A Christmas Miracle

Hey Everyone,

It’s hard to believe, but we’ve already been back half as long as we were away. How is that possible? Three weeks in Costa Rica felt like three years, but three months at home feels like three days. And the well-worn track of routine is only picking up speed as the holidays approach.

There’s lots I plan to write about our return home; the challenges of re-entry, the complete disaster zone our renter turned our house into, things we learned, ways we’ve changed. But those stories will have to wait a bit longer. At the moment, I am hard at work writing the whole adventure as a book, even have a world-class agent in NYC excited to help me sell it. Though I’m working full time, chauffeuring the kids, dealing with life back on the gerbil wheel...I’m writing when I have time, scribbling on napkins when necessary. Quite honestly, I have not been this excited about a writing project since I lived in LA back in the late 80s. Which feels pretty good, I must say.

So why am I breaking my long silence now?

I’m writing today with a Christmas wish. If you’ve followed this blog, you’ll remember the orphanage we visited in Banbassa, India. For me, the Strong Farm Agricultural Mission (or The Farm, for short) was the most transformational place we visited. The love these 100 orphan children shared with me and my family, the smiles on their faces, the joy in their eyes has helped us all redefine the concept of “happy” in our own lives and continues to tie us to the Farm even when we’re 13,000 miles away.

Anyway, I got a letter from Clifton Shipway recently. Clifton is the 25-year-old Farm director and his letter was not good news. His mother Maxine passed away shortly after we left, but this loss was made all the more difficult by a series of lesser losses that followed. A new Farm car was stolen in Delhi along with a laptop, a passport and a significant amount of cash. Then Clifton was in a taxi crash; shaken but OK. And a critically ill Farm boy needed immediate medical attention. And torrential flooding hit the area, damaging stored winter clothes and grain supplies. As they say: when it rains it pours.

Clifton’s note was not a complaint or a pity letter. But he was seeking assistance. With Christmas coming up, with 100 orphans on hand, with supplies running low, he was looking for a Christmas miracle of his own.

This holiday, Traca, Logan, Jackson and I will be setting aside a portion of our gift allowance and sending it to our friends at The Farm. It was a unanimous decision and one that feels much more meaningful to all of us than another present under our own tree.

But I’m wondering…

If you were moved by this blog...if you felt either inspired or entertained...perhaps you’ll consider including The Farm in your holiday giving as well? All money goes directly to the kids; having been there, I can say this with complete and total confidence. What’s more, any donation, whether large or small, goes a long way in that part of the world. So every little bit counts.



One thing I did learn after six months volunteering our way around the world: You don’t have to do anything big to make a difference. You don’t even have to leave home. The desire to reach out and touch someone’s life is the only requirement. What better time than Christmas to put this simple concept into practice?

So if you’re looking for a way to increase the amount of joy on Earth this holiday season, I can think of 100 smiles that will shine a little brighter with your help. Thanks for considering this and please call me or respond here with any questions. You can also click here for some more pictures and inspiration from the Farm website as well as to make a donation.

With love and hope for little more joy,

John
Gorham, ME
cell: 207.232.2985
home: 207.839.8743
work: 207.774.0051 x114

The End of The Road

For those of you still with us...this will be my final entry on this blog before returning home. With time running out on this adventure, I’m finding my desire to live each moment far outweighs my desire to write about it. At least for now. As a result, I’m falling further and further behind on the story with a precious few days left to wrap things up. And while it’s a little like driving all the way across the country only to be left ticketless in the Disneyland parking lot…there will be time enough for stories in the days to come. So. To the wrap up.

Our time in Ladakh was incredible. For eight days we lived above 12,000 feet, in the shadow of the Himalayas, in air so thin simple tasks left us gasping. “I was out of breath eating breakfast,” Jackson said one morning.

Ladakh is the Northern most region of India, part of Jammu and Kashmir but not far from the Tibetan border. Cut off as it is from the rest of the country by the tallest mountains on Earth, Ladakh feels completely unlike the insane whirl of Mother India to the South. In fact, it’s known as “Little Tibet” with people, culture, language and religion all drawn from the former Tibetan nation to the North.

Our purpose was to visit the tiny village of Stok, home of Khen Rinpoche Lobzang Tsetan; a Buddhist monk and a friend of the family. Khen Rinpoche started a school in Stok and we were going to help out. At least that was the plan as we drove from Rishikesh back to Delhi for our 55 minute flight to Ladakh’s capital city of Leh.

As luck or the Buddha would have it, we ran into our favorite monk at the Delhi airport. He had a flight 15 minutes before ours and he was just sitting in the terminal at two in the morning when we arrived. With his deep red robes, his bald head and his near constant smile, he was kind of hard to miss.


He’s one of the few people I’ve ever known who is never flustered. He is not impatient, angry, annoyed, judgmental, worried, scared or—near as I can tell—unhappy. He travels most of the year, raising money for his school and other projects near to him and I asked him once if—at 74—he liked this rootless life. “No choice,” he said in his deep gravely voice, big smile on his face. “Best to like.”

