Sun 13th October

Good day Hospice fans!

[This post was meant to be up yesterday but we got back to the Hospice late & I didn't get time to post it]

So then tomorrow I will be travelling again to Madurai City to see Gnana & Kirubai & will be going to visit the school a Melayakudi. Well that's the plan anyway it should go ahead as I could be coming home next weekend but we shall have to wait & see if it actually happens or not. 

The plan is to stay overnight which will be nice & travel back to the Hospice on Tuesday.

I will do my best to get the Melayakudi report up on this blog as soon as possible as I really want to get that done before coming home. 

I'm not sure if I'm going to get time now to do the school report about an average school day for the kids at the Hospice but I will try my best next week will be all over the place if my extension is rejected. If I don't get time to do it I am sorry, I wouldn't have procrastinated on this if I had known this problem would arise. I thought I had plenty of time left. But you never know the extension might well come through. 

So then to continue with the stories of the children & today I will tell you about Carthick. 

Carthick is 8 years old and has been at the Hospice for 5 years now. Again he contracted HIV from his mother at birth but uniquely among the children his mother lives here at the Hospice as well. 

Things started to go bad for Carthick & his mother when his father left to marry another woman. 

Palleniamal (Carthicks mother) had no means now of supporting herself & her son. Her family had rejected her because of being HIV positive & she had nowhere to turn. With all these things & what she must have felt was the only option left she decided to commit a joint suicide with Carthick. 

Now fortunately before she went through with this she found out about Arulagam Hospice where she & her son would be accepted & cared for & now Palleniamal is one of the workers at the Hospice so this place has truly been a blessing to them. 

Now Carthick is a funny child & is always eager to please and show of his skills. For fun I've been showing the kids how to do handstands & Carthick is really quite good at it. He bounces around the place in a way that you can tell he would be very good at gymnastics, and infact in a couple of years when he is old enough they are going to get him some gymnastic schooling & I think he will be brilliant at it. Ok that's it for now I will let you know about the visa as soon as I know. Stuart :) x x x