Down to the tracks

I have been really wanting to share with you what happened last weekend when I went out to feed the children! This week has been insane and awesome. Monday was the best day as my niece was born back in the states AND the mission team heard about my feeding project (which I have been calling Asha Guwahati) and they decided to donate for the meals. There is so much to write about but I will save this week for later and talk about last Saturday. 

As you know, two weekends ago I couldn't find the kids whom I had been feeding regularly. So last weekend I got some people started with the cooking and then I went on a scouting trip to the corner. Much to my dismay, the kids were still missing. I decided to walk further in hopes of finding them and quickly found myself making a beeline for the train tracks. I walked and walked, and ended right at the rails. I walked parallel to them through the slums. I peered into the shanty homes and saw many faces smiling back at me. This was where I needed to go. No one approached me as I wandered through, so out of place. There were kids without clothes, dirty and wounded. Children bending over the the tracks, picking up trash that has been tossed out of passing trains and homes that looked as if the would collapse on themselves in the slightest of breezes. I walked and soon ended where I began all those weeks ago on my very first feeding adventure and I just knew. If I couldn't find the children on the corner I had to come here. So I walked back home and was a nervous wreck. The tracks are hard, the people of the slums they need so much help and I knew it would be yet another push forward to continue growing this project. 

We packed up the food, I hopped on the back of a coworkers bike, Louise and Kelly got in a tuk-tuk and we headed off to the tracks. The next 10 minutes were a blur. We just set up on a corner, right at the rail just at the entrance of the slum village. The people came in swarms! Thankfully my friend Kelly has way more of a backbone than me and she managed to make it an organized chaos. We were yelling out "Queue!!" "Children" and "babies" in Assamese and for the most part, the crowd got it. We placed the warm boxes of food in tiny dirty hands and even though it was madness, many managed to connect their eyes with mine in a thank you. As usual, it felt like it was over before it began and it was time to walk away. For me, walking away is the hardest part because I know what lies behind me. I know how much more I can do, I know how much more I want to do. The support I have been receiving in this adventure keeps me up at night in excitement. I can not wait to share with the week I have had, the weeks that will come as this project grows. Thank you all for your support thus far <3