Exhausted

October 6, 2008
Ok so I forgot a couple of things last time because I was completely exhausted when I wrote it, but they are important to the next couple of days. Friday, after Lynne cut a couple of the girls’ hair, she had all the lice teams start working and told them to do even more on Saturday. On Saturday we woke up early to get working on the video, but before we started, Lynne did a lice check on the girls and it was still disgusting. So we put the camera aside and we all picked up a lice comb and started doing girls’ hair. Really it was quite gross. I would get four or five big ones in just one pull though a girl’s hair. Then a few of times lice crawled on my arm and freaked out, but I got over it after the first couple of times. I really had hoped to get out of those clothes as soon as we were done, but we had to go back to the designers. So another thing I forgot which was one big piece of news is that we finally found a designer for the calendar after going to like three guys who gave us outrageous rates. They probably were normal for the US, but they were crazy for India. The guy that we found turned out to be friend of Ratnam’s named Ram Krishna and he had celebrated his son’s birthday with Agape. I don’t know if I said this already, but in India it is customary to through a party and give chocolates to other people instead of getting gifts yourself. You get new clothes, but mainly you celebrate for other people. So bottom line, the designer loves Agape and was even willing to design it for free, but Lynne said that she couldn’t accept that because she knew that it was a big job. These past couple of days we have become very good friends with the boy that works for Ram Krishna who was doing the calendar for us. We probably have spent over 24 hours in that little shop tweaking everything so that it comes out perfect. After the designers on Saturday, Ratnam got a call to say that Ramulamma one of the positive girls broke her arm. One of the older girls was playing and swing around in one of the rooms, and she fell onto Ramulamma. When went straight there and you could see she was in pain. Ratnam and told them to give her a sedative, so she wasn’t writhing in pain, but you could tell that she was. The arm you did not need and x-ray to know that the arm was broken. It looked like she had two elbows. We called up couple of clinic to see if they could take her, but none would take her until ten. We splinted her are using a cut up cardboard cake platform, gauze and padding and then we went back to the house to snarf down some food before we went back out to take her to a clinic out in the middle of nowhere. The clinic was literally a hole in the wall. We carried her in, but they took her around to the side were there was a tiny room that had a very old looking x-ray machine. We waited outside (literally) until she was done and then we took her back into the clinic. They lied her down on the bed and gave her a shot to dull the pain. They doctor then asked Lynne and I to wait outside. I had kind of hoped to be able to stay in, but he was pretty sturn. Then not even waiting five minutes after they gave her the shot they started resetting the bone and we could hear Ramulamma screaming from the waiting room. Lynne got so made at the doctor for not waiting until the Novocain had taken effect and the fact that he basically kicked us out that she went back in to make sure that then were taking care of her. The kicked her out again though. Finally the screaming stopped and they put a cast on her. It was quite thin compared to the casts in America, but it seemed to be holding her arm in the right position well enough. We then drove back and we were all completely exhausted. Ramulamma fell asleep on my lap on the way home. We dropped her off at H2 and went home. By then it was after 1am, and we had a lot of work to do for the designers including writing text, and finding pictures. We tried for a little while, but gave up. However I was still grossed out by the fact we had pulled lice that morning and so I stayed up and did a lice check on myself. Luckily I found nothing, and I went to bed.
Another huge thing I forgot was that on Wednesday we took Luke, James, and Sweetie to get tested for HIV. Normally kids can’t get tested until they are two because they have their mother’s antibodies in their system, so they can have both false positives and false negatives, but there is a DNA test that is very accurate in younger children. They drew blood from all the kids and we had to wait four days. On our way to the designers on Saturday, we picked up the results. And it was GREAT news they were all negative. They had major doubts about Luke because he came to Lynne in Ratnam in a very scary condition. He had soars all over and no hair and he was the size of a new born at 4 months, but he is negative. They had been trying to find time to have this test done for months, but they never had the time. Finally, before they leave for six weeks they know. Sunday we were at the printers from 10 to 5:30. We took the boy we have been working with out to lunch to a place within walking distance from the studio, that Lynne says has the best Biriyani in Hyderabad, and Biriyani is Hyderabad’s specialty. It was quite good, but they said that it must have been from the top of a batch, because there was very little masala on it, but it was still very good. After we left, we went to shop for some things and the super market was crazy there were so many people and it looked like a Costco, except the amount packaged together is not outrageous. It took us almost 2 and a half hours to get everything we wanted and then we went home. We worked on the calendar for hours before we crashed. We still had so much to do so Lynne got up at 5:30 and I got up at 6 to continue working today. We had hoped to get to the studio by 9 but that didn’t happen. We got there by ten and worked until 3:30, when we finally finished it off. We then broke for lunch. Since no restaurants would be open at four, we ended up going to Pizza Hut. It is a little weird since I have never actually been to a Pizza Hut in the US, but it was very upscale. The interior was nicely decorated, the only thing was that they were playing rap music, because I think that is what they think people listen to in America. Lynne was saying how once she went into her super market and they were playing this rap music with vulgar language, and the people had no idea what they were saying. Lynne brought it to the manager’s attention, and I think he was really embarrassed. The pizza there was ok, but their sauce was not very exciting. I got desert though, which was really good. It was warm chocolate cake and vanilla ice-cream with hot fudge on top. I was very impressed. After that we had to waste time before we went to Lynne and Ratnam’s new landlord’s house so that they could sign off on the contracts at 7, so we went to this five-star hotel, where they had bought passes to used there exercise room and pool. They showed me the facilities and then we had cappuccinos in the lobby. It was first real half an hour where we didn’t have anything we had to do in about 2 weeks. While we were there the landlord called to say that the roads were very flooded and that he was going to be late so we did some food shopping. After the meeting with the landlord we had hoped to be able to pick up the CD for the printers of the calendar because they really wanted a week to print, but the designers area was flooded also, and he had no power, so we have to wait for that until tomorrow, which ruined our whole plan of filming in the morning while Ratnam finished off some of the last sponsor gifts. Finally the landlord got home and we went to his flat. We spent over two hours there as he and Lynne tried to figure out a fair agreement. They have been emailing back and forth for over a week, but they wanted to finish it off. The landlord was being a little weird because he kept suggesting that Lynne was going to be arrested because she was allegedly selling orphans, which is completely false, be he just kept saying what if. But finally he relax a little bit and we went home to dinner and bed.