today I smell and I am happy

I realized today I am so smelly. I am stanky. I got home and was dripping in sweat from my first auto rickshaw ride. My hands were sticky with god knows what. My shirt was clinging to my body.

I was so happy.

This all was a product of my first day of work. My wonderful, amazing, insane first day of work.

It started with a walk to the Mother House for the 7am breakfast with all the other volunteers. Walking into the room and seeing the 70 plus other people was great. The room was just buzzing with laughter and chatting and smiling and at least a dozen different languages. I was so ready to jump into it. I ate my chai, banana and slice of bread with my friends from Canada I met at orientation. They are this amazing couple from Toronto here for the Larche International Conference. Matt and Marco are both working at Prem Dan as well and said they would help em find my way there after breakfast. After singing goodbye to the volunteers who were having their last day--a Mother House tradition--the garage door flung open to release out to our respective work sites. It felt very epic. Release the volunteers!

And then to my bus. Gosh, the 202 Kolkata city bus. What an experience. It cost 4 Rupees to ride to my work. It was so rickety and fast and colorful. On the bus I met a girl who was, as I could tell, the only other fluent, English speaking volunteer going to Prem Dan to the women´s ward. She very quickly became my new big sister and mentor for the day. Her name is Bernadette and she is from South Africa. She´s an amazing woman. I really enjoy having her here.

Bernadette walked me to Prem Dan with the other volunteers, mostly Spanish girls and few Japanese and Korean girls as well. Oh, the Seattle girls, they never showed up... MIA. Ehh.

Walking into the Prem Dan facility was surreal. After walking through the dirtiest slums I have ever seen in my life, we went through a gate into the compound. It´s like a whole other world. Quiet and clean and large and well kept. We started the morning with laundry. TONS of laundry, all done by hand. Our hands. My back is sore and my hands are worn nearly raw from all the ringing I did. Carrying pail after pail up two flights of stairs, hauling heavy loads of soaking wet sheets to and from stations. It all was great. It was the perfect way to interact with all the other volunteers. We all could barely 'speak' to one another, but between my broken Spanish and lost of smiling and gesturing towards buckets, we figured it out. Imagine that...using my high school Spanish in India! HA!

Then it was time to go into the sleeping room and help feed breakfast to the women.

The woman are ... hard to put into words. Some of them are so so sweet and just want to hug you. Others cry all day. Others never speak. Most are insanely malnourished and tiny and have various aliments like open bed sores or missing limbs or hunched backs. Gosh, I´m not going to try and describe the women now. I don´t know how.

After little tasks like serving breakfast, we had a chai and biscuit break with the other men volunteers from the other side of the facility. A much needed break and chat session with Matt and Marco.

The later morning I spent my time doing the 'real work' as Bernadette would say. I walked around and sat with women. Just sat with them. Held their hands. Rubbed their backs. Listened to them cry. Laughed with them. Nodded as if I understood their rapid Bengali. Back rubbing, hand holding and smiling. I am a pro at these things. I was made for this work.

Bernadette described Prem Dan to me best. She said that the patients have lived their whole lives on the street. They have always been treated like animals, their whole life. They come to Prem Dan to die being treated like humans. It´s our job to be human with them.