A tale of toilet tissue

Today being another holiday Mike, Ali and I decided to have a day out and went to Jaypore, a much bigger town not far away.  We all squashed onto the bus like sardines, along with about 150 other people and a bag of chickens on the luggage rack, clung to the bars and handrails while going up the hills, round the bends and over the lumps and bumps in the road to arrive feeling a bit bruised and battered an hour later.   I don’t know how the chickens felt.

We wandered around the market and some of the shops which seem huge and really well stocked after the tiny stalls in the much poorer town of Koraput.  I found a stall where I could buy some fabric to make into tea-towels and some handkerchiefs to replace the ones stolen off my washing line by a cow.  One of the things that M and I really wanted to try to find was somewhere that sold comfy chairs, desperate to get away from the ubiquitous plastic chairs which are all we can get in Koraput.  I’ve seen some lovely cane chairs that I’ve taken a fancy to but had been told they were brought from Bhubaneswar, too far for me to travel for chairs.  A very nice man looking after another shop told us where to find a furniture shop then proceeded to escort us through a maze of back alleys to find it.  It was of course closed.  However, he insisted we take his phone number so he can help us next time we are in Jaypore.

Ali found a shop stocking decent tea – you’d think in India that it should be easy to get good tea.  Not in Koraput, all that seems to be available there is Tata tea.   I’m a bit of a tea snob and love good tea.  I usually end up throwing away half my morning cuppa here as it’s so disgusting.  I proceeded to risk getting 500gm of a tea that looked and smelled good but was as yet untested.   Ali took me to a fabric shop that sells fabrics using traditional tribal weaves and patterns where I bought a sari to use as a bedspread and a couple of lengths of fabric to have made up into copies of a lovely top that I had bought elsewhere in India. 

We found a little shop where I managed to buy myself a set of 4 knives, forks and spoons, 4 china mugs (small but better than steel or plastic), a can opener to finally open the can of tuna left behind in my house by Carol, a pestle and mortar for my spices, a tin caddy to keep the ants out of my new tea and a rechargeable emergency light to light my way when we have one of the many power cuts that are happening every few hours.  A good shop and we were still accompanied by our new-found friend and guide.   Our quest for comfy chairs thwarted, we trudged our way back along the main road to the shop we’d seen earlier that sells pillows and cushions and splashed out to a pillow and cushion each to try to make our plastic chairs more bearable.

The best find of the day was the shop that sold toilet paper.  This was about the 6th shop that Ali had tried, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to which shop to go to for anything in India, toilet paper being particularly awkward.  Our Koraput shop had sold out of toilet paper and this being something we like to keep in stock we were on the lookout for more supplies.  Ali found those supplies and Mike proceeded to buy up all his stock – all 17 rolls of it.  I asked him if he had a problem he needed to talk about which for some reason made Ali collapse with laughter.  What’s so funny about toilet paper?  Our guide looked somewhat bemused by the volume but the shopkeeper seemed to think it was a perfectly normal transaction and worked out how much to charge for the loot.  Mike was a happy man and promised to share out his goodies at home.  I stuffed all 17 rolls into a bag and off we went. 

Toilet paper is fairly voluminous and we were fairly laden down with other goodies and decided we didn’t fancy squashing ourselves plus shopping onto a bus.  We treated ourselves to a taxi back home, waving goodbye to our guide.  This was an extravagance at 400 rupees instead of 10 but shared between 3 of us seemed worth the cost to save the aggro of prising ourselves into the bus.  It also meant that we could see the landscape out of the windows which pleased me; it’s lovely and quite spectacular in places.   I wished I’d had my camera when we went past the cattle-market being held by the road just outside Jaypore, apparently around 1000 head are sold there every week.  This explained the larger than usual number of cattle we’d seen wandering along the roads with herders encouraging them on.  I made us a cup of tea en we got home and it was really good, the best tea I’ve drunk since I’ve been here. 

Off to my newly found friendly neighbours for supper combined with hugs and kisses on arrival and departure and being made comfortable on a bed, reclining on nicely arranged pillows – rooms double up as bedrooms and sitting rooms and beds become chairs during the day here – nothing is specialist here.  They call me Auntie.  Except for the loss of all mobile phone and modem signal for most of the day – 4th day running it’s been a successful day.

