Cookin' in Kerala

One of my favorite places at the convent is the kitchen. There, four young women from Assam arrive each morning at 5:00 a.m., start the fires, and begin cooking for the days' meals. The sisters and the resident girls also get involved.




Molina, Juliana, and Katerina








Steamed rice noodles, idiappam, with fresh coconut.




Sister Sini making curry with coconut milk, chilies and potatoes.




Appam.




Preparing jackfruit.




Chopping vegetables.




Chopping a coconut!




Deep frying bandha in coconut oil.




Ishwarya the kitchen cat.

Visiting the Sari Shop

As part of the preparations for the jubilee, the girls decided that Holly and I needed to wear traditional clothes. So we solicited the help of two teachers at the school to take us shopping. Bindhu and Deepa took us to the Family Wedding Center on the main street to make our purchases.



Holly went first. She was robed and outfitted for a beautiful sari by our friends and the shop assistants.


I went next. In search of a churidur (trouser and top outfit) that was long enough for a 5'10" person to wear, and the shop assistants piled one outfit after another until I stood in a sea of choices.


By the time they were finished with me I was a hot mess.


But the shopping didn't end there. Next we were off to a jewelry shop to purchase a necklace, earrings, bangles, and a ring to match our outfits.


After stopping for a cup of hot tea in the market, we visited the home of a lovely woman, Sindu, who runs a sewing business in her house. She measured Holly to make the choli blouse for her outfit. The children of the house attend the Auxillium school and we later learned that many parents take fabric for the school uniforms for her to make. That would be approximately 1600 uniforms...


Sindu, with her sister, brother in law, children and niece and nephew.

Preparing for the Jubilee

There is a 50th Anniversary Jubilee celebration at the Auxillium this weekend to celebrate the fifty years of service of one of the nuns. The school and the sisters have gone into overdrive to prepare for the 500 people who will attend.

This morning three men arrived with a truckload of coconut palm tree trunks and they began to build a structure for a large tent using the trunks, nylon rope and their bare hands. Within an hour they were standing on a scaffold of trunks that was over three stories high.

Meet the Children

Here they are - beautiful, bright, respectful, curious, full of life.

Bucket Bath

I am staying in a sweet little room on the first floor of the convent. The sisters have generously looked after our needs and provided us with spotless rooms for sleeping and lots of clean water for drinking.


But there is the challenge of the bucket bath. In the bathroom there are two buckets, a hot water spigot and a cold water spigot, and a drain.


Tonight was especially challenging because the power was out.

Early Mornings

I awoke this morning to the sounds of this place in India. It is 6:30 a.m. And the sisters are singing a prayer in Malayalam, their local Kerala language, during their morning service in the chapel across the hall from my room. I can smell the wood burning cook stove at the back of the kitchen and I can hear the milk cows bellowing in the back garden.



The cooks, who are from Assam, and a large pot of rice.


The milk cows getting a morning wash.

Today we met the 1600 local children who descend from the local neighborhoods to come to school. The children belong to Hindu, Muslim and Christian families and they arrive by all imaginable means of transportation.

Arriving in Kerala

I arrived at the Auxilium Navajyothi Convent School early on Sunday morning after a harrowing ride through the streets of Calicut with Sister Elizabeth and her driver in the school jeep. Sister Elizabeth, the Mother Superior at the convent, had been waiting patiently outside in the sun for an hour in her impeccable white habit and she stood smiling at the end of the ramp when I walked outside the airport doors.


The convent is about a thirty minute drive and Sister Elizabeth's driver nimbly drove the narrow roads at high speed with cars, motorcycles, tuk tuks and buses aiming towards us for a head-on collision every step of the way. Sister told me not to bother with a seatbelt as I was in good hands.

The girls in the upper grades who board at the school were waiting for our arrival. The girls live in a room on the second floor of their school and are looked after by Sister Marcy, who also runs the post tenth grade school and teaches English. They are well cared for and spend their time studying, singing and completing their chores. They are preparing for entrance exams for university studies.


The upper school and some of the girls who are residents.


The convent where I am staying.