Chicken Livers by Sheila Ash

In the nagar, stall holders banter with passers-by
words filling the air like a chorus of crickets after the rains.
Hadija’s smile greets my Sunday morning approach
Her hair, jet black, plait thick as rope, hangs nonchalantly over her shoulder
her saree’s colour steals from beneath her apron wrap
bangles glisten and jangle as merrily as her chatter.
Comfortable in our Otherness we Namaste and Namaskar,
ask after each other’s wellbeing, as she reaches for a bird
fresh for her regular customer.
Two poles and a remnant wall hold proud the side-less stall’s rattan roof
plastic tarpaulin shading the polished metal sheet of her counter
as its rests on cinder blocks and straddles the caged birds below.
To one side a ubiquitous large blue plastic basin sits hatted by a food umbrella.
To the other her butcher’s block, worn down by repeated cleaver blows -
a tree stump, stained red in blood.
She skilfully breaks the bird’s neck, removes the skin,
buckets castoff feet for the poor, discards unwanted innards,
until pointing a tentative mu lagibi bahut achi
gets it added to my parcel of meat chopped up Indian style.
A bemused smile teaches me Kalija, my only Telugu word.

© Sheila Ash, 2018

Reasons to be cheerful Part 3

( I suspect only readers of a certain age and disposition will get what the the title of this blog refers to  = everyone else – go google!)

The fact that power cuts happen has never been a real issue. Reality is that Orissa sells its power to better off neighbouring state of Andrah Pradesh. And powers outs are fine when they are regular or scheduled. No power between 7 and 8PM? No problem just make sure you have the water boiled for your nightly cuppa before 7PM, then puts your feet up in the dark and sip a nice brew.

We’ve been pretty lucky recently, with our power outs being scheduled or at least occurring at a regular time. But this week has been back to 20 minutes on, 2 minutes off, 10 minutes on, 30 minutes off etc etc all through the day. It is unpredictable, irregular, unscheduled.

We have UPS power backups in the office, one is attached to each PC. The idea of these Uninterrupted Power Supply units is that their battery charges when there is power and then when there is no power, you have battery supply for 20 minutes. Plenty of time to finish a piece of work, save your work and properly close down the PC. That is if they worked properly.

Sadly their battery life is not good. With the above erratic power outs being typical the batteries never get much of a chance to fully charge up.  Instead of 20 minutes of power in reality you get about 5 minutes. After about 30 seconds their warning buzzer starts bleeping (Annoying noise No.1), and then the interval between bleeps gets shorter as time passes until it is bleeping constantly (Annoying noise No. 2). Finally it just completely cuts out.  Eventually the battery cannot recharge and just bleeps constantly if switched on.

In practice this means that all work which involved an electrically powered piece of equipment stops for a length of time from 30 seconds to all day. That means no PCs, no router, no internet. No fans, no light. And try not to open the fridge door too often if the power cut if for more than about 4 hours or your fridge will start to become an incubator. Any ice in the freezer compartment will have melted so good excuse to have another one of those frozen fruit juice slabs – cold, sweet – or frozen water melon sticks (Upside No. 1)

Of course if you have a laptop you are not dependent upon mains power. But remember that battery that started of as having life of say 5 hours (depends on what you run and how) now after two years of tropical dampness, low and changeable voltage power supply only has a life of under 1 hour.  My colleague’s laptop’s battery is basically fried which means her laptop goes down, without warning, each time their is a power cut.

So “what did you do when the light's were off?”  I can always find something to do, even if it is jotting down some thoughts onto paper. There are also tasks around an office which need doing and which everyone puts of doing. Once I got everyone to muck in a clear the paperwork off all the shelves and sort what should be kept from what could get flung away; we’ve done planning on pieces of paper. By the way I have been a whole 2 years without seeing a yellow sticky or any other form of Post-it note either in use or available!

But doing something during power outs is not the usual state of affairs. Normally everyone has nothing to do ,so they sit around and chat.

This is grating on me more than usual this week! Perhaps it is because I am very busy working to complete things before leaving India. Perhaps it is people’s lack of initiative. Perhaps it is that managers don’t plan work for their subordinates to do during such times. Perhaps it is because I feel a little stressed. Probably it is all of the above and more. There you have it .

Reasons to feel stressed part 1

(1) Perhaps it is because one of the jobs I am doing is one I don’t really know how to do, I have never done before and I am not finding it straightforward to figure it out.

(2) Perhaps it is because one particular person in the office when he does not  have anything to do has the habit of standing beside me watching and asking inane questions. I have been through the polite requests not to do this. I have been through the assertive requests not to do this. I have been through the blatant “Go away” request. What to try next? Blockhead!

(3) Perhaps it is because having agreed a completion plan, new tasks keep being added. OK I know all about requirements creep and I can manage  prioritising and reprioritising no problem. But it is still reflective of the same lack of planning and lack of  urgency which abound here in India. Several of these tasks could have and should have been done months ago. Most required action on someone else behalf after my initial involvement and before my final involvement.

(4) I suspect the last few weeks are amongst the most stressful for volunteers - tying to get things finished, trying to get flights home arranged, trying to get your exit paperwork in order, trying to figure out what you will be doing when you get home, where to live, will you be able to find work

(5) I hate formal goodbyes and I just know there will be one here. Indians really like their formality, speeches etc. Me, I like to just quietly go.

(6) I took a gamble earlier this month and told my house agent to find new tenants now my existing ones have vacated amicably, so effectively I have no where to stay when I get home. If Plan A AND Plan B fall through  - sXXt ! :) 

Reasons to be cheerful  part 2

(1) I will have completed the whole 2 year placement! and with some nice sustainable work outcomes. Hooray! No mean achievement, girl!

(2) I am still financially solvent. I feel like giving a “I’m still standing” finger to those politicians, bankers and economists who mess with folks savings!

(3) I will get to eat cheese, and ham,  and lamb …

(4) I will get to drink cider, gin and tonics…..

