It was my third time visiting the Bharathapuram colony. The last time I was there I had the great privilege of helping the medical team with their work. Today, I wanted to dance! After taking a little hike partway up the hill, touring the colony with the volunteers, and visiting a few small businesses, we ended up at the old persons home. This is where the magic happened!
Previous to this day, I had always just had people turn on music and we would dance to get, getting as many people involved as possible. We would typically only get a couple of people to join in on the dancing while the rest of the colony members would enjoy watching. Today though, I told the people that we wanted to do "exercises", and I brought some scarves along to help with the activity. I had never seen this amount of joy from the dancing in any colony previous to this! The movement was so simple, yet the joy on their faces was miraculous! I was so grateful to have the help from the volunteers, so we were able to do these dancing exercises with several people at a time. We would use two scarves, giving one end of each scarf to the person we're working with, and then holding the other two ends ourselves. With this set up it was easy to guide the people through some simple exercises (which felt like simple dancing), sometimes resulting with them taking over and leading us! (Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of this, but I do have small video clips that I will be able to share later :)
Whenever I visit a leprosy colony, I like to remind myself to look beyond the surface of what some people would focus on as being the downfalls or the poverty of the colonies. Yes, it is sad to observe the circumstances that many of these people live in.... But they too have blessings, and they have created many wonderful solutions to their own challenges. During my time in the colony today, I tried to capture photos of beautiful things I saw around me. I tend to take some pictures on my phone and some on my Canon, so the quality of these photos varies :) Enjoy!
 |
The pathway for the hike
(The first photo is from the lookout point I made it to on the hike) |
 |
| An attractive door/gate near the trail |
 |
| A home I like :) |
 |
| Geese! I love birds :) |
 |
| Adorable calf |
 |
| The pillar and framing of a beautiful home |
 |
| Same beautiful home with flowers |
 |
| An attractive pillar of a different home |
 |
| A view of the pillar through the gate |
 |
| More cows! :) |
 |
| Lovely flowers and palm trees |
 |
| This man was waiting for medical aid when he asked for me to take his photo :) |
 |
| Pots/vases/plates |
 |
| Clay pot |
 |
| The gate to an old couple's home |
 |
| Painting tools at the Art Studio where colony member create stunning art |
 |
| The lovely Mary leading us on a tour of the colony |
 |
| Children playing with my drum (I have a video of this too that I'll share later!) |
 |
| This woman was my #1 dance partner! She was so adorable and happy to be dancing/exercising |
 |
| This is the same man who asked for a photo earlier, and he later came to dance/exercise with me! |
 |
| A yummy Indian sweet I bought for myself after leaving the colony |
Now go make someone smile :)
Comments
Post a Comment