After not too many hours of sleep on Tuesday night, what with last minute packing of another tee-shirt or a few bags of “goodies” to pass on to the children of the village of Chahalka, or something to give to the children when they are brought to the NATIONAL IMMUNIZATION DAY (NID) booths on Sunday, I awoke at about 4:30 on Wednesday morning, to begin the long journey to India. My wife and I packed my suitcases, carry-on, my briefcase with laptop, and then four large cartons into her car to take the first leg of the journey. The carton boxes contained all of the “official” ROTARY DREAM TEAM shirts that had been embroidered with our special logo, and that of the donor of the shirts – TD-Banknorth and the five dozen pair of work gloves donated by Springvale Hardware. We then drove to Sanford, to where our Rotary Club meets every Thursday morning, to meet the other members of my Rotary Club who were a part of the team traveling to India - Richard Bergeron, club president; Lawrence Furbish, chair of the projects committee, Shawn Sullivan, club bulleting editor, as well as maybe two or three Rotarians who might come to see us off and wish us well for our journey. When we arrived in the parking lot, we met up with Marie Bergeron who had just helped her husband unload his bags and “stuff” into the entrance of the Knights of Columbus in Sanford – who own the place where we meet.
There were several other cars and when we entered the building, we found there were about a dozen of our fellow Rotarians who had made the effort to come down to send us off with their good wishes. Among those Rotarians was our assistant district governor, Carolyn Lambert, who had come to offer a prayer for us and to commission us on our mission, on behalf of Rotary and the people of India, whom we would meet in the coming two weeks. Since it also happened to be Ash Wednesday, Carolyn took the time to write a special service for the disposition of ashes (created by the burning the previous year’s palms from Palm Sunday) for those of us on the team, and any other of the Rotarians and friends who wished to receive them. Two of the local newspapers were also represented – The Sanford News and the Journal-Tribune for a few last minute photo ops.
Our driver, Bill from Elite Limousine Service in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, arrived with an oversized van. We loaded our bags and the four carton boxes and with hugs, kisses and a few tears, we boarded our coach and headed out on our drive to Newark Airport. The ride down was pretty uneventful, with one comfort break stop and then back on the road. We managed to arrive in about five hours – Bill is a VERY good driver. He is a part owner of the company and was particularly kind to us when determining our cost for the trip down to Newark and the trip back from Newark to Sanford on February 20. We certainly appreciate all he did for us and we will look forward to seeing him again on the 20th after we land at 5:00 in the morning!
We arrived at the airport and offloaded all of our bags and the cartons of shirts and gloves and proceeded into the Continental terminal to await the arrival of he other members of our DREAM TEAM. With the help of some of the folks in my office, we had bagged up all of the shirts, with names and shirt sizes, as well as one tube each of the Lobsterman’s Balm, donated by Ghisaline Berube of Casco Bay Gardens. This balm is made from all natural products and is a wonderful relief for chapped hands – what we could fully expect from our work project activities over the coming week. We would be carrying rough bricks, basins of concrete mix, basins of sand, digging with pick-axes and spades, painting with rather strong paints on the inside and outside of the two buildings, so the balm was soothing and most welcome.
Slowly over the coming four hours, members of the DREAM TEAM arrived from different Ontario and Newfoundland in Canada, from Alaska, Nevada, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Minnesota and even from Evanston, Illinois. – Rotary International’s headquarters. PDG Kelly Wike had made nametags for everyone of us, and as we sorted out the bags with shirts, we pinned on the badges, and also had a ready supply of GOODBYE POLIO – THANKS ROTARY bumper stickers to place on our luggage. Our ranks swelled considerably and it was time to check in at the ticket counter. When I arrived at the desk, I was told I had a message from two of my team members – Audrey and Ann-Marie Athavale, whose flight had been delayed for hours from Detroit, and we were unsure as to whether they would even arrive in time for our flight. I worked with the ticked agent to ensure they would have two seats on the same flight but the following day, should they not make our flight. Additionally, while I was still at the counter, I received a telephone call from Roger Schulte, informing me that he, Eugene Hernandez and Greg Jones were “stuck” at LAX in California and would undoubtedly miss our flight that evening to Delhi. Fortunately, I was also able to secure three more seats for Flight 82 the next evening. We all processed through the ticketing and on through security and met even more of our teammates on “the other side”. Pam, Sean, Cari and Logan Roberts, Don Fink, Shiva and Aruna Khousik and a few more. Some of us decided to have dinner before boarding the plane, and also visit the duty-free shop to purchase a bottle or two of wine to take with us for our group to enjoy at dinners in the evening. Unfortunately, none of the shops offer wine, so we settled upon joining our dollars or rupees, once we arrived in India to have Sanjiv purchase some cases of wine for us.
We reached the boarding gate and found, once again that we had to get in line to re-check our already checked and re-checked boarding passes, before we could get into another line for boarding. We finally entered the plane – a Boeing 777, which was to be our home for the ensuing fifteen hours. Most of us were seated in the back two sections of economy class, and tried to settle in for a long flight. Soon after we took off (only a few minutes later than scheduled) we experienced some “moderate” turbulence, but once through that, we were offered dinner – as if any of us really needed another meal. In my section of the plane, we had two babies who must have realized some enjoyment from screaming, because they produced a cacophony of yelps and shrieks, punctuated by the percussion section producing kicks to the back of my seat and that of one of my seatmates. One does learn to tune out and to hopefully get some rest during the flight. Following dinner, the lights were dimmed, the shades lowered and with movies and music and games being offered on our personal screens, some watched, some played, and some listened, while others read, wrote or slept. Some of us even sneaked peeks out the windows, watching as the sun set over the jagged mountains of Afghanistan, seeing the moon reflect off the snowcapped mountains of Pakistan or peering into the night and then seeing one and then two and then dozens of tiny lights on the ground below, pointing to remote villages and hamlets or even larger cities. Our pilots finally landed our flying carpet in Delhi, after circling through the foggy night, and when the main cabin doors were opened, many of us experienced the smells of India as they drifted into the cabin. We proceeded through customs and immigration, met at the baggage carousel, visited the restrooms (alone a singular experience) and pushed our carts through the fenced-off area out in the main terminal. We were met by Divan – a representative of High Points Expeditions, and were welcomed with garlands of gold and orange marigolds, counted off to make sure we were all here (did I mention that Audrey and Ann-Marie Athavale actually DID make our flight?) and then moved outside into the chilly night to board our buses, to be driven out to Sohna, to meet at Sanjiv’s farm for a midnight welcoming dinner and then off to our motels for a few hours of sleep.
When we arrived at the farm, we were enveloped in the unusual cold (and some of us were from Canada, Alaska, Maine and Minnesota and thought we knew winter). Bob Weel from Alaska had on only a short-sleeved shirt and was shivering until Sanjiv offered him a fleece vest. We ate a sumptuous meal which we would undoubtedly have enjoyed more had we not been overtired and cold and dreaming of sleep! We were distributed to our two motels in Sohna and urged to try to sleep, as breakfast would be in only about five hours from then. It was a long, long journey with a very short night!
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