(5) I will get to see friends and talk with them for more than 5 minutes

(6) I will get to show emotion, to hug and be hugged, to hold hands, dance and let my hair down

(7)  Plan A has always been to volunteer. As of this week, Plan A is looking at least feasible. I received a placement offer from VSO with a tentative start date of mid February 2012. The process is for me to consider this, do due diligence, and give a basic Yes/No response. Then if Yes, write up my reasons why I think I can do this role, send this to VSO for the recruiting NGO and await their decision. So for now I am in due diligence mode. There are pros and cons, not least because it is a poorly drafted  job description – why are all organisational development roles so poorly spec’ed out?  I’ll post more about my due diligence efforts in a separate post. For now, I’d love to hear from anyone with experience of living and working in Nigeria, or who can put me in touch with someone they know who has lived and worked there, especially if that was in the northern part of the country, Zaria city, Kaduna state to be precise.

And that all has to be weighed up against Plan B  - a tip to toe overland Africa trip

(8) Plan B has always been to go travelling, specifically I wanted to do an African transect. NSEW. Arab Spring makes North Africa crossing still a little fraught and recent developments in Kenya have to be watched closely, but one cannot live one’s life in fear and crossing the road is perhaps the most dangerous thing we do every day without giving its hazards more than a passing thought.  So the thought was to go with an overlanding truck group. Whilst would love to do it free style  and organised trips have their limitations, they also have the advantages of less hassle over driving and coping oneself with mechanical failures and for me just now the advantage of company after 2 years mainly on my own. Ok my ideal would be to hitch up the wagon with the right company, have a mechanic in our midst and go slow in 4x4 packed with tent, sleeping bag and spending numerous nights under the African skies by the camp fire. Dreams.  Reality could get close, but with the sacrifice of speed.

These trips have fixed start dates, with West coast route leaving in November before I get home. So I had been looking at just doing the East Coast route. But just when I think I had identified my first choice operator (trying to avoid the totally party time 18-30 type trips) this idea took a set back in October when they pulled out of running trips in Africa.  So back to the drawing board and what I have come up with is an other operator starts London in early April, crossing Europe, Istanbul, down through the Middle East, Cairo and then on down the east Coast route, crossing over via Botswana to Namibia and ending up in Cape Town in mid November? I’d love a companion – anyone interested? 

(9)  Plans for the period immediately after flying home on 12/13th November are slowly beginning to take shape. I am dependent on friends sofa and spare rooms until I can get dental  and medical checkups done formally should I take the VSO placement route. Also I need to get my eyes tested and new spectacles lenses in all my glasses and sunglasses. Mundane things but critical. I also need to buy clothes  - in typical girly fashion, “I have nothing to wear!” Time is constrained because I am heading back to Algeria so need to get  visa for there renewed. Hopefully all that can be completed by early December letting me spend 6 weeks or so chilling in the dry desert heat, by the camp fire, with good companions. Anyone else feel like coming? Then a few weeks back in the UK before either heading of on placement, or a slightly longer few weeks before heading of travelling. or something completely different, who knows!

reasons to be cheerful >>> reasons to be stressed = life is still  good!

Rodent alarm clock – dhamana!

Today has been a bit of a wildlife day. First I was woken up just before 5AM this morning with a noise really quite close to my head – it sounded like something rummaging at the corner of my mosquito net. In a half asleep daze I am waving it away with my hand. I’m sort of only half awake and thinking it is probably Fred (the resident gecko!) when the noise becomes more of a scurrying , clearly a bigger animal, and I realise I must have a rodent in the bedroom. I get up, switch on the light  and sure enough I find a rat sitting on the bedroom shelves. 
I chase it out of the bedroom, trying to watch where it heads for,  ie how it got in, but I loose it in the dark in the kitchen. Once the kitchen light is on I check the sink plumbing. You will remember this was the way they were getting in last year. My landlord had put in a cover thinking it would cure the problem and I dispensed with my make shift rat stop of a piece of marble and slab of cement. Well this musa had worked the cover loose!  So after a good check that it wasn’t still in the house, it was back down with the marble and cement blocks.
Later this morning in the office there was much asa, asa – come ,come – with a ssh sshh do it quietly. There outside the window of our Accounts room was a snake. Only a couple of days before a cobra ( in Oriya “naga”)  had been found in Mr P’s brother’s house, squirming about by the cooking gas cylinder in the kitchen – deadly! Luckily the adults of the house saw it and none of the small children were about. So Mr G, who manages our old  age home was summoned. Seemingly he is an ace snake catcher! I missed all that excitement and when I was told the story yesterday I had mentioned that I had never seen a snake in the wild. Much bemused looks and then the questions “you don’t have snakes in your country?” 
So today when someone noticed this one in the grass outside the office Mr R came to tell me about it so I could see a snake! Not a deadly one,  but about 6 foot long and the thickness of my forearm.  The name for this one in Oriya is “dhamana”: and after investigating a bit on the web I find it is a fairly common Rat Snake which must have a field day in our nagar with all the rats and toads we have.
After it disappeared back into the shrubbery and undergrowth, then all the snake stories started to come out. It appears that on 2 occasions a cobra has actually come into the office building through the front door! Actually there are lots of snakes in the nagar even though it is getting to be a built up area it wasn’t always and there are regular sightings.  I just have never seen any. Part of me wants to and part of me doesn’t  - this is as close to one as I really want to be to any snake. Another Indian experience ticked off the list! I’m just glad my wake up call this morning was of the rodent rather than reptilian variety!

Who lives in a house like this?

It’s been ages since I showed you all anything to do with where I am staying here in Rayagada. Way back when I first arrived I posted pictures of the empty accommodation that greeted me on my arrival in placement in mid December 2009. Gosh doesn’t that seem a long time ago! So how has it  changed?  Inevitably the basic household goods have been acquired, but very few in the way of luxury items. I have not intention of having  to ship stuff home as many volunteers have done, and my every intention is to go back with less luggage than I came with! However the place does  now look lived in. For those of you who know me well, you will realise I haven’t tidied up for the tour – you take me as you find me, as always! So lets take a look through the keyhole, or more aptly the padlock, and see what it is like inside…..

