Sheila and Tony Thornthwaite
In 2005, my wife Sheila and I set off for Tuni Orphanage in Andhra Pradesh, India not knowing really what to expect. We had been well briefed but as this was our first trip to a developing country we were excited and apprehensive. Arriving in Chennai in the middle of the night was a startling experience. The heat, noise, smells and sights were all totally foreign. Everything seemed chaos, especially the taxi ride in an old 1950’s car where the only thing that seemed to work well was the horn.
The train journey up to Tuni from Chennai was never to be forgotten. Sixteen hours in a packed carriage with stifling heat, pouring cyclone rains and a window that would not shut will stay with us, as will the great courtesy of other passengers and their intense interest in who we were and what we were doing. As we approached the station we passed the orphanage that had a huge banner outside with our names on it welcoming us. It was the beginning of a welcome that will remain in our hearts forever.
The director, ‘Premdas’ as he is known to all, met us and we were driven to the gates of school. Here were two lines of children, beginning with the smallest (about 5 years old), that stretched from the gates a hundred metres or more up the drive. As we got out of the car they all started cheering and clapping; we walked in between the children and the lines joined up behind us with dozens of small hands wanting to hold ours and proudly telling us their name, and immediately asking us to remember it! It was overwhelming and wonderful. We had hoped to arrive quietly but we soon learnt that is not the way things are done in India.
Tuni Orphanage is an amazing place. There is a very strong Christian ethos that the children embrace completely. The campus is much bigger than I expected with classrooms, sleeping accommodation, dining hall, ablutions and offices. It is more amazing when you learn that all this has been built since 1999. We stayed in Gillie Cottage on campus and delighted in all the new experiences. Firstly our job was to help with feeding the children. Large aluminium vats of rice and curry were produced and with ladles we helped serve the nearly 400 children and various staff members. Three meals a day over the three and a half weeks we were there means that we served the equivalent of the population of St Andrew’s, including university students. Hard work but great fun, as the children were irrepressible and very helpful. They eat some of the hottest curries I have ever tasted using their right hand (don’t ask what the left hand is for), sitting on the bare floor surrounded by other children, dogs, ducks and geese and more insects than you can imagine.
Our other job was to help teach the children computer skills. The orphanage had just set up a small IT room with 4 computers. They loved to learn and sitting three to a screen practised basic computer skills. We soon realised that by half way through a lesson we had double the number we started with and had to lock the door to stop more children coming in. Of course India presents different problems to teaching computer studies. The power fails frequently and you never know how long for, and rats would get into the room to chew the wires but somehow the children learnt all we could tell them more quickly that you can imagine.
Perhaps the most important thing about the orphanage is education. As Dalit children they are born with a huge disadvantage, bigger than anything we can imagine in Britain. In reality the only way out of a life of grinding poverty is education. The orphanage teaches English as well as traditional subjects and it is this that changes a child’s life chances. India is developing fast and needs educated young workers in many of its new industries. There are job opportunities that will override the difficulties of caste and upbringing and make possibilities for some of these children that they could never imagine. The work that is being done in Tuni is tremendous but it is the individual stories that stay with me. I was chatting to Premdas one morning when a young woman, perhaps 15 years old, came with her sister who was about 11. She looked gaunt and very serious, her face full of purpose and a little fear. Her sister appeared unwell, not walking properly and very red. They were orphans who supported themselves in a local village by looking after neighbours’ goats. This work gave them10 rupees a day, around 15p. This was all they had to buy everything they needed to live. Now, disaster had struck. Not a big disaster as you see on the television but a small disaster that was threatening their very existence. The cyclone rains were dreadful, much worse than normal and had swept away their little wood and palm branch hut. They had nowhere to live; simply nowhere. The girl did not plead or beg but simply stated her disaster and waited. Premdas took out his chequebook and wrote her a cheque for 1,000 rupees. I can still see her serious face and her ailing sister as they walked away. One thousand rupees is about £12.50 the price of a CD. It was enough to build that girl and her sister a new home.
We left Tuni with a hundred stories. As in our arrival we were not allowed to slip quietly away but drove through lines of waving children as we tried not to cry. I do not know if we will return to Tuni and its orphans but I do know they are very often in my thoughts and prayers, and that part of me never left.
