Judi Kloper home from her India trip scouting for children
Message: 5533 From: JudiKO@... Received: Do Feb 03, 2005 8:30
Subject: from judi, home from india
Dear Everyone,
Having arrived home from three weeks in India (last weekend), I am finally
catching up with emails (704) and phone messages (13, not bad!) and lots of
things on my to-do list.
My trip began in Mumbai and in Pune visiting a friend and mostly working at
Preet Mandir. My coworker Cathie Woodward, herself a mom to eight from India
including Durga from TLCH and now my assistant at Journeys of the Heart,
joined me in Goa since my director was not able to travel due to ill health. In
Goa we had two days more or less of visiting a new orphanage there
associated with Preet Mandir, but mostly we shopped for a day and ate HOT Goan food
(so good, so good) and enjoyed the beach (and all the many many tourists from
Russia who were everywhere...even signs on the beach and other places were in
Russian!).
Then the real work began for the next two weeks. Cathie and I flew to
Hyderabad where we met with some lawyers who are very familiar with the high court
and family court cases of the AP kids. In fact, we got to go to High Court,
and gazing out of the window in one of the offices I saw the largest bats
I've ever seen, fruit bats I think they are....for a while I thought that Gita
and Shalini had passed on to their next lives and had come back as these
hideous things. Then I felt bad for thinking such horrible thoughts about the
bats, who really are supposedly gentle creatures (unless you happen to run into
them with your new bouffant hairdo....)
Then we proceeded to see the kids at TLCH and visit with Sister Teresa for a
good hearty lunch, which we enjoyed. Sister is doing well considering all
she's been through, all she's been forced to go through due to Gita and
Shalini and Uma and all the other evil nasty sick examples of human beings, of
WOMEN, that exist in this world....
When we arrived, all the girls were sitting in a room in rows watching a
video. They were so polite when they greeted us, all looked absolutely
beautiful as they always do there, with their hair clean and shiny, their faces
sparkling and their eyes wide and glistening. I mean it. They were so cute...and
still, it was so very sad to look at each and every one of them and think
back to the days I'd visit and they were babies, to see Jessie who was the baby
next to Prasanna; Prasanna has been home for four years now. And to see
Helen and Anusha and Sahiti and Manusha and all of them....it's absolutely
criminal that these children are being held hostage and not allowed to have a
childhood and the love of a family. While Gita has the freedom to raise her
child (as a single parent mind you, the very people who she has tried to
emotionally crucify in the INdian courts and society), and while Shalini plays at
being a so called loving mom to her sons, they deny other children the very same
thing that their kids have. SO VERY SICK!
I know I don't have to write all of that, that you all know this and agree.
I just have to vent.
So Cathie and I took the kids' photos and I will list them all here. Please
write to me if your child is on this list and you would like to see a photo.
These are the only kids at TLCH.
Cathie was taking notes and was unsure of the spelling, as am I right now
too. Please excuse. There are 29 children, including just one boy, Pradeep,
Santoshi's brother.
Anusha (of course! She's one of 'mine')
Avanti
Ratna or Retna
Mythili
Sahitia
Nandita
Manusha
Rajeevi
Blossom
Namrita
Helen
Ragini
Lizzie
Poornima
Priyamvada
Sridevi
TWINS: Srikana and ShashiKala
Jaqueline
Vanella
Aleena
Hemabindu
Prema
Jessie
Suganya
Vismaya
Lavanya
SIBLINGS Pradeep and Santoshi
I have updates too, which Sister prepared, so if you would like a copy of
it, please let me know. I can scan it to the computer and send it as an email
attachment. Otherwise I can fax it.
I'll wait to hear more from you about whether or not you want photos and
updates. I realize that it's hard for many of you and I will abide by your
wishes. If you know of families of these kids who are not on this list, feel free
to give them my email address.
From TLCH that evening, Cathie and I flew to Vijayawada, where we were
greeted by Carol and Noel who founded Care and Share..... What a fantastic place.
I will write about that in another email as there is SO MUCH to write about
that organization and the work they do. We were able to not just visit all
their programs around that part of AP, but we visited one of the fishing
villages with which they work that was affected by the tsunami. Journeys of the
Heart has been helping that one village out, using the donations of many of
our adoptive families and adoptive families and others that read of our
efforts on the Ichild lists and other places.
OK, more later. But this is a start....
Ta ta,
Judi