Nightly English practice advances forward one question at a time

If I walk home from the office any time between 5 and 6PM when it is still light I am met en route by a bunch of the nagar’s kids. They seem to spot me from a long way off and then all I hear is my name resounding and lots of running feet. The oldest goes to tuition between 6 and 8PM in addition to a  full school day and the youngest is a toddler of preschool age. There’s usually about 6 of them, all keen to practice their English with pre-rehearsed questions “What is your father’s name?” “What is your mother’s name?” “What is your grandfather’s name?” “What is your grandmother’s name?” “What are your sisters names?” “What are you brothers’ names?”   I have  to remember what I have made up and keep consistent. Early on, after the look of complete bewilderment when I said I did not have children, I became never married – just an easier explanation all round! I also invented brothers and sisters, just to give them answers to their questions. So now I have to remember that my brother in law and sister in law are now my brother and sister, my best friends are now my second brother and sister etc.
Every time it is the same questions! Nice as it is it does get monotonous! But they all get to ask and are all answered. Then just when you least expect it, Vikram inserted a new one tonight “What is your favourite game?”  Stopped me in my tracks it did and I had to think fast – playing cards was the decided upon answer – pretty safe, known in India. Received with head wobbles of agreement. Theirs? well of course cricket for the boys and badminton for the girls.  I’m taking guesses on the next question, when it will arrive and who will ask it!

Nora Batty meets Quasimodo!

I thought I had found the perfect answer to cold feet in a country where one takes ones shoes off at every house,shop, office, temple door and walks on freezing cold marble, and where shoes means flip flops (thongs to my Antipodean friends), namely socks with toes. Having consigned one of few pairs of socks I possess here to the waste bin after I visited the Rat Temple at Bikaner (but more of that later), I needed to find a replacement. My friendly ladies outfitters had only one type of sock, puice coloured pink (no choice)  in either nylon (no thanks!) or cotton (yes, please) at 35 or 40 Rupees respectively. Two pairs were purchased and on arriving home, washing my feet I put them on, or attempted to. Clearly they are not made for western feet misshaped by 50plus years of wearing shoes !  Nor for the musculature of my calves as I can only just get them over my ankles :)  The result looks like a cross between Nora Batty(*) and a Quasimodo glove puppet! So maybe in 2011 life will deliver me a Compo (*) x Esmeralda !
(*) Hint: For non BBC TV watchers, check out the characters in the series Last of Summer Wine

Diwali 2010

Diwali, has religious significance to Hindus and others, but for most folks it is as the festival of Lights that it happens in practice, more akin to Bonfire night in the UK in that it is a great excuse for adults to have fun with firecrackers. And it goes on all week! So many fireworks are let off here the air is thick with the aroma of gunpowder and the whole of the evening sky is lit up and the noise would drone out even the honks of the trains here!
We just happened to be in the Daspalla Hotel  in Vizag on that evening and the hotel management put on a show on the forecourt. All the guests and staff came out were given sparklers and fizzy wires.
It was really great to see the staff, mostly young, men and women, smiling and letting go

Numerous roman candles, rockets, white showers, catherine wheels  or "chakras" and others were set alit. 
.






In India at this time, houses abound with candles, and the outside of the hotel was decked out with Happy Diwali sign and the entrance foyer had a lovely colourful typically Indian Rangoli design  for the day.
 

The next picture is from the day before in Arakku where the village market was in full throw and sugar cane was everywhere. I did wonder why there was so much around and it wasn't till the following day as we got to Vizag  in the evening that we found out why....The markets were again filled with sugar cane. Very pleased young men were to be seen standing with tall bunches of sugar cane stacks waiting to catch the bus or auto home. Seemingly these are prized as gifts for the women in their lives - the notorious Indian sweet  tooth again!  
With the fireworks, there were none of the health and safety issues we get plagued with back home - "Don't hold sparklers in your hands" - Dah? isn't that exactly what they are meant for? And certainly none of the "Light touch paper and stand well back", "Do not return to a lighted unexploded firework". Instead folks, stood by them as they went up, were showered by spent casings, flying ash, and sparks. Certainly no shouts of " Sabu tan", Be careful!
But absolutely great fun! And a chance to explore the night settings and capabilities of my new camera.


   

 
     

Road construction Indian style

The last month has seen addition construction work in our Nagar in that 2nd Lane is being rebuilt. I am told that for 8 years the nagar has been waiting for this.  Only one of the lanes is partially concreted for about 200 yards! The rest are dirt tracks. Everyone's hope is that building the road will remove one of the reasons auto drivers give for not coming out here.
I had been hoping to provide a photo journal of how this was done but I can only provide early and later stage photos as my camera packed in during the middle period, so you will have to use your imagination for part of this tale.
Stage 1. Originally the lane was just a sandy dirt track that you can see in this first photo.     
The first signs that something was happening was the arrival  of piles of boulders regularly positioned along the track side.


Stage 2: Place out boulders regularly along the path of the lane.   At this stage I am thinking of cobbled streets back home and hoping that this isn't what was going to be the end point here. Cobbles are one thing with their flat surface, but these boulders were just large roundish stones. Un-walkable! And so it remained for some time. 

Stage 3: The arrival of gangs of workers, men and women, who flung earth over the boulders. This earth was taken from trenches, 2 feet deep, dug at the sides of the lane. I'm thinking why dig these? They will just fill  with water and become stagnant, and be a breeding ground for mosquitos?  But them where else would you get the soil from the fling on the boulders?
Stage 4: Bulldoze the lot! Yes, seriously! The bulldozer was driven over all the boulders, crushing them to smitherines!
Stage 5: Apply more earth, and repeat.
Stage 6: Wet the resultant surface and leave to bake in the sun. Or if you are unlucky get rained on and go muddy.
The result is in places not at all bad. Cars have been seen driving in third gear! But in other places it has already started to break up where the tyre tracks of motor bikes are creating ruts in the muddy soil where there has not been enough broken boulders. Yes, the secret of a good road surface would appear to be an even distribution of broken boulders. Unevenness leads to ruts. Sadly, we have ruts in one part on my route home. Next rainy season this will be a mucky mess. For the rest its OK.
Until the trenches fill in, folks traversing the nagar, i.e. not following the block pattern of the lanes must take care, especially in the dark, a 2 foot drop is significant! People can be seen jumping across with bicycles in hand, motor bikes kept driving up for the first few days only to have to turn round and find another route - a few Oriyan and Telugu equivalents of Merd were to be heard!