When I first met Khen Rinpoche a few years ago in Maine, I thought he was just your typical monk. True, he was sweet, amazingly centered, easy to joke with…but a lot of monks are this way, aren’t they? In Ladakh, you see monks everywhere, deep red beacons on the otherwise dry and barren landscape. But as I have come to discover, Khen Rinpoche is no more a typical monk than the Pope is a typical priest. In fact (and please forgive the crude basketball analogy), if there were an All Star team for Tibetan Buddhism, Khen Rinpoche would be on it. The Dalai Lama would be the captain, of course, but Khen Rinpoche might just make the starting five. He’d definitely be on the second string.

Which is how we got invited to meet His Holiness in the first place.

When we were back in Thailand, I checked the Dalai Lama’s website to see if he might be in India. Turns out, he was speaking four hours North of Stok in the tiny town of Disket around the time we were planning to be in the area. Checking in with Khen Rinpoche on Facebook (Ah, such a modern world we live in!), I asked if he was planning to attend. “Yes. I am going,” he wrote back. “Would you like to come with me?” Which was not a difficult invitation to accept.

But getting there is the trick. The road from Stok to Disket in the Nubra Valley is unique, to say the least. As the crow flies, it’s an easy 20 minute flight. But as the Jeep crawls and bounces and inches its way along, it can be six hours of white-knuckle, bone-jarring, high-altitude driving that will test even the strongest nerves and the strongest stomachs. It’s mostly a one-lane road with occasional pull outs to allow huge diesel trucks to squeeze past. No guard rails. Just sheer cliffs falling to certain death below and rising into jagged, snow capped mountains above.


Traca had the hardest time with this, literally reciting a safety mantra in the back seat for much of the trip. And with good reason. As we made our way up, the burned out shells of many contract carriages lay forgotten on the rocks below. Massive potholes waited at the highest altitudes. Rock slides were a constant threat. The road is only open four months of the year because, as I said, this road is unique. The sign at the summit says it all: The World’s highest passable road. 18,380 feet.


Altitude is a new focus for us since arriving in Ladakh. Stok sits at 12,000 feet and anything over 10,000 is capable of producing AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) if you don’t take sufficient time to acclimatize. The AMS handbook recommends you spend at least 36 hours basically laying around and growing more red blood cells. If you don’t heed this warning and you over exert yourself straight out of the Leh gate, you may experience severe head aches, dizziness, swelling of the brain and/or death. Which makes 36 hours of rest seem preferable.

But when you drive straight to 18,380 feet in three hours, there’s no time to adjust. As I stepped from the car for the obligatory pictures at the top of the world, I felt winded and delirious. My head was pounding. My lungs and eyes hurt. Honestly, I felt like lying down in the snow and going to sleep. Forever. Luckily, I made it back to the car and rolled down 8,000 or so feet to Disket in the Nubra Valley.

As for the Dalai Lama, he was holding three days of talks in one of the most remote corners of the planet.


The first talk took place in a wide stone valley, below and between Disket Monetary and a new 150 foot golden Buddha statue, surrounded by snowcapped mountains and packed with local villagers dressed in traditional (and sweltering) Tibetan costumes.


Still at 10,000 feet, the sun was intense and the wind non existent. But the crowd didn’t care. Thousands upon thousands of devout Buddhists arrived hours early and sat a hundred yards away to spend time with their beloved leader. We, on the other hand, we guided to the extreme front of the festivities and seated a mere 20 feet from the podium.


And this, my friends is where this journey will end for now. We are currently in Salema, Portugal, ten years after we last lived here, meeting old friends, enjoying the beyond-beautiful ocean, savoring the sun and every minute of our journey that remains. We walk through fields of fennel and rosemary, down paths lined with fig and almond trees, searching out empty beaches, sleeping late, eating fresh local food, and attempting to process the road we have been on. From Costa Rica, to New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Laos, India and at last Portugal, we will soon be back where we started, 26,000 miles to return to the same spot. But not really. I can not process all that has happened, for Traca and me, for Logan and Jackson, any more than I can believe the time has past so quickly. But here we are. And while I remain on this side of the Atlantic, with my family still intact, however temporarily, I intend to soak it all in while I still can.

I have loved sharing this journey with all of you and I have loved hearing your comments as we have gone along. Gator Bill and Meredith, I will give you special mention as our most consistent and treasured blog responders. Thank you for the heart felt words, the encouragement and the unexpected laughter. My sincere hope is that the journey will not end when we touch down in Boston but that the spirit that has guided us safely on this meandering path will continue to infuse our days with adventure and passion. If it can vicariously offer the same to you, I will be all the happier.

Thanks for traveling with us and see many of you Stateside soon.

This is only a test...

We interrupt this blog to simply say: We’re still here.

At the moment, we’re back in Delhi after an incredible 8 days in Ladakh, the northern most part of India. Scarce internet, busy schedules and a lack of oxygen made blogging difficult but I’ll try to catch you up in the next week. We have some serious relaxation coming up.

