Wednesday, Day 2

Today was hard work but very rewarding.

My group was doing construction today. We drove about an hour away to a leprosy colony where we will be building bathrooms for many of the villagers. This colony was the first that Padma (she is an Indian activist that works extensively with the leprosy-affected) worked with. It is doing very well, it is clean (as can be) and many of the villagers have microbusiness and a lot of them pain at the art school. It is currently the standard that the other colonies are aspiring toward. The first step of the project was to move about 2,000 bricks, about 500 to 4 different houses!
The first house is the one on the left. We moved the bricks behind the house. Through out the summer volunteers will be coming back to build a bathroom for them. It was hard work. Sweaty and hot and the bricks were heavy. But it was exciting to see our progress and my group is really great. The best was when we got some cold water! It was divine! The second best was when our group leader fell into a small water pool, we were all jealous that she got cooled off :) The people in the colony were so nice. They only speak Tamil so it was hard to communicate but we all smiled at each other.

This is the Bindu Art School. Many of the villagers paint and sell their work. I believe some of it has even toured around the world. All the paintings were so beautiful and it is amazing to think that most of these artists are working without fingers (lost because of leprosy). I set two aside that I am going to go back and buy!

That afternoon at playtime I brought my camera so the kids could play with it. They LOVE to take pictures and look at themselves. The following are some that they took.

Kids playing soccer. Look at the beautiful jungle!

This is Triti. She likes taking close up pictures of her face and me!

I loved going to the village today. It was amazing to see how much nicer it was than the surrounding villages because of the ability the villagers have to work and make some money. They are all so sweet and I am excited for my medical rotation when I can be with them one on one. These children are so lucky to be at Rising Star and going to school instead of sitting around in their villages. I already know I love them all!