The left hand picture shows one of the first traffic on the new road - two ladies carting firewood back from the forest.
The right hand picture shows the new road surface straight on and left at this crossroads and the old road surface to the right and from where I was standing to take the picture.
Just right click on the pictures to enlarge

A first dalliance with the new digital camera

So it finally arrived. Ordered 11th October arrived 21st. With a promised delivery of 6-8 working days and the Dussehra holidays falling  last week I would say my first experience of online ordering (with Infibeam) in India worked pretty well. I must admit to being nervous about buying fairly substantially priced electronics, but supplier turned out OK and the postal service keeps up its 100% record of deliveries ( just rubbing salt in Hilary's experience here! )
I decided to stick with an Olympus as I have extra batteries, charger and cards already with me, and bravely opted for their new model SP-800UZ which was reviewed here and here.
Today was my first chance to take some pictures as I walked home this afternoon. It perhaps wasn't the best day with storm clouds gathering, and I know I need to get used to having a camera with such a big zoom lens which is consequently bulkier than my previous pocket camera. My hand's  steadiness needs to improve and I need to get used to where everything is on the menus, but judging from first play and from previous experience with Olympus models that should not be at all difficult.  Being a "beginner" photographer, I'm still messing around, but here are a few photos of my nagar today.
 

 
As a result of our first dalliance together I have to say the thing that blows me away is how easy the Panorama function is to use - three photos taken in panoramic shot, lined up via an on screen automatic target matching wizard - take picture 1, move camera and a target appears, as you move across your panorama a second target appears, as these overlay each other the camera register this and takes the second picture. Second to third picture follows in same fashion. Simples!

( I received no incentive, financial or other, for this review)

A little bit of Italy in Orissa!

This past few weeks I have been replete with goodies. I don't want to put folks of sending stuff as believe me it all goes very quickly and is much appreciate as it breaks the routine of veg and the boredom of always having the same thing time after time. The past few months I have been inundated with aubergine, and over the next few months it will be cauliflower.  There will come a point in time, mid January last year, where I really don't want to see another cauliflower ever again!
So the first package to arrive was full of teas - the best drink of the day - I am sipping a peach and ginger tea as I write. It makes a wicked iced tea, very refreshing! A present from CR book club buddie Theresa in USA, sent in response to one my posts. 
Next came fellow volunteer Brooke from Delhi to work with me on a specific project. She came, having done a shopping trip in the Delhi stores, with half her luggage full of my purchases. Two days on the Sampta Express and I am surprised she had raided them to keep going!
Oh and no prizes for guessing correctly what was consumed first! Yes Gerry it was your wine. Lovely! :0 
Next came one from Judy in the UK, oats, tins of fish, oatcake biscuits - sorry no pictures as by that time my camera had packed up :(
Then last weekend as I have previously reported I raided Omar's shop in Koraput. So I have been indulging in nice treats such as pasta in a walnut sauce. I didn't even miss not having parmigiana or a sprinkle of parsley - who am I kidding! But it was delicious, simple, unfussy, no spice, no chilli, a bit of Italy in Orissa!
Thank you all!

My day, yesterday.

