Hyderabad, India; day 2/4

Day 2 - the Leper Colonies

Leper Colony 1.

shunned from society, the lepers are forced to live in the outskirts or in little encompassed communities such as these:

as soon as they see our truck, they quickly gathered up on the sheets by the entrance to form an audience-like crowd because they knew something was in store for them. some even brought their previously used bags because they knew they were being fed today.

the kids were so grateful.. they would say thank you after you give them food and even after you answer their questions. lol. a group of girls asked me about school. they were like, "are you in college? what do you study? have you graduated? where? what do you want to do?" of course my usual response to those questions are "UH... getting there... not sure yet?? im still trying to find it..." and i'd say it in total embarrassment. i've been taking baby steps alright.

Leper Colony 2.

this is actually one of the fortunate houses within this leper colony that we visited. This house in particular belonged to our tour-guide/church-friend Sarah and her hubby Abraham. Limited electricity..

and only sunlight lit the kitchen.. she would have to light wood to cook. she said to us, "I'm praying for an electric stove"

they were blessed with a huge speaker! and a blanket. (that poster was her wedding sign; and those are their real names)

couple doors down was a "hospital". The lepers would come here every morning to get their lesions disinfected and banded. The lady doing the bandaging is actually Sarah's mom! The elderly lady getting bandaged started to cry a little when we got there. She was saying that her leprosy has not healed yet and it has been going on for too long and she just wants it to stop. Basically with leprosy, it progressively eats away your skin and through to your bones painlessly. so one day you can have a pinky finger, and next week it's just a stub and you didn't even notice. In this woman's case, she fears her foot is eventually going to deteriorate and she will be forced to walk on crutches.

a few of the neighborhood kids were running around playing. they ran up to our hands, grabbed them, and tugged us to come play with them. Julian and Sierra couldn't resist the offer

We returned to the main place where they gathered because the trucks with our food finally arrived. It was mainly women and children, very few men?

i took this pic from afar. looks like she was explaining to the other one what exactly was going on.. or they could be playing a game. I really feel for these kids who are born into these types of communities. They have no choice but to live within the walls of the leper colony without knowing what's on the other side of the wall? .. ??

passin out rice..

i dont know if you can see it on your screen, but if you look at these ladies' fingers, they have the lesions from leprosy. you can see that their limbs have been eaten away. They have no fingernails and some were missing whole fingers

day 3 next!