A few more pics posted...

These kids!!! Yesterday was the last sunday of the month, which is essentially visiting day here at the school. Families come and meet with their kids, wash their clothes and bring them whatever treats they can afford. These include carrots, sugar cane and small fruits (literally the only treat they get all month). I cannot get over the generosity of these children, because wherever I go, kids of all ages are breaking off hunks of carrots and sugar cane and relentlessly shoving the biggest pieces at me! Can you imagine this in america?

One of the youngest kids, Aryan, really melted my heart. Because of a recent scabies outbreak, we have had to start applying lotion to the kids that are affected. Aryan was one of the worst, with big scabs all over his body, including his 'you know what.' When we applied the lotion, he was very brave and did his best to hold back tears (the stuff really stings), but a few big drops managed to squeeze out and land on his chest and the floor. But later that evening, as I passed him in the hall, without even a glimmer of hesitation against the person who inflicted all that pain, he broke off half of the small fruit he was eating and thrust it at me. He is 5 or 6 years old!!! It's all too much sometimes...

In other health-related news, apart from the scabies situation here, we are also dealing with a small outbreak of 'loose motions' (Indian for diarrhea). Treatment is basically hydration, but this can be tricky when we dont even have enough water bottles for each kid. Matt and I are trying to manage this, but it's difficult. Ultimately though, the kids here are so used to all of these afflictions, that they can pretty much take care of themselves. This week is also going to be 'deworming week,' which will involve giving a single dose of Albendazole (anti-parasitic) to each child and waiting for the magic to happen!

Dr. Toegel is keeping us busy, as you can tell. We are teaching at the school, providing extra tutoring when necessary, trying to figure out/cure 20 of the kids who are anemic, organizing the deworming, monitoring the health of all the kids as much as possible, overseeing the construction of the new school (laughable), working with the HIV outreach program to design specific interventions for sex workers, working on the preliminaries for a possible mobile health clinic to serve the villages, hounding the Indian National AIDS Control Organization so that they set up a HIV testing and care center here in our city, helping to organize a potential teachers' training for English skills. That's all for now! Ultimately we just want to have some sort of positive effect here and that's what's most important.

Hope everyone is well. Missing you all!

XO, Ty