I was asked about what my typical day is like. So I decided for 1 day to keep a record - here is yesterday
8AM - I don't use an alarm so waking up can be anytime between 6:30 and 8:30 depending on the quality of the night's sleep, my tiredness and time at which I went to be the previous night, and recently the amount of early morning builder's noise from the work on the upper floor of our house. It was all quiet this morning and I slept through.
I shower, dress, comb hair, the usual. I pick up and dispose of the night's gecko droppings. I take down and store any clothes which have been drying overnight.
I prepare and eat breakfast.
I refill my overnight water bottle and place in fridge to chill. My water supply is well topped up, so today I don't have to boil and filter any water. Just now I do this about twice a week, at the height of the hot season I was doing this every other day. To boil and fill my filter full takes about 1 hour and having pans of water on a rolling boil generates a lot of steam.  This morning is already hot, so I also make sure my metal water bottle is filled to take to work. I've started to not need to carry water every day now it has got cooler, but the odd day catches one unawares and the temperature goes back up to 33 degree C.
I check my shopping list. This isn't a day for my sabzi walla to call, and I'd been to the grocers only yesterday so no trip there was required today. Otherwise a shopping trip would need to be fitted into either this time or on the way home from the office.
So instead I do some work. Check email . This morning I prepared for my later meeting with Mr P. Throughout my placement I have been keeping an achievements log but I had not updated this since I got back a month ago, so updating that served as a good check on what I have outstanding with Mr P, what I am waiting to receive back from him and what we need to discuss this morning. As with many volunteers, and most NGOs, there is a bottle neck at getting feedback back on work completed. My efficiency level is much lower here than at home - it just takes so much longer to achieve something, all things move more slowly, all things require constant nagging and reminders to get a job completed. Trying to address the root causes of this in one's organisation is a  real challenge.
9:20 AM Leave house and walk to office
9:30 AM Arrive at office
BA, who is coming in just over a week's time, has returned comments she has made on two NGO documents, so I read these and reply to her email.
Morning hellos as everyone starts to arrive in the office. I practice increasing my fluency with normal greetings, questions and answers.  My Oriya daily word from B today is sampurna = completed. We have discussion about whether there is a difference between sampurna and sarila, there doesn't appear to be.
A parcel has arrived from  the UK. I hadn't open the others in the office but decide to open this one as there is much interest in what exactly is in these. A packet of muesli serves to confirm my attempts at describing my typical breakfast. Tins of sardines and mackerel are met with bemused looks when I say you eat it straight from the tin, cold, there is much discussion of preservation methods and eat by dates - 2015, really! Stock cubes are initially thought to be soup, this leads to major discussion about spicy v unspicy foods, about what exactly is a stew, how I like to taste the ingredients and not have their natural flavour masked by to many added ones.
10:30 AM I help Mrs P with a problem in Word. She is trying to produce labels to be used on the spines of project photo books and shows me an example. She is having difficulty with how to get text into a box in Word. A real easy problem to resolve. I take the opportunity to reiterate what we had discussed previously about good v bad photographs. I show her the first draft of the Shakti at a Glance/ Shakti Profile which was revised yesterday, emphasizing the need to augment it with the best photos we have. I use the technique of 'tell Mr P, Mrs P, re tell Mr P' quite regularly, it works :)
Mrs P brings up the topic of the Annual Report. I begin to show her a number of these from other organizations. We have been working this week on her Excel data visualisation skills so I take the opportunity to point out some good use of graphs within a couple of the reports by way of reinforcement. And give her a gentle reminder that she promised another blog entry on our PRI training camps for which she was graphing up the data yesterday.
Mr P joins us and we review several annual reports from Indian and International NGOs. This generates a good discussion of the pros and cons of their approaches, of what is liked and not liked in each, about the type of information and the type of photographs required for the production of ours. Opportunistic, this discussion, but it is a highly pertinent topic.
12 noon Meeting with Mr P.  We discuss the current emergency situation and the lack of doctors. The funding promised for 10 health camps in the villages we currently work in is insufficient to fund visits by a doctor from Rayagada Town. We discuss just how much we can do for the 47 villages in the affected area and the calls Mr P will be making this afternoon using the funders & suppliers contacts list I have generated over the last few days.  We discuss important v urgent,  about pragmatically drawing a line under some pieces of work and getting them off the to do list, of perfection v acceptable. We review preparations for BA's arrival, and the status of our other Short Term Assistance (STA) requests with VSO.
It was a good meeting. We end up with a prioritized work list, an agreement as to what will get completed this week by Mr P and by me; we have looked at how priorities can be established between conflicting demands on Mr P's time. I make a mental note to write up some examples of the time management methods we used for Mr P to refer to in the future. In addition, we have addressed some important questions about the upcoming Annual Report, in the context of desired goal of Credibility Alliance certification.
2:15PM Leave office and walk home
2:30PM Arrive home.
I wash my hands, feet and face. Sometimes I will take a full shower, but today as it is so hot I just need liquid, so I raid the fridge for a long cold fruit juice. I prepare and eat lunch. I wash up, tidy kitchen and wipe cooker clean, place the kitchen towels in to soak.  I unpack and store goodies bag contents, take picture and write thank you email to sender
3:30PM I sit down with a cup of tea and attempt the quick crossword - my once a week indulgence when The Guardian Weekly arrives! The brain is not complying and it remains unfinished after 30 minutes, so I change tact and write up this day so far for blog.
4:15 PM Back to work. I complete the final design work on organisation's business cards, letterheads, produce Word templates for business letters and begin work on design examples for the Annual Report. No I am not a communications specialist - but these are one off jobs which will help create a more professional appearance to the work of the NGO and give all the staff a greater sense of identity and pride in their NGO and its work. A good  feeling having another job struck of the list of things to do.
5:45 PM My landlady's daughter calls round on route to the shops. I send her of on an errand to buy more mosquito coils.  I light my last two, on in each room.
6:15 PM I spend a bit of time catching up with email from VSO, blogs, email and facebook messages from home, check ConstantReader book club bulletin board and write the second part of this blog entry.
7:00 PM I decide the shower can't be put off any longer. It has been a hot day, and the evening humidity is high, over 85%.
There's not much in the way of household tasks today just putting my clothes from last two days into soak over night. This will become one of tomorrow's jobs. I used to do washing on a Sunday, but for now the best way to get things dry in the rainy season is to have them hanging inside with the fans on, so that means doing washing in smaller amounts, every other day. I also have to wash my mosquito next  which I do about every 3 months, this should probably get done more often but I am rationing my supply of anti mosquito repellent for re sealing it. The other big household task is washing the floors and cleaning the bathroom,  which get done once a week, or slightly more often when the soot and dust deposits coming in the open vents and windows from the coal and ore carrying railway wagons really get to me, but again probably not as often as they should be done!
8:30 PM I prepare and eat dinner and wash up. Tonight I catch up on the furore over the Commonwealth Games debaucle. Other nights it could be an attempt at the cryptic crossword, or the sudoku, and some language work or some reading.
10:30 PM I take another shower - at the peak of the hot season I was showering 4-5 times a day. I head to bed with my Sony ereader and a copy of C J Sansom's Dark Fire, the second in his medieval detective murder mystery series.

For how long should a bar of soap last?

This isn't an idle question!

Exclude detergent usage in the kitchen, the washing of  clothes, shampoo to wash your hair, and just concentrate on how much soap a person uses to wash themselves. Take me for example, at home I tend to buy in bulk, buying large bottles of body wash, value packs of several cakes of soap at a time. I usually have several different types of body wash on the go simultaneously.  Then there is the soap, hard or liquid,  located in the bathroom and in the kitchen for hand washing.   At home I shower once a day. If I am going out, have been to the gym or have been working in the garden or the like, then there would be a second, and rarely a third . Additionally, I would wash my hands after a toilet visit and probably several times more in the course of an average day. But all that said, I have never actually calculated how long one bar of soap lasts.

Here in India, it is different. The biggest I buy is one bar of soap, and that is a small size compared to the standard size in the UK. I don't have a spare one in the house  but  I checked on the side of the Lux body wash container - it is 125ml. Now I tend to keep the body wash for traveling, and as emergency supplies, so my normal daily washing tipple is my bar of soap.  I reckon, barring the odd one which has slipped out of my hands to go flying off down the squat toilet, that I get through one bar at least every two weeks, give or take. It was definitely more in the hot season when I was showering 4 times every day at least!

Anyways, after the last flying bar episode I had been thinking I was using a lot of soap. But was I really using a lot or just thinking I was? Was the soap remaining wet in the humid atmosphere making it not last as long? Was I using more soap to work up a lather here than at home?   That train of thought parked up until this week when I am doing some work to help with fund raising for an emergency response to the rising numbers of deaths from diarrhea and cholera that are being reported in the rural KBK region of southern Orissa. Fellow volunteer Nikki suggested approaching Hindustan Unilever re soap supplies. So we added this to our short but growing list of corporates to approach for emergency supplies as we try to get oral rehydration kits, water purification tablets etc into these very remote areas. 

When compiling a list of things we need to know when approaching these corporations for assistance, one thing is to have worked out just how many bars of soap we need.  I've read that a person infected with cholera produces about 15 litres of diarrheic fluid per day! Everything has to be washed. Every time a non infected person touches anything belonging to the infected person they should be washed. So there is quite a lot of washing. Hence the question how long does a bar of soap last?

