for either the baby or the mother and it must be removed surgically. What else can you do but take thier word and watch them hack away likely cutting something they shouldn't since they have no reguard for the patient to start with leaving behind a scar for life.

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At 81 days out my wife's family came over from India to see the U.S. They are surprised by a lot of things but one of the most obvious is our waste. As we drove back from the airport my mother and brother in-law wanted coffee. Now before I go to much father I need to point out that there is a fundamental difference in coffe world wide. It was one of those little surprises you never expected. I'm a coffee addict. Coffee to start the day coffee to end it. I drink my coffee black. No milk no sugar. In India however coffee ALWAYS has milk and sugar. To make coffee in India you take a sauce pan put milk into it. Bring it to a boil. Add a couple scoops of coffee grounds and let it boil. When it is dark enough you add several teaspoons of sugar until it's about as sweet as maple syrup. Once done you run the sticky brown milk through a strainer to get the grounds out of it and then put it into small cups about the size of a Texas shot glass. One of the things I missed the most while I worked in India was a simple cup of black coffee.

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