Dussera

Today is the day of the Dussera festival when most people don't go to work and the town was thronged with people dressed in their finery.  It's a really colourful, noisy event and everywhere I went with my camera I had people wanting me to take their photos.  After my rude awakening of the morning and clean-up exercise I decided to catch up with some emails and do a bit of work.  Then the electricity went off, followed by my modem and mobile phone.  When my battery was down to the last 10 minutes I decided to give up and go for a walk.  That's when the heavens opened with a cyclone storm.  I got wet.  But it didn't really matter as it was warm and I took some photos on the way round a rural road that took me round a big curve and back into the town or Koraput.

View across some of the Koraput hills near the Kolab reservoir, part of the Machkund Dam series of reservoirs

I need to learn to carry things on my head like this

More than usually colourful Koraput market place

A tribal family

One of the dozens of tribal stalls with the produce beautifully presented and laid out

Kids jostling for attention

And some more

This cow obviously fancied a change from rotten cabbage

Wheels

The cows don't care where they lie, everything has to go round them

Autorickshaw decorated for Dussera

Not sure how many people will fit into one rickshaw, my maximum count so far is 15

 

 Five on a bike

 

 Beautifully decorated bus on it's way to Jaypore.  Why did it say Good Luck on the back?

 

This one says Good Luck on the front

This one belongs to a petrol tanker.  So that's why the lorries say Good Luck.

Another day off work

I woke up this morning still feeling full and needing to do some exercise so decided I needed to wash through some clothes again - they'd been washed but didn't smell good.  These are things that I first washed just after I arrived in Koraput and they took so long to dry that they ended up smelling sour and musty as the water slowly turned stagnant.  Not a great perfume so I had left them soaking with detergent overnight and washed them through this morning.  Now washing bending down over a bucket in the bathroom is a messy business and I usually end up with my clothes soaking.  This weekend I'm alone in the house, the shutters were all closed so I decided to take off my pyjama bottoms while I did the washing to make life a bit easier for myself. 

At least I was just slightly covered up.  As I wandered back through the house I jumped when one of the builders flung open a shutter from the outside and shouted "Pani pani" at me  and pointing up to the roof.  This took me by surprise as it was about 6:45 in the morning and on Dussera festival day when noone works.  Oh well, I just had to cover up and go to switch on the water pump.  There is a big water tank on the roof which is filled by water pumped up from our tube well, the murky looking pit just outside the house.  The roof has a new hard surface on it that I guess needs to dry slowly to stop in cracking and they keep wanting to flood the roof with water from the tank.  I hope we are not on a meter, it seems such a waste as I see water pouring over the roof and out through the new drainage outlets.

By this time I was well awake and needing to burn off a bit of the aggro from my surprise visitor as well as yesterday's calories so I set-to with a scraper on all the bits of mortar splashed all over the floors.  They don't feel great under bare feet.  I hadn't been able to find a paint scraper similar to the ones we use at home when decorating so have improvised with a kitchen spatula I found that's a bit more solid than most.  So the next couple of hours were spent on my hands and knees scraping the floor with a spatula, brushing up the mess with my paintbrush/dustpan brush (fully clothed) followed by a swill down with the mop and bucket.  Why do I do these things on my holiday I wonder?   Probably because I'm too tired to to it after a day at work. I'm beginning to think that I really should have gone away for the weekend to have a proper rest.

I'm stuffed

I started the day by deciding that I needed to do a bit of cleaning up after the builders.  I may regret my efforts as they haven't finished yet and will be back soon to continue making a mess.  However, there is a small balcony to the side of the house which has a small drain outlet at one end.  Not so long ago, that drain got blocked by builders rubble, the monsoon rain flooded the balcony and water poured into the house, flooding the floor with several inches of water.  The monsoon has slowed right down but there is still the odd downpour and I decided to avoid the risk of a repetition of the flood and cleared the rubbish off the balcony and cleaned the mortar off the windows, shutters and grilles.  I got filthy and sweaty and wore out my broom.  I also cleaned out the fridge which was starting to look a bit fluffy around the seal and found a cabbage rotting inside a bag at the back.  I made a passing cow very happy when I chucked her the cabbage.