Take the Kasipur block we are working  We know the number of villages. We know the number of households and people, adults and children, in each village. So if I using a bar every 2 weeks (14 days), then 4 people would use a bar in 14/4 = 3.5 days. Lets say 4. So lets say in an affected area, if a family of 4 uses 1 bar of soap every 2 days, that's 16 for the month. So for every 1000 people, we need 1000/4 * 16 = 4000 bars of soap! Retail, a bar costs 16 Rupees. That's 64,000 Rupees! Now I can see my financial acclimatization well nigh complete because that sounds a lot of money, and it is here in India. But a change of perspective later, with a cross check on the current exchange rate ( about 71 Rupees to the GBP, 45 Rupees to the US$) I remind myself that it is only just under 900GBP or $1400.

A very unusual thing happened on the way to the office.....

I am walking up through the nagar to the office in the morning when an auto  approaches from the side lane and turns into the way I am walking. Now you don't see many autos venturing into the potholed tracks of our nagar. But this is Govinda, our locally resident auto driver. He moved into one of the houses nearer to the railway line than mine a few months back, so of course I had started to use him when I wanted to go to the market, and he was great he would wait till the marketing was completed, he waited at the tailors when I waited on my shalwar kameez to be finished, he took a detour to the chicken seller on the way home.  I recall that he'd given me a welcome back shout and smile a few days ago when he noticed I had returned here. This time he shouts something I don't catch. I see he has a passenger so assuming it is some Good morning greeting I carry on walking. Then to my surprise he slows down and signals for me to get in. Are the heavens about to open up with another monsoon downpour I wonder?  Does he think I am going to the market?  Now I know from visiting Jen that auto shares are common in Bhubaneshwar, but here no, if you are to share there is a whole negotiation to go through between the sharing parties and with the driver.  It is not an everyday occurrence and something which does not happen quickly. It has only happened to me once when someone wanted to get to the railway station and I already had the auto. This is clearly not a share. My office is only a few minutes walk away but I get in and as best I can indicate that I want off at the corner leading to my office, that I am not going far. I get out, wondering if I should pay something and of course not actually having any change with me, except notes in my wallet in my back pack - damn these shalwar that don't have pockets. But he merrily goes on his way.  I smile. Wasn't that nice! He's definitely cultivating a customer relationship - but good on him! A bit  like my grocer who now gives me a free bag of water to drink when I visit his shop. I make a mental note to cultivate my auto driver relationship as well.

A brush with a tea caddy - or, there's no use crying over spilt tea.

I was running very low on tea at the weekend, having almost finished all my nice stuff - down to my last pot  of Jasmine and last couple of Earl Grey tea bags. So I thought I had better stock up with some of the local stuff. Being in India does not mean getting nice tea. I suppose it is all exported  to earn vital foreign exchange. So in practice tea means a choice between Dust Tea ( yes that's what it is called) and Leaf Tea, which in my opinion is still tea dust. And of course it is all loose, no tea bags. So I bought my packet of Taj Mahal Tea and duly opened and emptied it into the canister. That was yesterday.
Now comes lunch time today and I go to make tea. I lift the tea caddy from the shelf and away it flies, I am left holding the lid in my hand with tea all over the kitchen floor. No big deal I hear you say, it is dry, the floor is marble, all is well just get the dust pan and brush and sweep it all up and into the waste bin.  Well yes it is dry, but wrong on all  other counts. Ok you know already there is no such thing as waste bins and waste disposal here. It is over the wall onto the pile for the  cows and goats to rummage through. But how to get it there? Therein lies the difficulty.
When I first moved in I bought a dustpan along with a pile of other household items. Upon unpacking at home I discovered it is missing its brush. No I am told by the shopkeeper, there is no brush. I need a brush I say, he duly obliges and a brush is produced. No I have one of those , I want a small brush. No, no small brush. That was now several months ago and I am still looking for a small brush. Since then I have actually seen a woman sweeping up something into a dustpan with one of these grass or stick brushes that every respecting Indian housewife has. Here's mine, a grass one, about 3 feet in length , complete with Barbie Pink DayGlow Handle - makes you think about dressing up on a long cloak and flying off. And I have just about as much chance of doing that as of using it to usher dust and debris into the dustpan. There is no directional control. Dust redistribution, yes: dust collection, no way! 
So as regards the spilt tea, I manage to get much of the tea dust into the pan and then it is down on hands and knees, wet cloth in hand in an attempt to wipe the rest of it up.  I then start the whole tea making process  over again, half a packet of tea lost to the field mice. Thank goodness it was only dust tea and not my beloved Jasmine. I'll be trampling on tea particles now for days each time thinking what I wouldn't give for a decent brush and a decent cuppa!

Hoping my brand new exit permit actually works......

Some of you might be aware that I receive some sad news a couple of days ago via a comment to this blog. So I spent all of Wednesday and much of today, Thursday, arranging for an exit permit and flights home for the month. As other vols will know traipsing round the various offices of the bureaucracy that is the government of India, especially when it involves different branches is an exercise in patient determination. Combine that with being out here in the sticks where local officials have never had to do what you are asking of them before, and have no resource, written or online, to tell them what they are supposed to do and you have a recipe for a small job taking a long time. This is then made even longer by the passing the problem onto someone else that is rampant here. I won't go on about it but suffice to say after much to-ing and fro-ing as of late this morning I have in my possession an exit permit. Phew! I had seriously expected it to take much longer. This document is suppose to allow me to leave the country, to explain that my expired visa stamp in my passport is superceded by my application for an extension which is already in progress and has been since April, and also hopefully let me back into India . There is a nagging Doubting Thomas in my head that will only be quiet once I am seated on the international flight.
So Saturday morning bright and early I shall be picked up by a car to drive me the 5 hours to Vizag airport - booking this late meant no train seats, otherwise I would have been up even earlier! A 2PM flight to Mumbai, arriving circa 5:30 then a massive wait till a 02:20 AM flight to London - I hope there is something to keep me going and somewhere nice to sit and eat something at Mumbai airport. I should arrive Sunday 07:30AM local time in London. K is picking me up, bless him, then I shall catch up on sleep, eat some nice food, K is a great cook, and am looking forward to promised Champagne in the bath - no not to soak in just to drink to celebrate my first bath since early November and also their new bathroom. Then it will be down to practicalities, as I shall have to buy some summer clothes as the only UK clothes that are in my emergency bag at K's are winter ones, as I had not intended to be back until after the end of my placement.  I shall be living out of a suitcase for the time I am there and bunking up with friends as I have tenants in my house and all my stuff in store - thanks in advances folks, you know who you are! I shall be playing it by ear and there is no fixed planned itinery, other than to see J. She is currently in hospital  in Derby , but may be moved. J and I have known each other for nearly 40 years, having met in our first few days at university - gosh that is a long time ago! I have never met anyone with such a positive attitude and such inner strength of spirit as J - today she teases me about having to wear a mask to visit, in fact maybe even full diver's gear coming  from India she jokes :) Way you go girl!
So anyways, the blog may slow down, but I shall keep you posted and be back, hang on in there with me.

