At 7:20 Nehru and Ruby come to pick us up from Chennai/Madras’ main railway station. I have never experienced such kindness and hospitality and can only stammer thank you when they hang a flower necklace over my shoulder and bring us to a car. We have to travel four hours to get to the orphanage. Wait a minute. They have come here this morning, so they have woken up at 2am? To pick us up, guests they have never seen before? I am overwhelmed and think about it when the car drives us through the pretty land of Tamil Nadu.
At the orphan home the welcome is even greater. We get flowers, a child sprays around foam from a little canister, they sing songs for us. It’s amazing, never happened to me. Hailed like the King of Kings. We are seated inside and every child introduces itself. From now on we are Uncle and Auntie. Nehru shows us our room, which is the office of the small orphanage. We try to convince them that we are comfortable sleeping anywhere but they insist and we accept. They bring us dinner later and we talk about the projects we are going to support Eph’Phatha with.
I am so happy here.