Bracelets for the Girls and Elephant Masks for the Boys

Message For the Day: Making Strides; Friends and Elephants

Elephant Masks

Another two day blog and then hopefully a final one before I leave for the U.S. very early Saturday morning.

I see the beautiful children at St. Thomas Hospital making progress everyday that I’m there. Some a little, some quite a lot. It does my heart so much good to see these children grow physically and mentally and to watch Sheila with them. The pride on her face is clearly evident, and something to see…really! :-)

My novice belief is that when you tell a child “very good”, “perfect”, “YES!”, that they understand you no matter the language they know or what you’re speaking in. How I know this is by the smiles on their faces. I also believe that what we do as volunteers does their hearts so much good. Deep down they feel good about themselves no matter their ages.

I’ve also seen the happiness and sometimes relief on the faces of their mothers. The moms are so dedicated and patient with their children. They are also very strict and no nonsense with them at times. Some of them will keep a small tree branch on the table next to them so that the children know that they will be punished if they don’t try they’re best at all times.

Bracelets

Tonight at Seam it was girl’s night as all eleven of them made friendship bracelets, a few rings, and some made necklaces. It sounded like they were all having fun as they chatted on in Tamil and I happily listened in. Then I’d hear, “Sister”, “Sister”, as one of them was ready to have their bracelet knotted or a new girl had come in and was ready to pick her color. The night flew by as all of a sudden Paul was at the door telling me it was time to finish up. Stephen was down in the newly colorful study room handing out the nightly fruit (apples tonight) as he asked me to help. It was a day filled with rewards both for the children and myself at the hospital and for girlish fun at Seam.

Again there was so much improvement seen at the hospital today most especially by a very loving Shardha. He just continues to grow daily and his mom sees it too. Today we worked (hard) on some of the letters that I notice he has problems with, D, E, and P. D he wrote like a P, P he wrote like a D, and E he didn’t put the third horizontal line all the way to the bottom of the vertical line. By the time he was done writing the letters over and over and tested on them I felt
that he was writing them correctly. I will test him again tomorrow and keep my fingers crossed. We also did more pattern work with improvement and then I let him color, his choice. I will be very sad to leave his beaming smile and wonderful excited greeting each morning.

Seam Children’s Home tonight was boy’s night and they were going to be putting together the elephant mask pieces that I’ve been working on at the guest house. As I’d bring the pieces out and put them in front of them they’d all try and figure out what it was. When they did their faces would light up and they’d chatter in Tamil. I loved watching them try and figure out how the four pieces fit together. After those were glued I’d bring out the tusks and they’d get excited all over again! Mukesh and Suresh even had elephant “voices” to go with the masks. Hilarious!

Nancy