dessine-moi un mouton!: "not with a bang but a whimper"

today i went out to new mumbai (east of the city) on a rickshaw named jesus. we drove on bumpy dirt roads through deserted green countryside to visit another balwadi and then a home for orphans/people with AIDS/mentally ill patients (yes all lumped together) in the small village of panvel. the balwadi was great. we sang more songs and learned some letters and for lunch they proudly served me fried chicken, fries and coke while i enviously watched them eat curry.
the home for society's unwanted people was run by a friendly mr. larson type. he was well intentioned i'm sure , but i got very angry with him when he told me that "we give them food and a happy place and that is enough." there was a ten year old girl who was practically a skeleton dying of AIDS, along with about 100 other kids, adults, and babies who look like fetuses, who are positive. i asked him about medicine but he said that's just not what they do and that it's hard to get. i actually started crying i was so angry....though maybe it is indeed just too hard to get medicine, i really don't know for sure. but i know that if some of these kids get on medicine now, their HIV may never become AIDS. what is so frustrating is that there are all these NGOS each trying to save the world in its own bubble, but if they would just get together they could do so much more. there needs to be an NGO that provides a network for them..(well there probably already is somewhere..)