DONOR VISIT
When important visitors or potential donors come the Ashram knows how to present itself well. There is a special meal, the tribal children of the Ashram perform with group movement and chanting, villagers tell their stories about how the Ashram has helped them improve their lives.
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All of this is done under the mango trees beside the outdoor classrooms. Yesterday was the second time this has happened since I got here and I knew what to expect.
The visitors yesterday were an Indian doctor, a classmate in medical school of Hasmukh’s brother Jitubhai who hosted the huge wedding last week, who is now a successful doctor in Chicago and who has supported the Ashram financially in the past along with an Indian woman pediatrician who also had a very successful practice in Chicago and who gave that up to work in the very worst slums in Mumbai. Both of these humanitarians find the Ashram to be doing the kind of work with tribal people they find important.
After the the performance by the children and testimonials by tribal people and the Ashram staff people working with them I tagged along as the visiting doctors were taken to very rural area which the jeeps we were in bucked and twisted and bounced on the rutted trace of a road and through a stream bed to a very simple house surrounded by lush fields of wheat, mustard and castor surrounded by rounded rock mountains. We returned, the doctors left for Ahmedabad, and I went to sleep, exhausted and satisfied.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 