We spend one day amid the horns and heat and crushing humanity that is India’s capital city…then we’re off to Portugal for a week of nothing much. As we did when Logan was seven and Jackson was five—ten years ago!—we’ll be living in a tiny Algarve fishing village, simply chilling on the beach, playing in the surf, catching polvos (octopus) in the morning and relaxing with some vinho verde (green wine) in the afternoon.

So much to write about, so little time. I’d love to tell you all about our meeting with the Dalai Lama, our camel ride through the Nubra desert (with our friend Brian), our drive along the highest passable road on Earth…but it’s late and I’m bushed.

For now…
To all those who sent curious e-mails essentially saying: Are you still alive?
We are.
With more of the story to follow.

The Beauty and The Reward

In the past five months, we’ve packed up and moved on many times. But leaving The Farm was the hardest good-bye of them all. “You will cry, Uncle,” many of the Older Girls said before our departure date and I suspected they were probably right. It had only been three weeks for Jackson and me but I knew these kids would not be letting go of our hands or our hearts easily.

To wrap things up, Jackson and I threw a couple of parties. For the Small Boys we decided on a “Lord of The Rings” movie night. (LOTR was their choice.) I really wanted to take them all to an actual theatre; they’d never been and that nearly qualifies as child cruelty in my book. Ironically, they’d seen movie theatres only in movies but they didn’t really grasp the scope of the experience. “Picture a 60 foot screen,” I said. “As large as that tree. With speakers all round. And the action so big and loud you feel like you’re really there.” The Small Boys were spell bound by this description. “So nice, it sounds,” Clifford said. But it was not to be. The closest proper theatre that did not feature X-rated films was over three hours away—so their cramped TV room would have to do.


As far as viewing experiences go, it was not ideal. The ceiling fans drowned out most of the softer audio, the room was hot, we had to ration popcorn and soda when many of the Older Boys turned up…but none of that mattered at all. The Small Boys loved it like Christmas morning and talked about it for days. Amazing what five dollars of snacks and four hours of time can be worth.

For the girls, we went back and forth. Initially, Jackson wanted to take them for an overnight in the jungle. She even offered to use most of her birthday money to cater the adventure. “They work hard everyday,” she said. “They deserve a night off.” But when heavy rains turned the jungle trail to mud and made the river all but impassable, we needed a Plan B.

So one evening, I was sitting in the courtyard, talking with the Older Girls when I found three wrapped candies in my pocket. The kids call them “sweeties”—not to be confused with the man-eating monkey in Costa Rica by the same name. A bag of 120 sweeties sells for one dollar in Katima so we bought a bag to hand out. (Call me crazy but the opportunity to create a moment of pure delight by slipping one of these less-than-a-cent toffees into a small, unsuspecting hand is a pleasure I just never get tired of.) Anyway, I’m sitting with the Older Girls, find the candies, pull them out and hold them up.
“Anybody want a Sweetie?” I ask. And everyone does. But who to choose?
“Let’s have a contest,” one of the girls suggests. “The best song wins.”

There were no amazing performances that day. April sang two gruff lines of a Hindi song then said, “Now give me the Sweetie!” and tried to wrench one from my clenched hand. Shirley, a typically reserved girl, stood up and proclaimed that she would be singing “in anger”, then proceeded to belt out some Bollywood tune as if she were shouting it at her worst enemy. The girls laughed hysterically at all of this, cheering when a winner was selected, enjoying even the worst, most embarrassed attempts. In fact, they were so alive, so eager to play that it gave Jackson and me the idea we were looking for.

We decided to hold the first ever Strong Farm Talent Show and the girls were instantly on board. A sign-up sheet went up the next day and, in no time, 18 acts stepped forward; all singers or dancers, all girls. I was hoping to get the boys involved but the laws of Indian decency would not allow it. Besides: “Boys will just tease and make fun,” one of the participants said. “Only girls is better. Plus Uncle.”

As for talent show prizes, Jackson and I and Kim (a sweet 24 year old volunteer from New Zealand) walked into Banbassa one afternoon armed with around twenty dollars. Like Paris Hiltons-in-training, we bought rings and bracelets, ear rings, hair bands, nail polish, make up and anything else that caught our eyes. Jackson was mostly in charge of this operation. “Oh, these are so pretty,” she said at one point. “Can I have one for myself?” I said that she could. At 47 cents, the flashy silver anklet in question seemed like a decent bargain even to stingy old me.

When all the prizes were set, we then loaded up on drinks and popcorn and cookies for the big night. Our goal was not to skimp. We wanted the girls to pig out if they felt like it. Not a handful of popcorn each. We wanted bucket loads and left overs. Perhaps it is my abundant American mind set, but I thought, to an orphan, the gift of “too much” might feel as wonderful as the gift itself. Plus I think it all cost like five bucks.

The day of the talent show, I was asked one question over and over again. “What are you going to sing, Uncle?” When I signed up to do a song, I just wrote “Surprise” as the song title, mostly because I couldn’t decide what to play. I wanted something that spoke to these girls, something that said a little bit of what I felt for them. But by noon of the big day, I still didn’t know.

