This is getting tedious

Yet again we have had a Sunday without electricity.  I have no idea what time it was switched off, all I know is that it was not working when I tried a light switch at around 7 this morning and has only just returned at around 6:30 (with a couple of small hiccups in the preceding hour when it came back, I blew out the candles then it went off again several times).  This is the day when many of us volunteers try to catch up on household chores like washing - hard if your water tank is empty and there is no electricity to pump water up from the well.

Sunday is also the day when we do the main shopping for our week's supply of food.  This I did achieve, fortunately that is not dependant on a steady supply of power although sadly one of the shops I had assumed would be open was all shuttered up.  Tomatoes were today's big bargain at 5 rupees a kilogram.  Tomato soup for supper all week I think.  Jon is curled up in bed with a dose of the rapid Indian weight-loss diet, poor thing.  Is tomato soup good for a dodgy belly?

The building plot next door to my house continues to evolve in mysterious ways.  Gaps that had been left for doors and windows have been bricked up while new gaps have been created.  A group of 4-6 women do the hard work of mixing the mortar by hand then carrying it up for the brickies to paste the bricks together.  All this is done via my front yard, steps and roof which seems to be the easiest way for them to get it up to the height where it's needed, ducking underneath the washing hanging up there to dry, leaving spots of mortar all over the place.  There is also a nice trail of splats of mortar, grit and sand en route from the gate to my yard, up the drive and steps and across the roof.  Occasionally they sweep up but not very often.  I have found myself getting more and more paranoid about keeping the outside of the house clean in an effort to minimise the attraction for ants and to keep the drainage clear and end up sweeping up after them 3-4 times a week.

They seem to have colonised the area around my house, leaving their tiffin tins on the steps out of the sun all morning then sitting on my roof to eat in the early afternoon, sometimes playing games in the yard outside my front door - all within the boundaries of my property and almost falling into my house in their revelries.  I came home on Friday to find someone's motorbike parked outside my door with a big-boss builder contemplating the works from my roof.  Saturday I went upstairs with my washing to find the plot owner was also up in my roof with his wife, son and mother.  The big problem is that I have no contact with the landlord.  The lease is held by another NGO who want to retain a space for their next volunteer and pay the rent.  My NGO has no contact with the landlord and I have no way of finding out  if he's given the builders permission to work from his property.  Maybe I should just put a padlock on the gate to see if anyone complains?  I suspect they'd just climb over the wall as I've seen them do several times to get to their building material compound - which just happens to be my yard.  Grrrr!