On the Ground in India
Written by IPP volunteer Cherissa
It's been interesting to try to explain to my two toddlers, age four and two, where I am and what I am doing on this trip to India with International Princess Project. Four-year-old Max best understands this best when I tell him that I'm flying on an airplane to go to the other side of Planet Earth. So, greetings from the other side of Planet Earth!
For the past three days, Laura and I have been in Mumbai (Bombay), a city with a population of about 14 million people. The sheer number of people in India has been a bit staggering. The population of the entire country is 1.3 billion. That number didn't mean much to me until someone offered this perspective: The US has a population of about 300 million. So add A BILLION people to that (remember, one billion is one thousand times one million!) and put them all in the land mass that is, from what I understand, an area roughly the size of Texas. I can't even begin to describe just how many people there are everywhere.
During our days in the city, we've been busy with IPP business: a trip to the fabric district to pick out samples for future Punjammie styles, several meetings with other organizations doing important related work in Mumbai, a visit to two aftercare homes for Indian girls who have been rescued from forced prostitution, and debriefing and taking notes on the meetings and interactions we've had here on the ground in India.
When I return home, I'm planning to spend some significant time writing and blogging for IPP about all the details of our time in India. While we are here, there's simply not time to emotionally process, much less write about, all the things I'm seeing and experiencing. But while we are on the trip and when I can get a decent Internet connection, I'm hoping to keep you all updated about at least some of the basic facts of what we're doing. In the weeks to come, be watching for more in-depth posts about all that God is doing in this amazing country.
Very soon we'll be moving on to our next leg of the trip: several days spent in a quite rural area of India visiting one of the IPP sewing centers. More to come, friends!
