Calcutta, India:

I could not be angrier at the moment!  I have had probably 10 hours of sleep total since I got up Sunday morning and it is now Wednesday …I haven’t bathed since my first day in Dubai and since then I have, walked and toured Dubai for hours, gone to the beach fully clothed to burn in the sun, ridden in multiple buses, gone dune bashing, eaten dinner in the desert barefoot and then flown to India.  I have been up for more than a day without a drop of sleep.  As we get to our stop in Calcutta where a private bath (aka a toilet and a bucket for a shower) and a bed await me I find out that MY ROOM is not going to be ready for another 3 hours.  I was supposed to get to lay down and sleep until 3:30pm when we have orientation, and the others in my group can do that…all but me and Carrier.  I am dirty, hot, pissed off and ready to squall about it.  Not the least of which is that I was the first off our bus here in the city to be greeted by mothers holding naked babies and children running around calling us “uncle and aunty” asking us to help them.  I was looking forward to the promised respite and few hours of down time in quiet…but not me.  I am stuck waiting for my room.  Did I mention that on the plane they sprayed it down with us in it for bugs? Twice!  By law they have to spray this mist in the air over all the passengers...it immediately made me feel itchy.  I didn’t think you were supposed to come to Mother Teresa’s upset that YOU don’t have a room…but does this not show my utter self-serving, egocentric nature.  My friends are snoring around me, kids are begging in the street, folks are naked and Stephanie wants to cry cause she can’t take wash her feet, take a shower and lay down on a bed.  God help me…I am a mess.  And they call me a pastor??  Huh, someone needs to say, “How did YOU ever become a minister!”

Okay so a few hours later…we are finally settled!  I took a bucket bath and it was amazing because I was so nasty!  I got a brief nap in before heading to the Missionaries of Charity for orientation.  I will be spending my days at the home for disabled young children.  I am getting ready for bed and looking forward to a full nights rest!!!!  

 The pictures are taking forever to load so I will do three...one of the constant traffic, one of men bathing in a public fountain and the other of the buildings along the streets in Calcutta. The crowds are constant.  The smells are overwhelming…more like vomit than incense on the streets.  Dogs, cats, naked children, and throngs of people…it looks a lot like Slum Dog Millionaire.  And we were immediately oriented to the fact that Sutter Street by where we are working each day is a big hot spot for human trafficking of children.  We have been instructed not to touch the children because 1.  They don’t understand appropriate affirming touch 2.  Someone is watching to see who is touched more and the more touched the more exploited they become.  People use children here to get things from you.  They are a commodity.  It is very unnerving!   But the most unnerving was walking home from dinner on a smelly crowded street in the dark, with dogs laid out in the sidewalk as if they are dead and there between dogs are two children…babies…passed out on a piece of cardboard…sleeping.  I had to first step over the dog and then literally step over the sleeping baby to get into our compound.  Whether a gimmick, whether a trick to pull at my heart strings…there were children naked sleeping in the dirty sidewalk with adults shuffling past them, dirt from their heels falling in the faces while cars roll endless past blowing horns.  Something is very wrong with that image…and it won’t be leaving me anytime soon!