Well… Oops. It’s been a while since I’ve written anything
down. Honestly I was thinking that things around here haven’t been very exciting,
but as I was thinking through everything that has happened the past four weeks,
I guess it has been pretty eventful! I don’t remember the exact weeks that
things happened so I’ll just write things as I remember them.
Grace: As I mentioned in my previous posts, when we came
back from the village Grace was home! We were so thankful. But then we found
out that her family had disowned her because she shamed them by “not being a
good enough worker” at her job overseas and having to rely on foreigners to
come home… I mean, seriously?? Not only is Grace one of the smartest, most hardworking
people I know, but she did this whole thing in the first place so that she
could provide a better life for her two sons. There is a group of about 6 of us
here who are friends and are the ones that helped our friends bring her home.
When we heard this, we were all really devastated by the news. So, we got to
work and built a little room in the back of our friends’ restaurant that she
works at and now that is her new home! We all had fun building the little room
and making it nice for her. It was a bit difficult, because building materials
here are a little… not up to par. But we managed to make it work and it ended
up being really nice!
The nice thing is that in the weeks to come, her family kind
of had a change of heart. Basically, she is just disowned for the sake of the
family’s reputation. Now everyone knows that her family “did the right thing”
by disowning her from their family… but she and her mom and brothers still meet
up secretly and talk! It’s kind of funny [in a non-funny kind of way] because
there is like a whole team of women that pass along the message that Grace’s
mom is waiting on one end of the path and then grace will just go “on a walk”
and meet up with her mom and talk. It’s really stupid, but also really sweet.
The whole “shame culture” is just something I don’t think I will ever get used
to. It’s really sad, in my opinion.
Holi: Holi, or The Festival of Color, is a Hindu holiday.
It’s the holiday that has sparked the whole “Color Run” craze in the U.S.. IT
IS SO FUN. In other countries and even other major cities here, they do a whole
worship and ritual thing on Holi, but it’s pretty much just a day for the kids
[and everyone who still wants to be a kid] to throw color on each other! The
basic idea is to have a little bag of colored powder, [like the red powder they
use for Tikka - the red powder on most Hindu people’s foreheads] greet people
you see on the street by putting a little smudge of powder on their cheek or
forehead, and say “Happy Holi”. It’s kind of like the equivalent of giving a
kiss on the cheek when you greet someone. Except that when you get a big group
of people together, it just gets CRAZY and everyone throws color on each other
and basically the whole town is painted different colors [for like a week
because it stains everything… my hair is still orange…] and it’s just a fun day
to be out with friends. We had a large group of foreigners and a few of our
local friends and we just stalked up on powder and went nuts. There was a huge
parade in town and it was like a big dance party where everyone was throwing
all kinds of colors in the air. We also had the idea to fill socks with powder
and hit people with them! It worked really well and was kind of like a pillow
fight, but with color [and socks, not pillows].
Easter: Well… this was probably the most interesting Easter,
I’ve ever experienced. I really can’t post too much about it online, but it
definitely had its ups and downs. It's the downs I can't really post about [nothing to worry about, just some local drama!]. But the ups were good! I’ll start with Good Friday. We went to the
local church that we attend and showed the Jesus film. We had about 20 people
come, mostly kids and a few of the neighbor families! It was really good to
watch. Almost all of the people that attend that church are children. The next
morning we had church [Saturday is the day off here, so we always have church
on Saturday], where we talked about the death and resurrection. We did a little
art project with the kids and they really enjoyed it!
And lastly… we built a mini golf course! Kinda weird, but
it’s been really cool building it. We used all recycled materials and it turned
out really nice! It’s been fun to play on, too. And the looks from all the
local people trying to figure out what we were building were pretty hilarious!
Most of them thought it was a rock garden… but it’s been fun to show and teach
them to play mini golf!
Blessings.
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