As show time approached, I was amazed at how much work the girls had done on their own. They created a talent show banner to hang behind the stage, they rigged up a curtain to frame the action, they organized all the music and pulled together all the equipment to play cassettes and CDs and whatever else we needed. Food was ready. Programs were printed. Jackson, Kim and Clifton’s wife Priscilla were the judges...


...I was the host, and every girl on the Farm, young and old, was ready for the show to start.

What can I tell you? It was a hit. Amanda did an ultra sexy dance to “Sexy Lady on the Dance Floor” and everybody cheered. Then Hope and Usha did an ultra conservative and simple pom pom dance and everybody cheered just as loud. Gladys screeched a mercifully brief acapella tune that didn’t win a prize but did scare away all the stray dogs for ten kilometers. (And everybody cheered.) And Iris dressed up like a man and rocked out a hilarious number that had Jackson and all the girls buckled over with laughter.


When my turn in the program came up, I strapped on Clifton’s guitar and played an original song called: “I Want To Thank You”. I wrote it fast that afternoon and it is without a doubt the most unapologetically sentimental song I have ever written. No subtly here, no hidden meanings. I just wrote how I felt and trusted the girls not to wince. They didn’t.

…I want to thank you
for holding my hand
All of your laughing smiling eyes
Make me a happy man.

And I want to thank you
For all that you do.
Just like my daughters across the water
That’s how I’ll think of you…

The song went on and on, verse after simple verse, and the girls absolutely loved it. Especially the part where I sang to each one of them, thanking all 52 Farm girls by name in a long musical list. Jackson held my papers, I tried not to stumble over the long Reena-Meena-Sabrina-Corrina-Seema tongue twister...and when the final name was sung and the chorus kicked in again, the explosion of applause that filled the room was a sound that I and the girls (and probably the surrounding villages) will never ever forget. It was beautiful.

We’re in Rishikesh now, ten hours North West of Banbassa. Rishikesh is a wild Hindu city on the Ganges river, crowded with beggars posing as holy men...


...holy men posing as beggars, small girls dressed as brides maids, old women in colorful saris, lecherous men who ogle Jackson everywhere she goes, honking motorcycles, blasé monkeys...


...road blocks of cows, cow poop everywhere and a zillion billion flies on everything. It is both a spiritual place and a nasty place; heaven and hell all rolled into one.


Traca and Logan finished up their 12-day yoga course and by all accounts, they enjoyed it—though Traca would enjoy 12 days locked in a root cellar if she could do yoga, so that’s no surprise. But Logan stuck it out as well, the youngest by a decade or more, running through the cow patties during his free time, making the most of this unique opportunity. We’re here for one more day before heading up into the Himalayas but honestly, my heart is still back on the Farm.

The day we left, the goodbye we received was nothing short of overwhelming. The kids made stacks of cards for Jack and me, the Older Girls sang “Our Golden Days Are At An End”, many of them openly weeping as they did.


I was holding up pretty well, just floating along on a river of love and good wishes—until I saw Job.

He didn’t say anything. He just walked through the crowd and handed me a card. “You OK?” I asked and knelt down to his level. But he didn’t answer. He just hugged me with all the tenderness in his young body. I could feel him sobbing against me and I started crying right along with him; this boy who I have known for only three weeks; this boy who I may never see again. “Just so you know,” Clifton told me later, “Job doesn’t do this with everyone. So feel special.” And I did. I really did.

I’m including Job’s note here not for what it says about me or him but for what it says about the power we all have to affect the lives of others, just by reaching out, just by showing up. It doesn’t have to cost much or take much time. All it takes is a willingness to give. It’s almost selfish, really. For if I have touched Job’s life, he has most certainly touched mine. And that—we have learned—is both the beauty and the reward that all giving holds.

Dear Uncle John
May God bleass you. I will miss you very much. Pleas come back. Thank you for everything you have gived us. Thank you very very much for coming hear. I will awals rember you. God sent a gift for me and you are the gift. Thank you.
Love from Job

Shy Boy and Birthday Girl

With so many stories to tell here on The Farm, I realized that I’ve only been focusing on my own experiences. So in the interest of family fairness, here are a few snaps from the rest of the Traveling Marshalls. Let’s start with Traca.

When Traca was here, she had basically three primary story lines. 1) Work; she loved to help out in the kitchen doing dishes, scrubbing clothes in the laundry, baking bread, whatever needed doing, Traca was there. 2) Babies; as if it was a condition of her Visa, Traca almost always could be found holding one of the tiny nursery kids. Not much for the Human Jungle Gym routine that the larger kids demanded, Traca never seemed to get tired of a sleeping child in her arms. 3) Yoga; each day before dinner, Traca held a beginner’s class in the Small Girl’s courtyard. She even bought four yoga mats that she donated to the Mission. Little children and older staff would come to stretch, laugh and, well, mostly laugh—though I doubt the activity will continue now that she’s gone. Yesterday in church, a guest preacher tossed a bit of fire and a dash of brimstone on the seeds Traca was hoping to plant. “Some people may try to bring yoga to you,” the preacher warned. “But this is the first step toward Devil.”

