Here in Delhi, we’ve been partnering with Emmanuel orphanage. Emmanuel is a part of Hopegiver’s International, which has helped raise over 10,000 orphan and semi-orphan children.
It is impossible for me to overemphasize the importance of Orphan Ministry here. Everywhere you look are dirty children, begging for money or trying to sell you something. You can’t walk from your car inside to a shop without being stopped by them. After four or five, I lost track of the naked children we drove by on the side of the road. My best guess is that they are the result of the confluence of an impoverished post-Colonial economy, sudden hyperindustrialization, and a caste system which does its best to halt any upward mobility.
The orphanage is made up of one long building L-shaped building with two rooms for boys, one for girls, a few small rooms for staff and guests, and a hall for church on Sundays and study hall during the week. It sits on a large piece of land on the outskirts of town. A huge court yard has a slide and a swing, and plays host to constant pick up cricket or futbol games. A long dry season, as well as a broken down water tanker has reduced the courtyard and accompaning garden to dust.
The temperature has reached as high as 110 degrees, with only a slight dip in the evenings. The only break comes from the few fans and tired old swamp coolers, which run at the stacatto functioning of the electric grid.
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