Anjali - Birthdate: 9/22/02

Anjali was my first sponsored child. I had read the Compassion materials and knew I wanted to sponsor a child again. I decided to look at the "criticial need" kids, those who had been waiting for a sponsor more more than 6 months. There were so many!

I flipped quickly through the pages of photos to see if anybody caught my eye. Anjali did for an unlikely reason. She had the fattest face of any of them. I identified with being "the fat kid" and wondered if that was why nobody had picked her up yet, so I decided she was going to be mine (though her subsequent photo showed none of that baby fat that had drawn me to her photo in the first place).

Anjali lives with her father and mother and 2 siblings. She likes to play house and group games and to play with dolls. She lives on the plans of Nandyal. Typical houses are constsructed of dirt floors, adobe walls and grass roofs. The primary ethnic groups are Shudra, apu, Kamma, Baliga, Mala and Madiga. The most commonly spoken language is Telugu, though Anjali is learning English and though her letters to me are translated, she always includes a few words in English that she has written herself.

She often writes about food and her liking of fruits, particularly mango, apples, oranges and bananas.

She also frequently includes drawings of flowers.