Mother Teresa's

I went down to Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity for their volunteer orientation. For a little background, Mother Teresa was a Hungarian born woman who joined the Irish Catholic order called the Missionaries of Charity. The "Sisters" of this Mission are from all over the world and are placed all over the world. Teresa came to Calcutta, India and was so appalled with the number of people dying in the street that she set up a hospice for the destitute and dying so they could be comforted in their final days. Teresa's mission was to serve the "poorest of the poor", in other words, she was saying, "Go big or go home."
Eventually her operation would expand into several hospices that deal with several different areas. She would then become known as Mother Teresa or Teresa of Calcutta. Some of the other hospices deal with street orphans, street infants, people with leprosy, destitute and dying and mentally and disabled orphans. There are at least two others that I can't recall right now. In addition, the Mission also oversees 2 "dispensaries". That means a sort of medical clinic that tends to the street people's wounds, and also "dispenses" medicines to the poor street people.
At the volunteer orientation there must have been about 60 people. And this takes place Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week. After being given a quick description of the multiple hospices that the Missionaries of Charity run, I found out about the two medical "dispensary" clinics that do wound care. To me, I felt that my skills as an EMT would be better put to use there. I signed up and had a short interview with Sister Karina. When I sat down with Sister, she asked what my work at home was. After I explained what it was, she said, "Oh, I asked because you look like a priest. I thought maybe you were a priest at home." I knew I had a pious aura about me.
Sister told me that I could work at the "Dispensary" (medical clinic) at Daya Dan, the orphanage for mentally and physically disabled children and that I could also work at the medical clinic they had set up at Sealdah Train Station. I was so happy to be going back to my old neighborhood. This would give me five half-day shifts of work. Sister recommended that if I wanted more hours I should also work at the Daya Dan orphanage itself, since there are less people working there than some of the other hospices.
The next day I started by showing up at Mother House, the main building, bright and early in the morning for the volunteers' gathering and prayer. They handed out bananas and bread with tea and everyone yapped away. Then there was a prayer with a little singing and hand clapping. After an hour, we all went out to catch our respective buses to the hospices. The morning gathering was nice and all, but I realized I could gain an hour and a half more sleep and just head directly to the orphanage on the subway, prayer optional, of course.
My first day at the orphanage was not a medical clinic day, it was just working in the orphanage itself. There were about 50 to 60 children there, each with their own special need. Some were ambulatory while others were confined to wheelchairs. About half of these kids would put on uniforms and go off to a special school down the street. I don't know who runs the school. There were at least as many volunteers as there were children there that day and a staff of about a dozen Indian ladies who ran the place. There are also one or two Sisters in charge of the whole operation, but they rarely get involved with the daily hands on stuff. Once the kids who could go to school were gone, it came time to get the other kids up and going. Each child seemed to have at least one volunteer with them who would help get them out of bed, feed them, play with them and put them through an established physiotherapy session. The kids had plenty attention. What there seemed to be a shortage of, I found out quickly, were people to do the laundry...by hand. Which is fine, because, as Mother said, "It's not the work that we do, it's the love we put into that work."
The routine starts by stripping down the beds, then wiping down the plastic covered mattresses and crib frames with bleach water. After this, we get clean sheets and remake the beds. From here we drag all the blankets and sheets and clothing up onto the roof where there are 4 large concrete utility sinks for washing. The items are separated and thrown into the sinks where powdered soap is added to the water. One of the volunteers or the Indian women who work there will climb inside the sink and agitate the laundry with their feet, stomping up and down like Lucy and Ethel in that "I love Lucy" episode where they were making wine. From here, the soapy clothes and sheets are put into another sink of water and swooshed around. The items are then pulled from the water and wrung out by hand. Once all wrung out, they are hung on lines there on the roof. David, a volunteer from Spain kept joking that he was going to sneak his own dirty laundry into the pile one of these days.
The Indian ladies, who are often called "Massie" or "Auntie" (Everyone is either called Uncle or Auntie depending on you gender) are constantly correcting the volunteers while they are hanging clothes. Since the Aunties don't speak English, it's difficult to figure out what you've done wrong. At times it's maddening. Then after a while it starts to make sense. Things like, hang the pants and shirts with waistbands and collars to the sun so they will dry quicker. Or don't waste the big long clothes lines with underwear because we've got a ton of sheets coming. Put the undies on the side. The Aunties have a few English lines that they say over and over again that become very funny to hear. My favorite pertains to determining whether or not the sheets are ready to be taken down and folded: "No drrry, no pull!" This is said in a high pitched female Bengali accent with a long roll on the 'r'.
The nationalities of the volunteers are varied. There have been people from Mexico, Spain, England, Ireland, Poland, China, the US and New Zealand. The two largest groups that I've worked with so far has been Australia and Japan. There has been a large group of Aussies here with a religious organization. They are all high school aged and they make up about 50% of the people I wash clothes with. The next larges group are Japanese. They seem to be in their 20s and traveling separately. I've fallen into a clique where I've been working with some of the Japanese volunteers. There are 3 guys and 2 girls. One of the girls, Saori, speaks very good English and is always asking complex and sometimes politically sensitive questions. It's been great. The questions range anywhere from religion in the US to the Iraq war.
Sometimes it can get really hot up on the roof and sometimes there's a nice, cool breeze. It was late morning one of my days on the roof and I had wrung out so many clothes that my forearms felt exhausted. We had moved on to hanging up the clothes to dry. For some reason, there were not many people on the roof, just me and two of the Japanese guys. There was a cool breeze coming off of the Hooghlie River diluting the thick Kolkata air. One of the other guys sang a song in Japanese. It was soft and high pitched. The brother sang it sweet while one of the kids methodically circled us, touching each one of us on the back as if playing an imaginary game of "Duck, duck, goose" and Mother watched from up above.