do you know the agency's name? i do want to make sure they have legitimate credentials and all before i give them any really personal information.

i definitely want to talk to them and see who they are and what their intentions are - what the scope is of what they can do to help Adia. if they can provide her real and helpful care, as far as getting her health restored and making sure she isn't starved again, i have no problem with placing the matter in their hands. otherwise, putting her in a private hospital to get well and continue searching for options is a solution too.

i don't know if i'll have a choice necessarily - one thing i've found about India is that it's really, really hard usually to get people involved with something, but when they DO finally get involved, they won't let go of it and sometimes go really overboard. if they go overboard in the mater of getting Adia the care she needs, that's great of course! but if for some reason they can't actually so much for her but still think they should be handling her case, i don't think they'll rest until i'm out of the picture.

you said 'They have so many complaints that apparently they decided that you and Adia were top priority', do you mean they got complaints against my involvement with Adia? if so i'm shocked, i didn't know anyone here was even taking notice of her except for the people in the direct area, even when i was trying to get people to pay attention. how terrible that if people did notice her, they weren't trying to get something done to help her instead of just complaining!

the thing with Nepal is that we've been planning to visit but didn't know if it would be now or in about 3 or 4 months - we're doing a photography book on hand-painted signs of India and surrounding countries and want to get some from Kathmandu & Pokhara. our current Indian visa is up this month, and we heard we possibly could extend it within the coutry, but that turned out fruitless - so we'll take our Nepal trip now, and then come back to India. we can get the visa from the Indian Embassy while we're there. so, all signs point to it being a fairly mandatory vacation!

anyway, i don't mean to sound alarmist or anything about all of this - i've just had some experiences with volunteer and charity work in India before, and some of those ended up turning into a huge mess when Indian organizations tried to get involved with the work international groups were doing. so i guess i'm a little wary from the start! but again, i will be incredibly grateful to them if they can indeed provide the help that i've been trying to get Adia all along. is there anything else they want to know from me right now? and if they wanted to meet me, can they tell me when and how?

oh, also - i really appreciate all you're doing with this! i hope none of it is to stressful for you or too much work. that's aweseom you were Humanitarian of the year, what an honourable position!!! when all of this is calmer, i'll have to get some ideas from you if i aspire to the same title someday ;)

love,
nutmeg