Yeah!!!! I'm finally able to post something. I hadn't been able to for days now because the connection at the last hotel in Kolkata was interfering with my ability to do that. I'm writing for July 26, 2010.
Today was another amazing day! This morning we went to the Loreto Day School Sealdah. Oh my goodness, I felt so inspired by Sr. Cyril Mooney, the principal of the school. What a powerhouse of a woman! In 1979, she was appointed to be the principal at the school. When she got there, the school was basically a privileged private school. Out of the 790 students, only 90 were tuition free. Sr. Cyril saw so much need and felt compelled to do better. She did the math and figured out that she could probably run the school and pay the teacher even if only half of the 790 were paying students. So that’s what she did. She set up a lottery and started accepting more street children and children from shantytowns. Let me explain the difference, when you first get to India, you might think that the people living in the shantytowns with the corrugated tin roof huts are the poorest of the poor, but no, there’s a group that doesn’t even have a roof over their heads. They sleep on mats or sheets on the sidewalk up against buildings. So, those are the type she takes in. Then one day it struck her that these “rainbow” girls, as they are referred to, could actually have a roof above them, if the school opened up for them from 3:00 p.m. dismissal time to the time when the school day begins. So again, not having to worry about potential “lawsuits” and such, she began housing the poorest of the poorest. If the mothers were also found to be in vulnerable positions, they were allowed to stay in as well. Sr. Cyril is simply awesome! She didn’t just rest on those laurels though. She tackled the next obvious problem that was staring her in the face, then the next, then the next, then the next, then the next, etc. I’m not exaggerating. She told us that she doesn’t wait for the money. She starts doing what she has to do for whatever community she’s helping at the moment and has faith that God will provide her what she needs. I had the sense that I was with a modern day saint. Make no mistakes, this is not the passive, quiet saintly type. She is a force of nature! I instantly loved her and felt at home. She reminded me of all the wonderful Irish nuns and priests that I’d had growing up that inspired me to name my sons, Kevin and Kyle, instead of Fernando and Francisco. What a privilege to meet this woman and the other teachers. She leads by example. She expects the more privileged students to go out into the villages one Saturday of every month
to teach those students that can’t get to a school. Christian values are not just read about in books, but practiced on a daily basis. Oh yeah, and another way in which she “thinks outside of the box” is this, those students who do have to work, begging on the streets or whatever menial labor is available are encouraged to come in whenever they can get three hours straight. She has a cadre of senior girls ready to teach those students as needed. She’s does so much from teacher training to starting village schools, to work experience programs to prepare her “Rainbow Kid” graduates to enter the real world. INSPIRING!!!
Then in the afternoon, we made our way to the American Center. We caught an exhibition by the Patuas. The Patuas is the “caste” name for a community of itinerant painters and singers. In the old days, they would travel from village to village with a sack of painted, narrative scrolls on their backs. Upon arrival into the village, they would look for patrons to pay them to sing the contents of the painted narrative scrolls. The songs were mostly about Hindu gods and their accompanying stories/myths. Other themes would also be the “sahib pat” or foreigner scroll which would have to do with tales about oppressive things the “Britishers” were doing to the locals during the colonization. So in a sense, they were old-fashioned journalists to a certain degree. They have had to adapt their narrative, painted scrolls to the different political and social circumstances of the day, but their work is still colorful, powerful and strong, and they still sing the contents of their scrolls. 
After that, we were treated to a traditional and folk dance show, featuring one of the Unites States-India Educational Foundation's employees, Shohini(?). She was also a "Fulbright Scholar" assigned to Flagstaff, AZ. She's the soloist in the picture below. Then we ate dinner while mingling with Indians from all walks of life. Kolkata you didn’t disappoint me, and we still have one day left.
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