BUCKFIELD -Smothered in heat and foul smells – harassed by mosquitoes, screeching monkeys and repeated power failures – Michael Miclon and Michael Vayda almost surrendered their mission to help save babies’ lives.

“There were one or two times when we said, ‘We can’t do it,'” Vayda said. “There isn’t enough time. Nothing works.”

After all, they’d set aside only 14 days to travel from Buckfield to a town called Fatehpur in northern India.

In those few days, the friends planned to create an instructional DVD for use in rural hospitals throughout the poverty stricken area. It would teach mothers some of the fundamentals of caring for babies: avoiding dirty water, breast feeding, bathing and eating properly.

“We knew it was going to be hard,” Miclon said Tuesday, sitting at his kitchen table in his home above the Oddfellow Theater. “But it was harder than we thought.”

Only sheer will got it done.

“Every day began with making a plan, organizing the plan and quickly abandoning the plan,” Miclon said. They scrapped images they’d intended to gather as people failed to show up, props disappeared and the power dimmed and failed.

Eventually, they lowered their expectations to complete the work, even if it wasn’t as pretty as they hoped.

Once, while photographing a mother in her hut, goats kept wandering in front of the camera.

We finally told ourselves, ‘This is how they live. It’s home to them,'” Miclon said.

“By then it was like, ‘Cue the goats!'” he joked.

The project to go to India was born out of a trip a year ago by Vayda, who journeyed to the town with missionaries from the East Auburn Baptist Church.

Vayda and his then-14-year-old son, Zach helped renovate a hospital building and connect it to the Internet.

When Vayda returned home, he felt changed.

He shared his feelings with Miclon, his business partner for a venture they call Miclon Vayda Creative Communications. Through their company, the partners organize corporate parties and events across the United States and Europe.

“Do I just want to help people sell more stuff?” Vayda asked himself. “Do I just want to entertain people? What do I do with the back nine of my life?”

Miclon, Vayda learned, felt the same way.

Together they hatched the plan for the video with Wendy Cowles, a nurse at the Fatehpur hospital who is from Buckfield.

The partners raised $10,000 in expenses from civic and church groups, and private donations.

Miclon, who founded the Oddfellow Theater and hosts its monthly “Early Evening Show,” also held a charity event titled, “The Early Evening India Show.”

They raised the money they needed with only days to spare.

They left home on March 1, flying to New Delhi, then riding a train north for several hours and boarding a school-type bus for a final 13-hour trek.

Miclon remembered waking on the bus with his face pressed against the glass. He witnessed dawn in a wholly foreign land.

“It was as different as it could possibly be,” he said.

Road rules seemed optional, with folks driving into oncoming lanes when their rows were stopped, Vayda said. Everybody honked their horns.

“It worked,” he said. “I don’t know how, but it did.”

In most places, the roads were flanked with open sewers. On trash day, garbage was collected beside the ditches and lit on fire.

The combination of smells was overpowering, Miclon said.

When they reached Fatehpur, they began setting up their studio immediately, frightening the geckos that clung to the walls. Then, they went to bed.

The first night was the worst, Miclon said. Between the buzzing mosquitoes and the screeching monkeys, he barely slept.

That morning, waking on a paper-thin mattress, was a low point.

“You kind of take a step back,” Miclon said. “Within 30 minutes, we’d launched the project.”

There was no time for self pity.

“It’s amazing how you adjust,” he said. When he arrived, he was a pampered American.

“By the third day, I looked at the pool where we got our water and said, ‘The water’s a little cloudy today,'” Miclon said.

They were aided by Vayda’s son, Zack, now 15, and Ashley Graham, 24, of Auburn.

“We just clicked as a team and went for it,” Vayda said.

Without their help, the project would have failed, Miclon and Vayda said.

One recurring problem was the power, which seemed to work for a few hours each day. It was enough to recharge the batteries for the camera, computers and lights. But the charge was never enough.

One portion of the DVD they created shows their darkening predicament.

When they began, they had three lights. As the power ran down, their lights dimmed, from two lights to one to a flashlight.

Watching it at home – images of the young woman narrator alternate with other women pretending to breast-feed babies – Miclon cringed.

“There were times when I had to say, ‘You know what? This is good enough,'” Vayda said.

With each shot, the image of the pretty narrator darkened.

But the information was there: from illustrations showing the milk in a woman’s breast to a mother-in-law taking away a baby’s bottle filled with potentially deadly water.

They estimate that at least 3,000 new mothers will see the video this year.

“Of everything I have done, this is the project that I am the least happy with but the most proud of,” Miclon said.

They finished and left with little fanfare.

“There was no winner’s circle,” he said. “There was no party at the end.”

After eight days in the village, they boarded a bus and began the journey home.

Would they do it again? Yes.

The pair plan to create a nonprofit group aimed at helping people and divide their time between charity and business. They have already launched a Web site: notfar.org.

“We want it to be an equal part of our lives,” Vayda said.

Miclon agreed.

“None of it was easy,” he said. “This week has been a lot of soul searching. When another opportunity comes up, I’m in.”