Day 63, Oct. 12

The contingent from World of Hope (including me) had one more day of witnessing the great events that defined the Catholic community here. The first today was, of all things, the Dental College. It was a function of the Catholic Diocese of Eluru. Its chairman is the bishop; its administrative head is a priest; but, its academic hierarchy is entirely made up of dentists. The tour began (of all places) at the lab where the students had just been presented with their cadavers and were proceeding to open the skull to explore the brain. It wasn’t much fun for them. The tour group had varying reactions – mostly quite professional. We walked through areas dedicated to the various branches of dentistry. Fortunately, it was too early for the patients to arrive. Then, we were ushered into a small auditorium for the graduation ceremonies of the senior class. They received a Masters in Dental Science. From here they were heading to become interns at various places in a few countries where the rest of their education would be practical.
After a snack with the faculty, we headed for a parish with two large schools – one for boys another for girls. We were there for the ribbon cutting of the computer room. It contained three computers. Any of them would have been thrown out it were in the Diocese o Knoxville. But, that was a lot more than you could find in most other Catholic schools that I visited. This is the situation where about 20% of the students I unscientifically polled said they want to be working with computers when they finish school. In an India which aims at being high-tech, that is a realistic goal; but not if you haven’t seen a decent computer until college. We discussed how we could send our old stuff over to India.
The group then visited a place I saw on my first day, the school for the mentally challenged. A few of the students even recognized me. That made me feel good. However, I was studying the reaction of the group to the children. Their reactions were different from mine. The lay people were all engineer types. They analyzed. I tried to interrelate with the kids.
On the way back, Bob Leffew wanted to buy rupees through an ATM. I was there to help. He began to the same problems as I had. I tried all the tricks I learned before I finally got my card to work. They were useless. Finally, Fr. Moses got the director of the bank the Diocese uses to help us. Now, I knew it wasn’t my bank or the card that was the problem; but the machines.
We were invited to one of the convents which had a number of young aspirants there for dinner. The food was great, as usual. However, after dessert the group began to play music and then to dance. I had come to the dinner dressed for the first time in formal Indian dress. It consisted of a tunic coming to bout the knees and a loose pant that cinched up at the waist and clung to my legs to the ankles. Indians call all clothes worn as dress. Yet, this was a bit unisex as the girls were wearing a similar ensemble. Hence, several of the 17 year old aspirants welcomed me seriously with the complement I had never received before, “I love your dress.” By the fourth time, I got to the point where I merely smiled and politely accepted the compliment and the relationship it implied. I haven’t worn it since.