Ladies' Guild Meeting - September 2008
The September meeting was the first held in the village hall for three months. The grey evening and darkening skies warned that autumn is arriving fast. It was a good gathering, with a hive of chatter and expectation. Irene, in her beautifully pleated pale blue sari, waited patiently for the opening details to be completed.
Irene held our attention immediately. She used to be a teacher and so could project her quiet voice across the room. What she did not say was that her words would have us all riveted as she spoke of her unusual family, which is a result of her work for God. This gives her a very fulfilling life and an absolute trust in the ability of the Lord to provide.
Irene is part of a large Hindi speaking Christian family. There are about 70 children there at the moment. Almost always girls as girls are more often given to orphanages than boys. Boys mature to earn but girls cost money for dowries. Some of the baby girls arrive because of abandonment, while others are placed there by families, usually a grandmother, as a result of the death of a mother or because an unmarried girl gives birth.
Whatever the reason, the babies are taken to a nursery where they are loved and cared for until the age of about two. Children, over the age of two, live in family groups with a Bua (older sister) who looks after them. Irene said that by the time a child is two one of the family will have grown fond of the toddler and will ask to have the child in her family group.
Then follows nursery school, private school education in local schools until about eleven and finally boarding school. They wish to give the girls the best life possible, believing that private schools offer the best chance of education, exam success, training and therefore obtaining work. The children need uniforms, books, school fees and all the care of loving homes. The expense must be great but no word of this was said.
The adults decided that it isn't sensible to send all the older children to the same boarding school as if one causes a problem they are all stigmatised as "The Gorakhpur Children." Some are sent to schools, which better fit very able students. They go to a variety of English medium boarding schools, some going so far by train that they only get home for Christmas and the long summer holiday. These trips alone take organisation and money as an adult accompanies each group of students.
The girls are dedicated to God in a special service, held once a year, in the first year that they join the family. They receive a Christian upbringing but are baptised as Christians when and if they choose, so this is their own choice. Marriages are arranged for the girls within Christian families but no dowry is paid. The couple meet and can choose whether or not to marry; there is no compulsion. This leads to a wide family network where marriages are celebrated. Old girls and their families are welcomed to stay and there are a large number of sons-in-law.
Irene was staying with her sister Hazel; sisters whose lives must be vastly different. This is how she came to talk to us about the Gorakhpur Nurseries Fellowship situated on the plain in Uttar Pradesh, sixty miles from Nepal, where it is usually hot, dry and dusty, very unlike Streatley.
The Nursery has a long history. Mary Warburton Booth went to Gorakhpur in 1908 working with women and children but the First World War led to girls and children needing safe homes so the Nurseries Family began. Irene went to teach in India in 1969 at a school in the mountains. She used her holidays to help at the Nursery. One thing led to another and since 1982 she has made these children her family. They never ask for money, just pray for it so we were pleased to be able to take a collection for them. They do ask for our prayers.