As for Logan and Jackson…for the most part, I think the Farm has been a powerful, fun, life lesson for them, though it has had its challenges, too.

Logan’s biggest hurdle was the Older Girls.

Coming from Thailand where girls his age essentially bowed at his feet, swooned over his every antic and openly adored him for simply being white and alive (and cute, I suppose), the Farm girls were a tougher crowd. For one thing they speak English so relationships based on mere swooning and fawning were—much to Logan’s dismay—no longer necessary. They were also, in spite of their Farm isolation, more worldly and complex than their Thai sisters. Perhaps as a result of being abandoned, many of them abused, the Older Girls were no pushovers and, initially, they teased Logan as he had never been teased before.

“Hi, Shy Boy,” they would say. Or, “Good morning, Shy Boy.” Or, the double whammy, “Why are you so shy, Shy Boy?” At first, Logan didn’t know how to handle them. He’d push back when he was pushed, try too hard to prove them wrong. But acting un-shy when you’re not really feeling it is a posture the Older Girls saw right through. “Shy Boy. Shy Boy. Shy Boy!” they hounded, driving Logan deeper into his shell.

“Are you enjoying the Shy Boy game?” I asked him when I found him hunkered down in his room one afternoon.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I think it’s nice.” And by “nice” I could tell that he meant “torture”.

On the opposite side of the shy scale, Jackson struggled through a few obstacles of her own, most of them centered around a 17 year-old girl named Dora. Jack has no idea what she did to piss Dora off. None of the Older Girls do. “Maybe it’s the way she rolled out chapatis?” one of them speculated. But I doubt it. As Dora huffs around, ignoring Jackson’s repeated requests to talk, I wonder if it’s something deeper, some intangible insult that Jackson represents more than anything she actually did.

I wonder sometimes what we must look like to the children on the Farm. On one level that is both true and false, we probably look rich. Though we took a loan out to finance this trip, the Farm kids know and care nothing about home equity. With our stories of other countries, our American roots, our freedom and resources to come and go, we must appear to be privileged beyond measure—and I suppose we are. On another level that is probably even more powerful, we are a family; the one thing every orphan yearns for and—by definition—does not have. As father, mother, son and daughter, I wonder if we shimmer like some dream come true as we stroll across the grounds. Maybe we remind Dora of the family she lost, the father she’ll never have. Or maybe she just likes a bit of drama. I doubt we’ll ever know for sure.

Like high school girls the world over, drama is the juice, along with lip gloss and boys, that keeps the days on the Farm interesting. As far as Jackson goes, the drama meter spiked as her 15^th birthday approached. Dora said she was not going to attend the party (which is a little like a starving man passing up lunch), and she repeated this to me every time we met as if I had zero short term memory. Then, for no apparent reason, another Older Girl: Rita, jumped on the birthday boycott, proclaiming that, yes, she too was staying in her room on June 30^th.

Thankfully, the vast majority of girls were excited about the party and—on their own—got to work; making a Happy B-Day banner, baking a cake...

...assembling snacks and gifts and creating what I’m sure will go down as the most memorable birthday celebration of Jackson’s young life.

My personal favorite part of the party was the way they treated Traca and me.

Rather than relegating Mom and Dad to some place at the back of the room or banishing us entirely from the festivities, the Older Girls set two extra seats right in the front. Jackson sat beside April (another girl with the same birthday), and Trace and I sat beside them like honored guests. Leave it to orphans to know how to treat parents.

Like all parties, there was singing and presents and plates of food—though there was also end-of-the-world rain falling outside and a bat circling the room looking for bugs and a way out. To make things even more interesting, as soon as I took my very first bite of cake…the lights went off. This is a fairly typical occurrence. Most days, multiple times per day, for no obvious reason, the power will simply stop. Sometimes it’s off for only for a few minutes, sometimes for hours. In the heat of the day, it helps you appreciate the fan that had been spinning above your now-sweating head. In the sweltering night, it makes sleeping all but impossible. At the party, it plunged us all into total darkness, filled the space with shrieking girls, and had everyone moving to the exit like moths where a generator light was still shining.

What followed was the kind of drama and joy that you simply can not script.

One by one, the party goers stepped out into the rain. Water from the roof drain came down like a fire hose and Logan took it on the head, grabbing girls around him and pulling them into the deluge.

Jackson danced in the deafening rain, splashing in shin deep puddles, hugging her sopping friends and laughing directly into the monsoon’s face. Happy birthday, indeed.

As for the challenges the kids have faced…it’s all good.

Logan won the Shy Boy Girls over in the end, not by being brash and bold, just by being himself. “We’ve cured him of his shyness,” one of his worst tormenters said to me. And perhaps they did help a bit. Either way, Logan definitely made an impression here. After he left for Rishikesh, three of the Older Girls told me in confidence that they were in love with him. One had a dream that she married him and they had twin baby girls. Another, who was only 13, worried she was too young for him. “Not a problem,” I told her. “When Logan’s 24 and he comes back here, you’ll be 20. That’ll be fine.” She laughed, but her smile also looked a bit like relief to me.

