Wedding season!

The "winter" (it is still mid 20's to 30 degrees!!) months bring many weddings as the weather is less sweaty I guess! This first wedding is of a Christian friend who goes to Church in the fellowship that used to meet in the ground floor of the hospital's main building, but now meets in a hall to the rear of our HIV/AIDS project that I work in.

Christians in India tend to be fairly strict with themselves, and are very disciplined. They tend not to drink any alcohol, and dating is fairly frowned upon. In fact arranged marriages are common even in Christian circles, as are large dowry gifts. This lovely couple actually met through Church. There were a lot of difficult circumstances surrounding their engagement and marriage, and it was lovely last week to go to a bible study in their married home, and have a meal afterwards. I am sure that they will have a very fruitful future.

Hindu Wedding

Jo and I were very fortunate to be part of a friend's brother's wedding recently. The groom sits on a horse, and the guests dance to a live band in the street! The groom has a garland round his neck of money, and the whole affair is very impressive and large scale. There were around 600 guests.

Neil's visit

Jo's sister's boyfriend Neil had a very fleeting visit with us for 2 nights and one day in-between. He loved my bike (good way to get on my right side), and is contemplating buying one to get around London (good way to avoid congestion charges apparrently- maybe they should introduce those here? Hmmm, Actually, I think it would be pretty un-enforcable, and would only give the police something else to take bribes for- this is not just a cynical view unfortunately)

Judith's visit

This is our friend Judith Barron. She had a fundraising concert in aid of Lok Hospital before she came to visit us, and raised 1207 pounds for the work of the hospital. Pretty amazing! We're hoping to also organise a Ceilidh when we're back in the UK in the summer. We'll keep you posted. I'll love getting my kilt on and swirlin' aboot!

These photos are of the gateway of India in Mumbai, and of a boat ride in the harbour. Jo and I are now organising tours if anyone else is interested!!?

Superhuman new-year

Judith a friend from our church in Glasgow, has a tradition of dressing up as super-heroes for new year with her friends. Sadly Judith had a 24+ hour tummy-bug at Christmas, and so she brought in the new-year with oral rehydration salts in a glass!

We didn't quite get round to all dressing up for new year, but we did all buy superman T-shirts (and sadly I also got a belt). This was a few days later.

I did enjoy drinking 2 miniatures of Bowmore whiskey! (thanks Peter Foster)!

Judith's visit (II)

On a horse-and-cart ride at gorai beach. Alistair loves horses, and he also went on a big horse up and down the sand with his Dad. It was a good day. In the evening, I asked Alistair what he'd done that day, and he said "I've been on toooo horses!"

Here's Judith in Crawford market. It is a good place in Mumbai to source difficult to find food items. We bought weetabix for Freya's breakfasts, and Golden syrup - for flapjack! (yep, visitors can now stop brining these items!!)

This picture is also of a stall in Crawford marked sellin steel kitchen items. I love it. Cut and paste it from here to your desktop. It looks cool blown up larger!!

Last Christmas party (I think!!??)

This was taken at the "Purnata Bhavan" Christmas programme. It was on the 22nd of December, and was a very well run and enjoyable evening. I stayed with them for tea, and then drove home at 9pm in the dark.

Purnata Bhavan is a project that I've mentioned before. It is a Christian home 2 hours from Mumbai run by "OASIS INDIA" that cares for women and children. Some of them are HIV positive, and we provide them with medical care.

Anyway, about me driving home.....
.....I drove home in the dark. The head of oasis india (John Nonibel, whose brother Andrew Nonibel used to go to my Church in Glasgow, and was in my bible study group! It's all too small a Christian world isn't it!!) was horrified about the prospect of me getting flattened by a truck on the night roads, and tried to persuade me to stay the night and drive back in the morning. When I said that I thought I'd go back that night, a bystander who I didn't know asked if I was a surgeon- "Surgeons are the Doctors who are known to take risks"!

The journey wasn't actually that bad?- Only twice on the narrow hillside twisting road did I have to leave the road for the hard shoulder for the oncoming vehicles on my side of the road overtaking round a blind corner! NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT!? Seriously though, a friend of mine was recently hospitalised after a head on collision under similar circumstances. He's thankfully OK now.

Another thing that another friend had warned me about was the oncoming vehicles that appear at a glance to be motorcycles, but on closer inspection are larger vehicles with a light out "Don't go into the light"

All in all, night time driving should be avoided here!

Merry Christmas from Clanblack!

Howdy! The above photo is a bit of a cheat, as It was actually taken a few days before Christmas, and I was planning to be really organised and put it on the Blog on Christmas day- however thid didn't happen (obviously). It's a bit of a cheesy photo really!

This is alistair dressed appropriately for a red and white themed Christmas party at his nursery! Yep, those Christmas parties just keep on coming!