Mike called me mid-morning and asked if I wanted to go into town.  I jumped at the opportunity as I'd had enough of cleaning for one day.  We both had shopping lists of things we wanted to get for our houses to try to turn them into something a bit more like homes.  It is very sad when we think about how excited we are by our purchases.  I was thrilled to find that there is a shop in Koraput that sells proper full-size sheets.  Most of the sheets here seem to be more like drapes, not big enough to tuck in at the ends and sides so they get all wrinkled up underneath while you are in bed.  Not so comfy.  Just look at what I managed to buy today:

Aren't they lovely?  A little different to the plain white or cream sheets I have on my bed at home but they are big enough to stretch across the whole bed and tuck in at the sides!

 My next exciting find was a plate rack so that I can get the washing up off the worktop and somewhere on the floor out of the way.  We are blessed with a worktop that drains away from the sink so when I leave washing-up on the side the water runs off to the side and sits in a puddle in the corner.  Even more exciting than that was a new broom to replace the one that I've worn out on the builders rubble.  I cannot find a Western style broom with a decent brush-head and long handle, all that I have found here so far are bunches of twigs or seed heads or rushes.  I've found the rush most effective, the seed heads just leave seeds behind, the twigs miss half the dirt and send bits flying everywhere but the rush ones are OK.  Look at this:

My lovely new broom

Sadly I ended up having to buy 2 of these brooms as the first one disappeared from the pole straps on the side of my rucksack - possibly stolen by a passing cow who took a fancy to it.  Fortunately these things only cost 7 rupees each and they are fully biodegradable so I just made the vendor very happy to have sold 2 to me in one day.

The best find of the day though was the egg-boxes.  Someone asked me after my last blog posting about how easy it is to get eggs here.  They are easy to find, less easy to carry home as they are put into bags to bring back.  But today we found egg boxes - wonderful!

So Koraput really does have egg boxes

Mike was also very pleased to find  the egg boxes and proceeded to make use of it when he bought more eggs.  It was a toss up whether this was his best purchase of the day or the nails he bought.  Don't we live exciting lives here in Koraput?

We finished the morning by a very nice and very large lunch at a hotel in town, courtesy of Mike.  We chose tandoori chicken and chicken biryani to share.  All the chicken's we'd seen here in Koraput have been pretty small and weedy so we decided to go for a whole chicken for us to share.  Bad idea, there was more meat there than I'd normally eat in a week.  I was pretty full as we staggered back up the hill home with our loot.

On my return I had a shower and washed my clothes and new sheets.  While pegging them out on the line, my neighbours called out to me and asked me to come into their house to talk to them.  This was the first time I'd managed to say more than a brief namaskar to them.  Today I was introduced to them all and was made very welcome in their home.  Bhaskar is a linguist who speaks around 15 languages, he's offered to help me learn Oriya with the assistance of his niece who also lives there along with her daughter and various other family members.  I ended up staying there for about 4 hours and they insisted that I ate dinner.  More chicken masala, with egg noodles, rice and dhal.  Now I am so stuffed I can hardly move.   I couldn't refuse the offer of a meal as it would have been considered very rude and bad manners, eating is a very important part of the culture here and it's not good to leave food on your plate.  People are always asking me if I have eaten, did I cook it and what have I eaten.  I guess the concern and interest is triggered by the malnutrition and starvation that is all too common here.  I won't need to eat again for another week!

A day off work

It's Dussera festival weekend here in India, celebrating  Durga's triumph over the demon Mahishasura.  The festival lasts for 10 days and is one of the most auspicious occassions of the Hindu calendar.  Most businesses close for a day or so holiday, I have 6 full days without work!  This is great for me as I'm feeling pretty tired after the stress of arrival in India, learning new things, travel across to Orissa (twice), trying to make a home and get to grips with a new job.  

Yesterday I had a really exciting day, walking twice into town to get some food and bits and pieces for my house.  I did my shopping in the wrong order, really not thinking things through properly beforehand.  I had invited A and M round for supper and decided to make something using chicken.  This was the first time I'd ventured into carniverous cuisine here and I hadn't experienced the chicken store before.  Let's just say I can be sure that my chicken was extremely fresh.  I decided that I needed to get the chicken home ASAP and into the fridge as it was a pretty warm day, the rest of the shopping would have to wait.  And the meat needed to be cooled down!

