Chennai Orphanages

Today we got our first taste of life in Chennai.

The city itself is huge. The geographic area of the city of Chennai is maybe only half the size of the city of Dallas proper, but there are about 8 million residents.
Touring different parts of the city requires a bit of planning, since a visit to a location in a far away part of the city can take 4 hours or more in light traffic. And the roads in Chennai (and Delhi) are not exactly built for the smooth flow of traffic. Barriers in the road are set up randomly, in the middle of an otherwise perfectly traversable street, for the sole purpose of slowing traffic. And some of the “vehicles” on the road aren’t exactly speedy: cars and motorcycles share the road with carriages drawn by water buffalo and camels, and you can’t go half a mile without seeing a few sacred cows. Many streets have no lane markings, and those that do have lanes might as well not have any. Drivers in India look at all forms of traffic signs (including stop lights) more as best practice recommendations than actual laws to follow. I’m convinced that the drivers of India could be placed in the highest pressure environments in the world and never flinch, because they are absolute masters of the game of chicken.

The most immediately observable difference between Chennai and Delhi is air quality. The air here is bad but breathable, comparable to a heavily polluted US city on a high ozone alert day. But Chennai is still filled with all the contradictions of rich and poor that we found in Delhi.

We visited four orphanages today.

The first, Samajam, was a traditional orphanage caring for street children and offering schooling for the children in care (who range in age from 5 to 16). They have 100 children in care, and their facility is big enough to hold more, but they can’t take any more children as they don’t have enough ongoing funds for food and salaries. Our rotary partner in Chennai, the Madras Rotary, has initiated a matching grant project with our rotary club in Addison to install a clean water pumping facility for these children to help prevent water-borne illnesses. Some of the supplies for this project have been donated, and are already on-site (pictured here). The children that are here are extremely excited to be here, as they would otherwise have to beg for food on the streets, would not have any clean clothes or bathing facilities, and would not be getting any education. Children show up regularly to see if there are open spaces, and the word of mouth on the street (from one child to another in the streets of the slums) easily fills any spots that are available.

Each of the remaining three facilities we visited were orphanages for mentally handicapped children. These children, long since abandoned, are referred by hospitals or concerned citizens, and these orphanages are perhaps the only way these children can experience any quality of life. Many of the children are trained to do handicrafts or other basic vocations. The first of these orphanages, Little Hearts, also operated an elementary school for children from very poor families, and integrated some of the high functioning handicapped orphans in their care into that school in preparation to receive a complete primary education. That school was phenomenal – caring teachers and attentive students. They even offered physical education classes to the children. While we visited, an instructor was conducting a Kung Fu lesson, so I tried to keep up with the kids in that class as best as I could. My inability to keep up made me glad I wasn’t on “Are you smarter than a fifth grader.”

Click for Kung Fu Video

Each of these facilities does nothing short of God’s work, every day. It’s amazing to see, and it was an emotionally draining day to say the least.

Mike Morath