Jackson, Dora and Rita also came to terms, working out whatever needed working out without ever having to actually discuss it. If there were any lingering doubts that secret resentments were still being harbored, they ended last night when Dora slipped Jackson a note. It was hand written on a lined sheet of paper, the opening line of which read:

Dear Jackson

Your one of my sweetest and closest friend. Whom I dearly care 4. And whom I really love. Thanks 4 spending time with me. And making our friendship so beautiful.

One Blue Marble

Most of the time here on the Farm is tightly scheduled, which makes sense. With 100 kids and a skeleton staff, order and control are of utmost importance. We were lucky enough to arrive during the pre-monsoon vacation, where free time was more abundant—but now the kids are back to school and the schedule looks like this:

6:45 AM Breakfast
7:30 AM School begins
10:00 AM Morning Tea
1:00 PM Lunch
2-4 PM Rest and Study
4:00 PM Afternoon Tea
5-6 PM Play
6:00 PM Dinner
7:30 PM Bed

Which is how, a few days back, I found myself spending a few hours in the Small Boys room in the middle of the afternoon.

The Small Boys share a small, dark room with five bunks and two ceiling fans. The walls are painted a soothing blue with a few scant posters taped up for decoration. My favorite is a picture of a mansion with a Lamborghini parked out front and the caption: Even in darkness, light dawns for those who believe.


When I entered the room, the boys were playing their favorite card game. It’s played with a deck of World Wrestling playing cards, each card depicting a different hulky wrestler with various statistics printed along the bottom. Things like: height, weight, chest, bicep, rank and fight—thought what “fight” is and how it is determined is one of the great mysteries of the game. To play, one boy deals out the deck, then the player to the dealer’s left looks at his first card and selects the statistic he thinks will top all others. So he might say: “Weight: two hundred seventy” or “Fight: One twenty-two.” In its purest form, all other players draw their first card without looking and see how their wrestler compares. If the wrestler’s arms are the biggest, he wins. If not, he gives up his card. The problem is, the boys are consummate cheaters who craftily scan their decks, looking for larger chests or lower ranks, tossing these ringers into the ring…then fighting about them like rabid spider monkeys before moving on to the next hand.


On this particular resting day, one such cheating argument got so heated that Aunti Violet, the boy’s toothless den mother, heard the commotion and ordered them to stop the nonsense and get in their beds. I assumed this was my cue to leave but Job grabbed my arm. “Don’t go, Uncle,” he said. “Rest with us. This bunk is empty.”
“Yes. Stay here,” Kamal said.
“We will make it so nice for you,” Clifford promised.

Now, to be totally honest, my first instinct was to decline. Maxine and I had a conversation just the night before about lice—what a big constant problem they were, especially for the younger children—and, at first glance, all I saw of the bunk being offered was my chance to be infested. But as the Small Boys began scrambling around, now buzzing at the prospect of my joining their nap time, my desire to please them overcame my aversion to itch. Lice or no lice, I climbed up and laid down.


Like a sleep over with the seven dwarfs, the bed was ridiculously short for me, ending at the bend in my knees. To fix this, the boys built a box tower and placed pillows on the top to support my lower legs. Then they removed my sandals and placed them gently on the ground. Then a little boy named Jackey brought me a dirty, silk sleeping mask for my eyes. (What’s a few more lice among friends?) And Ekindar sprinkled powder on my neck. “To keep you cool, Uncle. So nice it is. Yes?” he said. Another pillow was delivered, forced under my head. And something was placed in my shirt pocket. “From Kamal,” Kamal whispered in my ear. The topper to this pampering was a lullaby Job sang to me. As the boys settled into their bed, screaming at each other to be quiet and not to disturb Uncle…Job sang two lines again and again:

Sweetie Sweetie, go to sleep
Have a lovely sweetie dream

His voice was soft and tender, high pitched as if singing to a baby—this boy who has perhaps never had a lullaby sung to him in his life.

I actually did fall asleep. Even with both fans swirling overhead, the room was hot and I was tired. For one hour I was just another Small Boy, resting on orders from Aunti Violet, dreaming of that Lamborghini on the wall to my right…

When I woke up, I was sweating, looking through red silk, delirious. I sat up in bed, pulled my mask off, careful not to have my head lopped off by the ceiling fan above me. With my legs bent over the edge, they nearly touched the floor and I looked down. Job was sleeping on the bare concrete beside my bed, curled up like a puppy.

My plan was to just slip out, let these boys sleep, but they all sparked to life at my smallest movement. “Please stay, Uncle,” they said. “Tell us a story. Sing us a song.” So I grabbed Clifton’s guitar from his office and we sang Christmas songs in the baking heat of the late Indian summer. Hark the Herald. Deck the Halls. “Clap hands,” Job would say after every song. And everyone would clap.

