Dust never rests and neither shall we

Actually, dust is the last thing this orphanage is covered in. I think the order would be more like 1)feces and pee 2)bits of rice and sambar (typical Indian rice topping) from previous feedings 3) dirt from the yard 4) flies 5) clean and dirty clothing.... dust may not even be in the top 10! So obviously cleaning is a favorite past time here at BalaGurukulam and something the children take much pride in. It actually gets to a point of insanity because what kid in their right mind would want to clean? For instance, I was busy brushmopping (they have no mops here, they use a broom of hard sticks to 'mop' the floors) the babies sleeping area when 8 yr old Dina came up behind me and demanded the broom. 'No sistah, you no do. I do it best, give it to me'. I argued with him and told him to go play with the other kids and let me clean the room because I was in 'scrub-everything-clean-because-this-place-is-filthy' mode but he persisted. 'Sistah! You go play, I want to clean. Go be with babies and let me mop, I am much faster'. I decided to ignore him and continue mopping despite his protests. Instead of getting the idea and going to play, he went and found another broom and started re-doing everything I had already done! At that point, I decided if he wanted to clean that bad then, shoot, let the kid clean!

The kids are also super obsessed with paper towels, lysol wipes, baby wipes, basically anything you can clean up messes with that isn't newspaper. They were in awe of us disinfecting poop spots with Mr. Muscle(Indian version of 409 or the like) and literally rip wipes out of my hands to clean it up themselves. They love the feel and smell of the cleaning product and will look for any reason to ask for a wipe or 'room spray'(they like the smell too much, just spray it into the air to make the room smell 'very super'). It gets to a point where we see them recleaning spots with baby wipes we had just used to clean a baby's bottom. At least they are getting the idea of soap and disinfectant, though. Neither had been used to clean up after poop before and I hope they continue to use the cleaning products after we have left.

When they clean our bathroom, on the random day father has decided for them to do it, they will use anything to scrub. My favorite was walking in and having it smell overwhelmingly like my shampoo. In fact, they had used half my bottle to clean everything from the floor to the sink and toilet! I guess they really liked the smell, though it is hard to explain to them why exactly that is not the best thing to use. They also like using laundrey detergent bars to scrub at the floor, leaving blue streaks in the crevasses and slippery spots for us to try and dodge while we take a shower. I think they've gotten the point now that we can clean our own bathroom but I keep my shampoo hidden, just in case.

Another thing the kids like to do is dig through our trash. We take our trash bag out to the pile they have outside their gates to be burned. Though not entirely hygenic, it seems to be what most people use here in Ambattur, and in village life in general. Goats and chickens are always digging through the goodies, scrounging what they can. When it gets burned, though, the smell is atrocious, a combination of plastic, old clothing and food. We learned early on to stay away from that smoke when we see it. The kids, however, seem to get into our trash before the burning takes place and we randomly see them playing with our old toothbrushes or diet coke cans. It can be pretty embarrassing sometimes for us but there is no way to stop it, we just have to be on vigilant watch all the time!