Parentless

 

 We got a phone call a couple days ago. A mother who had lost her home her husband and everything else. except her two children. One was 10 the other was just about to start college. She wondered if we could help. She wanted us to take care of the daughter. Instead we told her we would take care of both her and her daughter until she was able to do it on her own again.

One of those things you just kind of take for granted in America and never think twice about. When I first came to India 5 years ago I opened a Citibank account or to be more precise it was opened for me by my employer. Citibank was good their service was slow and if you ever needed to actually go to a counter it was a nightmare of long lines, angry customers and rude staff but at least they seemed reliable.

Recently we wanted to open accounts. One for the orphanage two personnal accounts one for my wife and I and one for the company.

So ICICI was the bank the company I worked for when I first got here used so we started there. A representitive came to the office I filled out all the paperwork etc. Weeks passed. Finally I get a response it seems my signature didn't match the signature on my passport. So we tried it again. Weeks pass again rejected because my signature didn't match. So again they came this time I sit for an hour practicing my signature to get it identical to how I signed my passport....

     We have two contacts in the area where we went to get the girls that we thought were going to help us track down the children in the greatest need. Our first contact was the pastor of the local church. As Mercy's rented car drove onto the property, she noticed some changes had taken place since we were there the previous time. The church had been fixed up and there was a new house being built on the property.

     Now one of the local men that was acting as a guide for Mercy had already tried several times to disuade her from going to see the pastor but Mercy insisted. He said the pastor would try to get us to take the children of all his relatives instead of children that really needed help. Well she insisted we've known the pastor for almost 5 years and though we don't know him well we knew him better than the villager. Mercy got down from the car and after formalities sure enough the pastor began to try to convince Mercy to take the children of his relatives. So they went to the village to meet pastor's relative who was a 16 year old pregnant women with a 2 year old daughter. According to the wife, her husband was struck dead by a demon when he walked out of the house one morning. As the pastor spoke to the 16 year old mother, she clutched onto her little daughter like a life perserver. One glance at the mother and you knew her only connection with her dead husband was the little girl clutching her knees. Her father felt though evidently that the child would be better off in an orphanage, the uncles all agreed but one glance at the women and you knew she didn't. So Mercy decided not to take the girl with her. Finally pastor started talking about his own granddaughter.  We eventually found out that he was building a house for his daughter and her husband there on the property and felt he needed to send her granddaughter with us. Somewhere along the way the pastor had lost the point. We weren't here to take children away from parents that loved them and wanted to care for them. We care for the parentless. Children that either have no parents left. Obviously this was getting her nowhere so Mercy left. Determined that this "pastor" was no pastor at all if he was willing to abandon his own granddaughter.

...

Ok, well maybe my methods aren't exactly scientific; perhaps my sampling is a bit small, and my conclusion too general. However, were we ever in for a shock. Who ever heard of a child that doesn’t like Chocolate Ice Cream? It was their first night here at the Home, so we figured it would be good to get them out of the house for a treat. About four blocks from the house is an Ice Cream Store, so we all walked up and we got a scoop for each girl. Well, I guess we kind of figured they might not have tried it before.  But women always like chocolate, right? …and kids always like Ice Cream.  So we figured it was a safe bet. Of the 10 girls, two of them took one bite, wrinkled up their nose and didn't want any more. OK, so what do you do with kids that don't know what a cartoon is, can't understand English and don't like ice cream, in order to get their minds off of what they have lost, what once was, and what could have been if only ... Today we tried toys, a couple of jump ropes and some 2$ teddy bears. It appears...

Back in the day when I used to look for a job, instead of looking for people to hire, I can remember getting emails that said I had been shortlisted. It's been a year since my Resume was active on Monster in the US, but I still get e mails that say I've been "shortlisted".  Once I started my own company I realized better what that means.  Recently I needed to hire a developer, so I posted an ad and got almost 1000 responses.  Ok so we "shortlisted". But in the end, it never really changed my life to find out Microsoft or IBM or HP "shortlisted" me.  In the end all it means is they actually read my resume instead of just deleting it. Yesterday though, it was a whole new experience. Mercy went out to a village we had been in contact with. Looking for orphans or children in need. We pretty much already setup our guidelines. Full orphans we will always take, but single parents in desperate situations, we need to talk to and decide. Mercy started with a list of 13 children. She came home last night with 7. She had...

Like any country to enter India you need permission from the government. Generally that’s a visa. However here in India there are two of categories of people allowed in. “Person of India Origin” and Ex-citizen’s.

 

There are three ways to be categorized a Person of Indian origin or (PIO) Your Parents were Citizen’s Your Grandparent’s were Citizen or your spouse is a Person of Indian Origin. Since Mercy is a Citizen of India I become a PIO based on her.

 

If you are on some types of Visa your entitled to purchase a vehicle, get a bank account, rent a house etc. as a tourist you can’t do many of these things. As a result a Visa holder to do any of these legal activities has to prove they are registered with the police IE a “Resident Certificate”. A Person of Indian Origin (PIO) only has to register with the police after 180 days. A Person of Indian Origin (PIO) is also qualified to perform any legal activity without being registered.

 

Ok now just try to imagine the looks...

     Well it's Feburary which means birthdays. Ash Mercy and I are all Feburary birthdays which means we could get it all over with in about 2 weeks. At least until DJ came along in Nov. which through the whole process off.

     Birthdays in India are much more exciting then I remember them in America. In the states they come and go with barely a nod. But here to ecscape it's nearly impossible.

     Before I left America I was going to get a cellphone that could contain all my contacts my schedule and everything else. But then after talking with a couple different people it seems not everything that works in America works here in India. So I decided to wait till I got to India to get it. Then when we arrived we were so busy getting everything else we needed that there wasn't much money for anything extra. In the states you can get a fairly nice phone by signing a service contract. In India there really isn't anything similar. So I got a 20$ phone that would ring and didn't do much more.

    ...

Warning Numbers Ahead if you already have a headache come back later.

Well it's that time of year taxes. I'm going self employed  on March 1 working out of my house. I started to realize that ment accounting. Ok I'm a coder not an accountant so I'm REALLY not looking forward to this. However If I'm going to have time to do what we came here to do. I've got to work for myself so I have the flexibility to do it. Hey shameless plug here want a website or an application Hire me. OK so back to our regularly scheduled program. As I started to look at it and I decide the first place to analyze was taxes you know I grew up doing my taxes since I was 16 I should be able to do it in India right? As I looked at it I started to wonder which is better India or America. The tax Schedule here looks something like this.

Men:

Income less then 110000 is not taxed

Income...

Last month as we began to analyze our expenditures for this year and develop a budget for 2008 we realized that money was a lot tighter then we first anticipated. For a variety of reasons. A lot of people that said they would help seem to have forgotten. I guess that is normal. Intentions are always good but in the end when it gets right down to it  it becomes hard to actually carry through. We had originally designed this site to stay in touch and update those that were interested in supporting us in the work we are doing. Thus as 2007 began to draw to a close we began to consider shutting down the site. It costs us about $14.00 a month to keep it going and since there are so few to keep updated it would be cheaper to simply continue to send out our newsletter instead.

So in Mid Dec. I stopped posting anticipating that we would shut it down in mid Jan. however after talking to some friends stateside they encouraged us that our blog was affecting more people then we realized and convinced us we should continue...