Children from the outskirts of Calcutta, India, receive food from the Calcutta Mercy Ministries feeding program. A truck carrying huge tubs of lentils, rice and other food makes stops at different locations throughout the region.
Exploring Opportunities for Counseling
And International Care in India
Dr. Bill Herkelrath, Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Dr. Forrest Inslee, Director of the School of Global Studies, traveled to India in January to explore possibilities for Northwest University student involvement in India. On this two-week trip, they visited various ministry sites and engaged in productive dialogue with the key ministry leaders.
Their visit coincided with the annual Founder’s Day, a celebration to honor the creators of Calcutta Mercy Ministries, Rev. Dr. Huldah Buntain and her husband, the late Mark Buntain. This gave Dr. Herkelrath and Dr. Inslee the opportunity to spend time with Mrs. Buntain, her daughter Bonnie Buntain Long and her son-in-law Dr. Jim Long, as well as various key directors and board members. Dr. Herkelrath and Dr. Inslee were able to learn first-hand about the history and vision for the extensive ministry network that comprises Calcutta Mercy Ministries.
The two Northwest University professors came away with a clear sense of the myriad opportunities available to students in the Graduate Psychology and Global Studies programs. Students’ services will be incorporated into their education process via credit-based practica and internships. Northwest graduate students could, for example, be able to serve Calcutta Mercy Ministries by offering vocational training with their school for the blind, providing counseling and assessment through the hospital and clinics, and designing micro-lending programs as part of larger community development projects.
Talks are underway so that Northwest University graduate students can help develop the psychosocial services component of 40 new rural clinics to be established in the coming decade. The leaders of the Calcutta Mercy Ministries extended a warm invitation for a broad and enduring partnership with the Northwest University College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and expressed eagerness to begin the process of creating specific placements and projects as soon as possible.
Northwest University has a long-standing relationship with Calcutta Mercy Ministries. Over the past several years, many students in the Mark and Huldah Buntain School of Nursing at Northwest University have completed their month-long cross-cultural intensive clinicals in India, where they learn and serve in the ministry’s Calcutta hospital and other clinics.
Below are Dr. Inslee's comments and photos from the trip.
January 21, 2008
We made it after a grueling trip! In hindsight we should have broken up the journey with a stopover in Europe somewhere. 19 hours of travel wiped us out.
Today we spent time at the Buntain hospital, and participated in the dedication ceremony of a new dental wing. Mrs. Buntain – or “auntie” as the Indians call her – is an amazing example of the results of commitment. In her 70s now, she started the hospital with her husband ages ago, along with a school and feeding program. Today their influence has grown; they serve some 40,000 patients in the hospital for free each year. The school (one of 120 they’ve started) has not only rescued children from poverty, but also made them into leaders. It was gratifying to see “third generation” students now serving as the leaders and doctors and teachers at the complex – all giving thanks in the ceremony today for the faithfulness of their auntie who helped build it all.
That’s all for now. More when I can keep my eyes open.
January 23, 2008
Our hosts are wonderful. The hospital, which is our “base of operations” so to speak, is run by five Indian guys, all of whom started their association with the Mission of Mercy ministries as little boys in the school. They are kind and generous with their time.
Joshua is one of them, the chaplain of the hospital. His dream (and that of the team), is to have 50 rural clinics in the Bengal state, and out of each a new church planted that will transform the community. When he talks of this, his passion is inspiring! He took us to a site just outside the urban zone to the Mission’s school for blind children. The school houses 120 kids, all from Hindu and Muslim backgrounds, and ranging in age from 4 to 18. Here they have a place where they are both safe and accepted.
In the dense, chaotic traffic-jammed context of the city there is no way they could survive unless they sat perfectly still in their houses all day. At the school, in contrast, they roam freely and know well their predictable paths from classroom to dormitory to garden... It was incredible to see the boys actually running full speed and doing long jumps in the large playfield where they gather after school. The wide-open spaces, so rare in Calcutta, are protected and predictable enough that they need have no fear. It is a sign of how important such trust is for them that, during the school holidays, many of the children choose not to go home.