“You have a song for Logan?” Ekindar asked during one break in the Christmas medley. It was a strange request but the Small Boys all hushed, eager to hear my answer. They all loved Logan when he was here, some even writing stories at school in honor of his visit. One such story was entitled “The Story of Family” and it began with the opening line, “There was a best friend and his name was Logan and Ekindar.”

Turns out, I did have a song for Logan; something I wrote for him when he was small; something I’ve sung to him hundreds of times to get him to fall asleep. It’s about drifting on the ocean, asleep without a care, totally safe as the wind gently carries you home. I sang it for the boys:

…So goodnight, my Logan
I know where you’re going
And I’ll have the wind take you there
Off you go now, my Logan
You’re heading for home
And when you awake you’ll be there.

“Clap hands,” Job said. And they all did, these boys who have never had their father sing to them before, who—other than The Farm—have never known the safety of home.

And then it happened.

It took me by surprise as it usually does, though I suppose I should be used to it by now; I’ve been bombarded with the question ever since we arrived. It’s something these children are desperate for me to answer “correctly” so I guess until I do, they’ll keep asking. With sincere conviction and not an inch of wiggle room, Job looked me in the eye, tipped his head slightly to the left and said, “You are a Christian, Uncle?”

I shook my head and spoke as gently as I could. “Actually,” I said, “I believe in what Jesus taught. And I believe in the example he gave. But I also I believe, and I’m not saying I know, but I just feel in my heart that other people might possibly be right as well.”

There was silence in the room, all eyes looking at me, not one of them buying it for a second.
“Then we can not listen to you, Uncle,” Ekindar said.
“Yes. Auntie Maxine said you are wrong,” Kamal added.

They were not angry with me, just telling me the Truth. And as I looked from face to face, the simple certainty I found struck me like a slap to the face. It was a supremely humbling moment for me, an Ah-ha moment (as Oprah would say) where I finally fully realized who I was talking to. Faith for these boys was not something to debate or deny. It was something to hold on to. It was a lifeline for them when the world had tossed them aside. It was their lullaby. In a very real sense, it was their Father. Who cares what I thought? For me to cast any doubt into their lives, these boys who I have come to love, filled me with a palpable sense of shame that made me blush and sweat and back pedal with every ounce of sincerity in my body. “Actually, I think that what you believe is 100 percent correct,” I said.
“Yes. It is,” Job said and we left it at that.
It was four o’clock. Time for tea.

As I walked to the dining room alone, I remembered the gift Kamal had placed in my pocket. Pulling it out, I found a pink plastic Easter egg with a smaller green plastic egg inside. Inside the green egg, there was a small blue marble, scratched and chipped from use but still—like a child’s faith—clear and brilliant in the afternoon light.

The Rocky Road to Rishikesh

If you ever want to really feel a tidal wave of love, do this: Tell a group of orphans that you are leaving, then tell them that you are staying a bit longer. Here’s how it happened.

It has been Traca’s dream to study yoga in India and so she is going to the Parmarth Niketan Ashram in Rishikesh. After much debate, Logan has decided to go as well. They’ll be taking a 10 day Yoga Intensive course on the banks of the Ganges river; 4AM meditation and chanting, daily yogic breathing classes, plenty of yoga postures—all of which sounded like pure death to our little Jackson. As a result, Jack and I will be staying on at the Mission for another week or so and, for that, I couldn’t be happier. Personally, I feel there is much more for me here with the kids than by myself on the mat and Traca was cool with that. She and Logan left today.

But getting there is the trick. We woke up at 4:30AM to catch the direct bus to Rishikesh, which seems like a straight-forward maneuver, but then this is India. There are no clean and tidy bus terminals. No orderly lines. No assigned seats. In fact, without a seasoned Indian traveler like Rick Shipway—Clifton’s Dad—to pull this off, I seriously doubt I would be back in my room writing about this at all.

Rick is 57, thin, a wiry Australian farmer. He first visited the farm (and met his future wife Maxine) in the late 70s when he delivered a plane load of high milk-yielding dairy cows to India. It was to be a humanitarian effort, so naturally the Indian Government impounded the cattle, demanding absurd duties be paid before the cows could be given away. Unable and unwilling to pay, Rick contacted Mother Theresa who not only convinced the government officials to back down but became Rick’s friend in the process. Knowing a little bit about both of them, I can see how they got along. Like the Angel of Calcutta, Rick is a powerhouse of energy, a focused force for good who moves through the world with a sense of purpose and conviction—qualities that also come in handy when attempting to navigate the confusion that is daily Indian life.

So the bus leaves at 5 or so and we are cutting it close as we pull out of the Farm. We’ve seen a few buses rumble past, heading to the right for Katima...but Rick takes a chance and turns left for the short ride to Banbassa.


Even at 5AM, Banbassa is chaos. The town is a maze of tiny shops and every one of them is opening. Horses lope alone down the center of the street. Children sweep the dirt road, crouched like rubbish in the path of the traffic. Hundreds of men walk in all directions and Rick honks at every one of them. Cows sleep here and there, mostly here. And buses line the road, just a string of rundown old school buses, colorfully painted, with indecipherable Hindi printed on them.

