Blind Beggar Recovers Sight!

Tonight we were approached at a stop light by a woman who appeared to be blind begging with the assistance of a young boy. We rolled down the window and greeted them and offered some packages of peanuts. "Hello! Would you like some peanuts?" They both smiled and I could see the "blind" woman's eye crack open a little to see where these strange voices were coming from. Then she tilted her head and squinted both eyes open just enough to really check us out as she walked away. I guess the sounds of two foreigners were just too interesting not to get a good look at. Andrey and I found this very amusing. Your gig is up lady but we would have given you peanuts anyway.

Correction

Please excuse my mistake. 1,156,897,766 is over 1 billion, not over 1 trillion as I originally posted in my list of facts about India. Clearly I get lost when there are more than a few zeros. For all I know there are a kazillion people around here! It's crowded!

The Republic of India

Andrey and I are going to India for two weeks on Monday. We've known for a little while that Andrey would be traveling to four cities in India this month to visit other offices with his boss. It never occurred to me to go with him until a spouse of one of the directors encouraged me to come. It didn't take long to realize this was a great opportunity that wouldn't be easy to pass up. I certainly won't have the same freedom once the kiddos come along. Besides, more stuff to keep me distracted while we wait, the better. The trip will take us to Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, and Kolkata.

Neither of us have ever been to India. We both feel it is something we just need to experience. I'm so glad we'll get to do that together. Andrey will be busy most days with work stuff, which means I'll have a lot of free time to explore and hang out with the few people I know. Fortunately, I've had the opportunity to get to know a few of the spouses of other field directors in Chennai and Bangalore, and they both have offered to host us and hang out with me while we're in town. In Mumbai we'll get to meet and hang out with a couple of women introduced to us by some of our friends in our church community here in Cebu. They have a midwifery/doula business in Mumbai and are involved in numerous outreaches to the poor. They have agreed to let us join them for a few days and see what they do. We'll have some time in Mumbai at the end of our trip when Andrey is finished with work and we can explore the city together before we head back to Cebu.

For a country that represents such a huge proportion of the world's population (and the world's poor), I figure I should know a few things about it.

India Facts
(taken from The CIA World Factbook: www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ unless otherwise noted)

• India's population of 1,156,897,766 (that's over 1 trillion!) is second only to China for the world's most populated country (July 2009 est.)

• India has 3.75 times as many people as the US in about a third the amount of land as the US

• Maternal mortality rate: 540 per 100,000 live births (Compare to 200 in the Philippines, 14 in the US, 5 in Canada) World Health Organization
  

• Infant mortality rate: 50.78 per 100,000 live births (Compare to 20.56 in the Philippines, 6.22 in the US, 5.04 in Canada)

• Fertility rate (average number of children per woman): 2.68 (Compare to 3.27 in the Philippines, 2.05 in the US, 1.58 in Canada. The country with the highest fertility rate is Niger, 7.75)

• Religions: Hindu 80.5%, Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, other 1.8%, unspecified 0.1% (2001 census)

• Languages: English enjoys the status of subsidiary official language but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindi is the most widely spoken language and primary tongue of 41% of the people; there are 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but is not an official language (2001 census)

• Capitol of India: New Delhi

• Government type: Federal republic

• Gained independence from the UK in 1947

• Legal system: Based on English common law; judicial review of legislative acts; separate personal law codes apply to Christians, Hindus, and Muslims