Some success

At last - I have received my some mail from the UK.  Still no sign of any of the parcels posted by my husband from around 26th August but at least my Guardian Weekly has started to arrive.  So far, I've had 2 deliveries, each of 2 papers.  The first delivery last Saturday was for weeks 25/09-01/10 and 9-15/10, today's delivery was for 02-09/10 and 15-22/10.  Not in quite the order that I'd anticipated but I'm very nearly up to date (or I will be when I've read them).  It's been a real pleasure to be able to catch up with a version of my favourite paper.  I'm not convinced I'll ever see my parcels but I can hope.

I have at last had some achievements at work.  My procurement policies and procedures have got past the accountant's eagle eyes with just a few adjustments to the form layouts which didn't take long to do.  At last!  All I have to do now is get the acceptance of our boss, the external accountant and the board.  It's a minor detail but it's given my spirits a huge lift to have achieved this small but significant milestone.  And that's not all.  I have acceptance of the majority of the draft HR manual, there are just a few questions on policies and procedures that had not been thought about before.  Now that's a real achievement, it's the biggest and hardest chunk of work I've done so far, I'm no HR expert.  Hurrah and thanks to my friends who are HR experts and helped me with this!

Every day as I walk to and from the office, people stop to talk to me.  I often see students coming and going from their accommodation and know many of them by sight now.  One of them introduced himself a few days ago and told me he was a student at the Talent College here in Kopaput.  I asked him what he was studying and his response was "talent".  There's another bunch of students I often chat to who, these are student nurses.  They always wave to me from their hostel when I go past, one of them walking along the road with me pointed to one of the waving women and said "that's my Madam".  I really need to learn more Oriya, sometimes things get lost in translation.

The paddy fields that I walk past every day on my way to and from work are being harvested.  It all looks really hard work.  I'm sure they are more able to cope with the heat than I am but it's so labour intensive, no machinery used at all.  When we first arrived in August they were planting it, by hand.  They are now cutting it, by hand.  Gathering it into bundles and carrying across the fields to the road, by hand.  Then lifting it onto carts, by hand.  No doubt it will all be threshed by hand as well.  And I buy it for 20 rupees a kilo in the markets here.  I am constantly amazed at the weights that the women can carry on their heads, huge bundles of still green rice plants complete with seed heads must be pretty heavy (I have seen as many as 12 bricks being carried on one head).  Today I saw a woman walking home from working in the fields carrying her scythe that she'd been using to cut the stems, the curved blade draped over the curve of her head.

The women doing the cutting are just about visible above the seed heads, it looks back-breaking work constantly bending over to cut the stems.

Picking their way back across the field for their lunch break, the field is still flooded and most of them have bare feet.

The stooks of rice stacked along the side of the harvested field, waiting to be taken out to the road.

Bundles of rice waiting to be taken away for threshing.