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Published: February 6th 2009
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I am a long way from being a religious man but when 1300 orphaned children first sang a song to Danielle and I and then followed it up by saying a prayer for us I, for the first time in a very long time was not completely critical of Christianity or any other religion for that matter.
I mentioned in my update from Mamallapuram that we struggled to find a conversation that did not revolve around yoga or meditation for the first few days of being in the town. The first people that we were able to talk to properly without holding in laughter were a bunch of lads from England who were completing a portion of their Gap year working in an orphanage in central Tamil Nadu. At 18 I was running a muck as frequently as possible and getting into as much mischief as I could, this is completely the opposite to what Chris, Jamie and Barney are doing as part of their post study freedom.
Over the course of two nights, too many games of cards and a lot of questioning, the boys had unwittingly convinced Danielle and myself that visiting the orphanage would be a
rewarding experience. With no set plans to our time in India we set off from Pondicherry early one morning bound for Salem. The boys and the Pondi tourist office told us that Salem was only four hours away from Pondi on the bus. Arriving at the bus stand early meant that we were able to pick our seats and we grabbed what looked like a decent three seater midway up the bus. I have since realised that this is possibly the worst place to sit in the bus as when the bus gets full, it gets really full and 2 large backpacks, 2 daypacks, an acoustic guitar, two foreigners and a number of different shape and sized Indians makes for an uncomfortable journey. Seven hours into the journey we arrived in Salem aching in every way possible and feeling very sorry for ourselves.
We checked into a relatively cheap hotel and made a couple of phone calls to arrange for a tour of the orphanage and soon enough after we were booked in for three days at the Indian Christian Mission Centre (ICMC). We were picked up the next morning by one of ICMC's drivers and taken to the
hostel we would be staying in for the few days and were soon taken on a tour of the closest school by the English boys. The tour of St Basil was just a preview of what was to come as we were swamped by children who were wanting to know who we were, where we were from, what our mums names were, what our favourite television channel was and who our favourite contestants on Indian idol?
ICMC is the product of 20 years of dedication from Pastor Jayaraj, a joyous and charismatic man who I am sure will one day have a top selling biography written about his life. Pastor Jayaraj had lost both parents, brothers and sisters before reaching ten years of age and was adopted by a Christian orphanage 50 kilometres from his home town of Salem. He was pushed away from his remaining family due to a strong Hindu superstition that he was the cause of the families troubles and it was even suggested to his grandfather to poison his grandsons breakfast in order to stop the terrible luck in the family. He went on to get a degree in philosophy and ministerial studies, working and
studying in the Philippines before returning to Salem to give back a bit more to his faith. He began by renting a house for $10 a month in 1988 with just 12 resident orphans and just 20 years later is housing up to 2000 orphans and operating nine separate schools and colleges catering for pre-school aged children through to high school graduates who wish to take up careers in nursing and education.
The pastors pride and joy is his Promised Land, an orphanage and educational campus 40 minutes out of Salem which caters for close to 1500 students and stretches as far as the eyes can see. We had the joy of visiting on three separate occasions but the first will always be the most memorable. After arriving at around three in the afternoon and after being taken on a quick tour around the grounds we were drawn to the sound of singing and clapping from the meeting area at the centre of the Promised Land. Sitting in rows with wide eyes and massive smiles on their faces were the children that we had come to see, all 1300 of them. After a couple of songs, a prayer and
a speech by Pastor Jayaraj we were given packets of biscuits to hand out to the children as they lined up in rows, shook our hands and said “Welcome to India”.
The next few days were spent enjoying the hospitality of Pastor Jayaraj and his wife Miss Chrissie, eating brilliantly catered meals, travelling out to the Promised Land and playing with hundreds of children each day, all who were dying for any attention. I would happily prescribe to anyone who is having trouble sleeping at night a dose of ICMC in Salem as I have not slept more heavily in my life thanks to all of the running, lifting, jumping and tom-foolery that went on each and every afternoon that we were there.
It would have been easy to commit ourselves to more time at the orphanage as Danielle would have liked to have done some teaching and putting smiles on the kids faces was simply amazing, but we knew that we should head off for the south of Tamil Nadu.
If you want more information on ICMC please visit www.icmcindia.org or send me a message and I will tell you all I know. It was an
amazing experience that we would recommend to everyone passing through Tamil Nadu. We have first hand seen what the hard work of Pastor Jayaraj and the financial support of many foreign supporters have done for these children so if you were thinking of being charitable at some point in the future it is a program I guarantee works.
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