Rick pulls alongside each bus and shouts out about Rishikesh. His Hindi accent makes girls on the Mission laugh, but none of the men in Banbassa laugh. They don’t seem to react all that much at all. They mumble…point…chatter on about something that Rick later translates as simply “rubbish”. At several point, he jumps from the car, bulling his way through the crowd, the only white face in a growing sea of local brown. If the Rishikesh bus is here, I have no doubt that Rick will find it. But it isn’t. We just missed it. We have to go to Katima after all.

Katima’s only ten minutes away and not a big deal under normal circumstances. But two years ago, the Farm and the area experienced the biggest flood in history. A whopping 82 centimeters of rain fell in a 24 hour period. That’s 25 inches of rain in one day! Naturally, the normally dry river bed swelled beyond capacity and the only bridge that connects The Farm to the Katima side of the world was washed away. Two years later, work still plods along. We stopped one day to watch the process and I was shocked to find cement being carried, one bucket full at a time, by a line of old women.


Dressed in colorful saris, these women balanced their heavy basket on their heads, back and forth, Granny labor in the mid day sun. I asked Rick why they used these women for this back breaking job and he corrected me. “They’re not old,” he said. “They’re probably around 25 or 30. Just a hard life, is all.”

With work still progressing, the only way across the river is to drive through it, no problem in the dry season, but a bit dodgy as the monsoon sets in. In typical Rick fashion, he races his Bolero to the water’s edge, eyes the flowing brown water for a split second, then guns it. I’ve heard it said that a car can be washed away in as little as six inches of running water and if that’s true, it’s not always true. A wave of water splashes over the hood, soaking the windshield and tires lunge over the rough, rocky river bottom. But we make it. Rick honks at no one in particular as we pull onto dry land. “Horn still works,” he says. “Can’t drive in India without a horn.”

By now Rick is racing the clock, really punching the gas pedal, honking at every dog, donkey and monkey that even thinks of getting in our way. Monkeys are all over this stretch of road.


In the Hindu religion, twice a week, believers pay homage to Hanuman, the monkey God by feeding these wild macaques, turning them into dependent beggars. Rick took us one afternoon to pay our own respects and we were literally surrounded. These monkeys are much bigger than Sweetie and the other spider monkeys back in Costa Rica. They’re also capable—I assumed—of taking much bigger bites out of my hide. Thanks be to Hanuman that they were content with the day-old chipatis we frisbeed to their greedy little hands.

Past mother monkeys with babies, humping adolescents, lazy males sprawled out on the tar, Rick is a rocket; 125 kilometers per hour or roughly 77 mph down a narrow two lane road. “If this whole Mission thing doesn’t work out,” I say, “you can always get a job as a race car driver.” Rick just smiles and hits the horn.

As it turns out, we miss the bus in Katima by just a few minutes and Rick makes a quick calculation: With a little hustle, Traca and Logan can catch the 5:30 bus to Haridwar, the center of Hinduism in India, then hop a short Rishikesh transfer. “We’ll have to hurry, though,” he says, as if there is any other way he travels.

Back to the river like a shot—but there is no getting across now. An overloaded truck stacked with garbage is stuck in the water and no one can get around it. Cars and buses line up in both directions, squeezing to the sides to allow a back hoe to rumble through and pull the truck to safety. It is all the opening Rick needs.

In a flash, he races between the trucks, cutting two dozen vehicles in the process, narrowly parallel parking between two giant buses as the oncoming traffic begins to flow again. From this point on it is pure travel insanity. A motorcycle tries to squeeze past us, only to be pinned to the side of our car by a huge truck. His rear-view mirror is bent backwards. The rider barely pulls his legs to safety. “Everybody out,” Rick says. “We’ll have to hop the bus right here.” Packs down from the roof. Trucks and buses rumbling past in clouds of thick black smoke. “OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD,” Rick shouts over the roar of diesel engines. “HE WON’T STOP!” Logan, Tom and Yasimine scramble over but Traca hesitates. “LET’S GO! RIGHT HERE!” A mad dash. Traca and I cut between two trucks, like running through the elephant line, and make it to the other side as the Hardiwar bus lurches up the hill. With her huge sausage pack on her back, Traca tries to jump in the open moving door…but misses. Running out of time. Logan’s inside. Bus going up the hill. With no time to spare, Rick pushes Traca from behind and she lands inside the bus. Looks back with a smile that says, “What the hell am I doing?” “GOODBYE,” I shout. Logan just raises his eyebrows and then is gone. Eleven hours from now, they should be in Rishikesh.

Back on the Farm, all is quiet and when the 6:45 breakfast bell rings, Job is waiting for me. “You are really staying,” he says and grips me so tightly, like a corset, around the waist.
I say: “Yes. We are staying.”
“Then my prayers are answered,” he says.
And we walk, hand in hand, to the dining hall.