Goody boxes

Suddenly I am replete with goody boxes. After Eleanor's arrived 10 days or so ago, I feasted on Kit Kats, Oat biscuits and really very good Dorset Cereal muesli and read letters from the boys. Then a couple of days ago a packet came from Hilary, an ex vol. This was the one with the Jasmine tea and the hair treatments I am so in need of.  Then today, 2 parcels in one day - a second from Hilary with tins of fish and muesli bars, with another hand written letter and one from Ken delivering bodily goodies like deodorant, decent bug repellent, a cobber to replace my disintegrated one, and spectacles cleaner. He expertly used the innards of the toilet paper to house the bottles safely! Ace packing Ken! Clearly I am now benefiting from all the practice you got in the South Pacific sending packages home to Sally :)  I feel totally spoilt especially as I believe there are more packages en route - a classic case of glut and famine. Will it be possible to keep up this 100% delivery record? Remain tuned to find out.

Une nouvelle tini pour moi

These past few days have seen a major festival in Orissa. The 12th  was Sabitri Amabasya, then the 3 day festival of Raja Sankranti.  Sadly to say, I have seen nothing much in the way of celebratory activities here in Rayagada, other than my landlady telling me she wasn't eating and Mrs P telling me she had spent the weekend back with the women of her family back at her parents house making sweets!
The first festival is for married women to pray for the well being of their husbands and is based on the legend of Sabitri who rescued husband Satyavan from the clutches of the god of death. The whole legend can be read in the link above.
The second is again a festival for women, this time aimed at unmarried ones. Beginning on the 14th June, the first day is called Pahili Raja . Swings are erected, sweets are baked, new clothes are purchased. In the Indian calendar this date also heralds the start of the monsoon.  It is interesting to note that Indian months begin in the middle of our months and finish in the middle of our following month. This is because the calendar is based on the agricultural cycle and follows the waxing and waning of the moon. So with the monsoon comes the start of the agricultural year, and just as new crops are planted, so young woman are shown off! - the swings of time, of the seasons and of life!
So I am excused participation in the first festival as I am not married. I'm certainly not being shown of as an eligible woman - so no swing, and I don't like Indian sweets, but purely coincidently I had arranged to pick up a new Shalwar Kameez from the tailors on 15th. I'd spotted the fabric some weekends back when my landlady and I were shopping - she was looking at saris, and as she browsed my eyes just happened across this set on the side of the counter waiting to get shelved. I loved the red colouring and pattern of the shalwar in particular. It was reduced to all of 550 Rupees and tailoring cost me another 140, so for around £10 I now have a completed new suit or as A puts it "une nouvelle tini"

Malarial quandary

One of the hazards of  living in this region is malaria. Two of my work colleagues have had time off with malaria since I have been here. Orissa is a top malaria state in India and Rayagada is a particularly bad area for cerebral malaria. I sleep every night under a mosquito net and try and cover up as best I can at dusk when the little blighters abound.  The worse place is actually in the office where I often get bitten on my feet, a  hazard of not wearing shoes. No one wears them here, only sandals and it is etiquette to remove footwear before one enters a building - a house, shop, office whatever it is, shoes off. The office bought one of those liquid plug in anti mosquito things that work in the electric socket but it doesn't seem to do any good. The past month or so there have been less about - more ants, more beetles, less mosquitos - go figure. I suspect it will get much worse again come the monsoon and through the winter months the mosquito numbers will rise once more.

The prescribed regime of anti malarials I was recommended was Paludrine and Alvoclor. No way was I taking antibacterials like doxycycline for two years, Larium was out, and Malarone,  my normal anti malarial of choice, is not funded by VSO as it costs over £3 per tablet per day and I couldn't afford to pay for that out of my allowance (at  a current exchange rate of around 65 rupees a Malarone tab costs about 200 rupees, that 6000 rupees a month. I get 10000 per month to live on. The maths are simple) Unfortunately it is the one antimalarial I have been able to take without side effects, but in the UK it is not advised for long term use. The most I have taken it for before has been 6 weeks. So it was back to the double whammy regime of P&A: they work at different parts of the parasites life cycle. Lucky for me, as when I tried to take then in Central America I had very irritated gastrointestinal tract and had to give up on the Paludrine. This time I have been religiously taking them with lots of food. That has stopped the gastric upsets but only when they've been taken at the same time as eating, if I forget and take them even 30 minutes later, I get nauseous and end up puking up the most acidic tasting spittle ever. But I have been persevering.

However last month I had the second bout since I've been here of mouth ulcers, another side effect of Paludrine. The first time I got these I stopped for a few days and they cleared up, but the second time they came back with a vengeance. Eating was difficult, salty foods stung in my mouth, my lips looked like I had overdosed on collagen!  This was compounded by me succumbing to yet another side effect  - hair loss!  Unfortunately it is also a side effect of Alvoclor! Now I'm not particularly vain but I can't stand it, every time I comb my hair, or wash it strands are loosened, my plait is noticeably thinner. This has brought it to a point in time when I have just had to say enough is enough and I've taken a break the drugs. These side effects are reversible I am told, and it is a risk to stop taking them, but I have definitely reached that point. I don't want to look like a female version of the man who wears his last quiff of hair across the top of his bald head

I was never happy about taking Alvoclor for two years - its long term use has more serious side effects - retinal damage with continuous high dosage use for more than 12 months, weekly use for more than 3 years, or a total consumption of 100g.  Ok I shall not be getting up to those extended periods or to those high dosage levels - I am only taking 500mg per week, but how much difference is there between 2 and 3 years? Without personalized medicine how can one tell where on the spectrum of reaction to a drug anyone is? 