More importantly, perhaps, is the space for social trust that the school provides. In the Hindu context, a blind child is considered a curse for a family. And there are millions of blind children in India, born without sight primarily due to fact that their mothers cannot get adequate nutrition. Blind children are often hidden away, sometimes in closets, for their whole lives. More pragmatic families station their 
children in front of hotels or near busy intersections, to beg for coins from passersby. Life is hard for everyone in Calcutta, but for the blind it is especially hopeless.
Here at the school, though, at least these few are given the love and security that every child needs. They not only study their required academic subjects, but also learn trades such as farming and animal husbandry. Many of the kids go on to university as well. All are given hope, love, and a chance to live lives of self-determination and dignity.
January 24, 2008
We went into the brothel areas today – and probably ought not to have. Even the Indian gentlemen who were our guides seemed fearful. Yet both Bill and I felt that we needed to see this part of the city that we might ultimately be involved with if our school ends up working with children of the brothels.
This part of the city is desperately poor. Yet it wasn’t the physical poverty of the place that was so overwhelming, but rather a poverty of soul; the despair was almost palpable, such that I could hardly breathe. The girls stood in groups on each side of the main narrow passage that led through the district. There was no way to avoid them as they reached out to touch us, called out to us and made lewd gestures in their efforts to draw us in. In their brightly colored saris and jewelry, they stood in stark contrast to the gray and dust of the streets and buildings—a harsh and jarring dissonance. The worst of it, though, we could not see: Behind the barred windows and locked doors, we knew, were the children—girls as young as ten kept as sex slaves, whose bodies were sold many times over in the course of a single day.
On days like today, it is hard not to be overwhelmed.
January 25, 2008
Bill and I keep breaking the rules! The rules of decorum prescribed by this post-colonial culture, that is. For instance: Each morning the hospital sends a car for us, to take us to the days meetings or site visits. The hotel clerk calls our rooms: “Sir, your car has arrived.” (White guys are known collectively as “the sirs,” regardless of age.) We head downstairs and, oblivious, walk out to the parking area searching for the car. This though sends the doormen into a panic. “No, no, sir!” They try to herd us back to the doorway, where the “rules” say that we must wait for the car to drive ten feet to doorway where we wait. We engender the same show of consternation when we mistakenly try to open the door of the car with (gasp) our own hands. We forget that there are always two or three Indian attendants to do that for us, and they are quick to put us in our place—a place, whether we like it or not, higher up the societal hierarchy.
The deference shown by Indians to “white” westerners is hard to get used to—and I am not at all sure that I want to get used to it! But I interpret this disturbing social dynamic to be a legacy of British colonial days, embedded deep in the cultural psyche.
But then I wonder if the emphasis on hierarchy is all British. Indian society seems by nature to be intensely stratified—by the remnants of the caste system, by the extremes of wealth and poverty, and even by religion. (Many speak of Muslims here, for example, as a sort of cultural underclass.)
So much strangeness to process.
January 26, 2008
So much of what we’ve discovered on this trip has been unexpected. We came really to explore the possibility of working with the children of brothels, but what we have found here is so much bigger than that. Calcutta Mercy Ministries is enormous and far-reaching; they seek to meet needs through schools, hospitals, children’s homes, churches, community development projects, micro-enterprise, and so much more. There are many, many opportunities for our teachers and students to partner with them, and they have embraced us as future family. Our new partnership is tremendously exciting to me; I look forward to new endeavors with them in this strange, wonderful, beautiful and desperate place that is India.
I tagged along with one of their feeding programs this morning. The kitchen staff works all night cooking lentils, rice and such – then at five in the morning, huge people-sized tubs of food are loaded into a truck. It is taken then to the outskirts of the city, to the garbage dumps where the poorest of the poor live and make their living by scavenging for recyclable items. The truck makes five stops at different locations throughout the region. On this morning, at every stop long lines of people waited in the dark and fog for what was likely their one meal for the day. You would think that such people would be pitiable, but this was not the case. To my surprise, they seemed oddly at peace, even happy. Who can say, since I had no opportunity to get to know them in this context. But maybe you can see what I mean in the photos below.
January 27, 2008
How can I be coming to love this place? The dirt, the noise, the chaos—yet underneath it all, this strange, inexplicable beauty.
Tomorrow we leave; I am happy to go home, but sorry to leave. My heart is for this place.
