Day three

Today is day three in the slums, not sure if anyone has mentioned the almost comical hour long ride there, imagine rush hour with no rules of the road, and at times not even a road! then add a few million tut tut's and few more million bicycles, mayhem doesn't really do it justice:). We saw the record broken for the most people in a tut tut today , 11 people crammed in this little yellow sardine can on a motorbike!

Today we finished the rooms with the fish and the dinosaurs, I forgot to mention in the last post but we also did the IT room yesterday , putting up all the posters of our round trip of London, they look amazing lined up around the room, we hung some red, white and blue bunting to finish it off! There was some face painting going on with the young children today, batman, dragons, pirates etc which they really enjoyed.

After cleaning up the rooms we all changed into our Indian tog's as Dr Kiran Martin is coming today, after a little wait she arrives with crowds of women and children cheering and throwing flowers they are thrilled to see her. After saying a million hello's and looking at all the work we had done so far we sat in one of the children's rooms and had a workshop with the children. A young girl stand up and tells the story of how all the children give money into a collection, when there is enough money they all decide who to help with a gift of medicine or whatever they need. These are a group of children no older than 12 I think,I can't help but think what an inspiration these kids would be back home. Another explains how her home had lost it's electricity and it was very intense in her house especially for her as she had exams coming up, she wrote a letter to the electricity board explaining she couldn't study and was worried about her exams, the electricity board came and fixed the homes supply straight away. Without her writing skills she says this would not have been possible.

Kira tells us of when she used to come to this slum years ago in just a van and saw patients by the road side, where there was an open drain, often children used to fall into the drain catching all kinds of infections, many died over these years. After a while they were upgraded to a toilet a big relief when it rained, everyone laughed. We continued to listen to may stories from the children, it was a very special time. Then the older children came in, Kira told us how this group of children are the first from Seelampur to go to university! They tell us various testimonies, how it is impossible to study in a slum home, so dark, so noisy, at Asha they can have a quite room all to them selves.
As well as Kira coming Amanda managed to get an Indian lawyer to come and visit the slum, a really nice guy, this is a work contact of Johnathan's, he is really impressed by the work Asha has done and is very interested in helping the children achieve their goals of becoming a fully fledged lawyer. This could be an incredible opportunity for the children, a respectful job and work!
So far none of the team has suffered any Delhi belly type of illness so thank you all who have been praying, Jez was unwell last night with a cold but after a good nights rest has managed to shake it off, unfortunately I seem to have got a cold today so am hoping and praying I can do the same by tomorrow, Amanda like myself is finding it very hard to sleep, so please keep praying.

Also thank you for all your comments they are great to read, I shall read them to the group tomorrow, I had to take picture of them with my phone as the printer here doesn't work either:)
Again excuse any errors it's quite late now and the computer keeps loosing the text when it crashes.

Alan..