Those of you who know me well will know I don't like taking any medicines and very seldom do: the only exceptions to this have been preventatives and inoculations. Many of the long term volunteers here don't take any antimalarials but I have known people who have had malaria, and recurrent malaria so I had expected to take them, so succumbing to these side effects left me in a bit of a quandary. It is a big decision for me not to continue.  I only hope that since I have been healthy so far in India, my strong immune system will see me through and I can get some further supplies of mosquito repellent before the next wave of the buzzing insects descend!

Missing....

It is clearly something that happens about 6 months into a placement but one seems to be thinking about home quite a bit, one's home comforts etc. I've noticed it with other volunteers that it happens about the same time. They have said to me that they miss things like good coffee and cheese. I don't drink coffee so no worries there and much as I love a nice piece of cheese, I haven't had those intense cravings for it that others have described - paneer being no substitute for a good strong chedder, a solid tangy Red Leicester, or a ripe and runny Brie, whichever your favorite cheese tipple is.

So it got me thinking about what I really am missing and what I will and won't miss when eventually I get home - these are not in any particular order and iinclude some surprise when I started to list them out .... so excuse the indulgence but these are what I am missing

• Green grass
• Blue skies
• Seeing the stars in a cloudless night sky
• Sleeping outside
• Clean air
• Dry air
• Dry heat
• Recycling
• Stimulating conversation
• Being touched
• Cuddles and hugs
• Soaking in a bath tub
• Pottering in the garden
• the sea breeze
• peace and quiet
• a cold glass of Sauvignon Blanc
• Digestive Biscuits
• Oatmeal biscuits
• Full cream milk
• Cream
• Trifle
• roast lamb
• smoked fish
• crunching on a crisp raw carrot, in fact being able to eat cold and raw food
• boiled ham
• good quality muesli
• muesli bars
• choice
• chats with friends
• exercise
• a good film
• a comfortable chair
• lounging on a big sofa or relaxing on a comfy floor mattress
• the warm glow of a winter's log fire ( OK I know it is it is hot here but there is something about those flames)
• 24hr broadband
• and last but not least Axxxx - tu me manque :(

what I won't miss when I get home

• plastic chairs and the consequential sweaty bums
• dahl
• train horns
• Indian long haul trains which either arrive or leave in the wee small hours of the morning
• tasteless naan - although yesterday I had my first really nice one, so light and tasty it was almost like filo :)
• marble foors - becoming second only to glass table tops as the bane of my life
• boiling and filtering drinking water
• ants
• humidity
• curry
• very very sweet Indian sweets and drinks like Thumbs up, sweetened toothpaste
• power cuts, planned and unscheduled alike
• street dogs - I've recently encountered a particularly snappy, barky one, mutual instant dislike.
• sweeping the floor with a grass brush
• washing the floor every other day in an unending attempt to rid the house of the soot from trains
• washing clothes by hand and having them still smell stale even when freshly laundered
• room fans which blow up all the dust and dry your eyes out so you wake up feeling like they are on stalks
• the time it takes to get things done
• Indian officialdom and bureaucracy

what I will miss when I get home

• the cheapness of food
• tasty potatoes
• the way Indian mobile telephone companies message you after a call to tell you how much the call cost and to update your balance
• cheap telephone calls
• colourful saris
• Shalwar Kameez - I  love wearing these, especially the shalwar and will more then likely bring some home

It will be interesting to compare this list from 6 months in with what my cravings will be at 12, 18 months into this sojourn and with what I indulge in once I get home.

Pop goes Orissa

Last Thursday I was telephoned at about 10PM by my colleague and now neighbour Mr Padhi to say him and another colleague Santosh were on their way to my house. Rapid dressing took place as I had just had a pre bed shower! It turns out they were coming to invite me to accompany them, their wives and children to a concert which was being held over in Housing Board Colony, the nagar next to ours. It has been an annual event now for the past 5 years and lasts for 4 days and was well attended. All the main road was lit up with lights, a bit like the strings of multicoloured lights that adorn British towns at Christmas time.

When we got there, the organisers were giving out gifts to the folks from the Old Age Persons Home which my NGO runs. The young people who organise the concert had decided to do this and everyone one from the Home had turned out this evening. They were given gifts of a piece of cloth and some food and sweets. Some of the old dears couldn't make it up onto the stage for their presentations, others had to be helped up the makeshift steps, but everyone got something.

Then the music started. I had no idea what to expect, traditional Oriya songs, Hindi Bollywood stuff or what. The modern Orissan pop was a bit of a revelation!. It wasn't so much the singers, or even the music that surprised me: it was the dancers. In a comparatively traditional area of the country, here were young women, in western clothes, jeans, a dress showing legs and even a tee short which almost showed midrift, gyrating away on stage in public, much to the delight of the crowds. Amusingly I wondered if having one thin and one more well built girl dancer in each pair was planned. In the first pair the girl in orange tee short reminded me of someone from a Chinese movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or House of Flying Daggers or the like, some Wu Xia film where the choreographed fight scenes are made possible by complex wire work and the characters movements seem unnaturallly fast and furious. In the second pairing, the girl in the black dress, with what looked like black cycle shorts on underneath presumably for modesty, wouldn't have looked out of place as a waif extra in a Dickensian fim set in her desinger grunge tatters.  Curious.

The audience seem to like it. It was a family audience, of all ages. When we arrived I was amazed to hear someone call my name. I turned round to see Gauri, one of the young girls from my nagar, she's about 10 I should think, beaming all over as she Namasted me from her seat with her friends.  I could imagine her friends all wondering how and being amazed that she knew foreigner auntie by name! I happily made her night and Namasted her back, smiled and waved. It made a nice change from the usual hordes who come and ask me which country I am from, which of course, happended for the rest of the evening, much to the amusement of Rasa and Madri my colleagues wives who shared an Oriyan giggle over this.

An unexpected and fun evening from which I finally got home and made it to bed just before 1AM!