I walked back into town for a second time in the afternoon to look for a couple of tin trunks to store my clothes, towels and my one spare sheet in.  Up till now my belongings have been stuffed into cases or vacuum bags strewn around the place.  It's really nice to be able to get them put away properly and easy to find again.  The trunks were too big and heavy to carry home so after trying to explain to the storeholder that I would leave them at his store while I found an auto to take me home (he spoke no English and my Oriya will not stretch that far) I got an auto just around the corner and told the driver what I wanted by gesticulating wildly.  We stuffed the trunks onto the seat next to me and rattled our way over the bumps and potholes up the slope towards home with me pointing and grunting to try to explain the route.  I know where my house is and how to get there  but don't yet know the address which adds to the challenge.  I'm a bit like a dog that knows how to get home but can't tell you the address.  He got me home safely and only charged me 20 rupees and a handshake for the privelage.  My house is starting to look slightly more presentable and I might even have more chance of finding things.

There is a string of email banter going on among the VSO volunteers here in India at the moment.  It was triggered by a 'basket of goods' survey we were asked to complete to gather info on the cost of living, presumably to check that the VSO allowance is adequate.  One of the items was cheese, something that's very difficult to find in rural India and not easy in cities.  The 'best store in Koraput' sometimes has processed cheese, a little like Dairylea spread.  Not quite the local farmhouse cheeses that I treat myself to back at home but it is a welcome change to be able to put something savoury onto my bread.  This survey sent us vols into a series of mails all of us craving cheese and threatening to break into the houses of volunteers who admitted that they had managed to procure cheese.  It's strange what having to live without a favourite food can do to us.  I threatened M with a lynching when he was served in front of me in our local best store and he proceeded to buy up Amar's whole stock of cheese, all 4-5 packets.  I thought that was just not fair but he relented and very kindly brought one of the packs round to my house the next  day along with a couple of cans of Fosters so order is restored in this part of Koraput.  A and M came round to share my chicken concoction for supper.   I was beginning to crave something other than curry and managed to conjures something up with chicken, mushrooms, tomatoes, beans and peas along with some basil and thyme I'd brought from home.  It seemed to go down OK and all the food was eaten without ill effect.  But no cheese-board, sadly.

The builders are still hard at work on my house.  I arrived home from work on Thursday to find scaffolding in the house.  They use bamboo poles for scaffolding here and there are half a dozen poles shoved through the grilles on the window, balanced on the frame with a bit of thin wire wrapped round to hold them in place.  

This one's right outside my bedroom door and I was worried I'd walk straight into the splintery bamboo which is at eye-level so it's now tastefully decorated with my one cushion of the house

At the moment they are busy finishing off the base of the parapet wall that's appeared round the roof.  And of course there are bits of mortar, wet and dry flying into the house.  Reminds me of when we had builders into our home in the UK a couple of years ago.  There's lots of shouting and hammering going on out there, echoing wildly around the house which has no soft furnishings to absorb noise.  Time to go out and see what festival celebrations are building up in town for this evening I think.

A day at the office

There was a workshop on disability orientation today at my NGO, delivered to most of the SPREAD programme coordinators to enhance their understanding of the problems facing people with any sort of disability.  It was facilitated in Hindi by Praveen from VSO with translations where needed into English and the tribal languages used by many of the people there.  I didn't understand most of it but was able to pick up the gist of the programme and had to join in the laughter at some of the exercises which looked great fun at the same time as being pretty informative.  The team were divided into groups and each group were told to simulate a different disability and then to eat lunch outside.  The pictures tell the story much better than I could

 First find your way out of the workshop

 

 And then round the side to wash your hands

The only way to lift a stack of plates with  your hands tied is with the help of a partner

Eating with your hands tied adds to the challenge of no cutlery

 

 Margaret & Ajaya from SPREAD and Praveen from VSO

I wish I could read this

 

 I managed to get M to take a photo of me but I am looking really self-conscious and no salwar kameez today

Back home for the evening we shared a few drinks with Mike, Ajaya and Praveen and put the world to rights and talked about our favourite music.   It seems that Praveen shares my Johnny Cash obsession which helped me to feel a bit more at home.

Home at last

I survived another overnight train ride from Bhuba back to Koraput.  I was a bit apprehensive as a family with 2 very young children were sharing our section of the train but the kids were as good as gold and had a great time using the bunks and ladders as climbing frames and swings this morning.  We did a bit of a swap with the berths to make sure the kids grandmother had a lower bunk and the family was safe and comfortable and I actually got a reasonable night's sleep.

I arrived home after an exhilarating lift back from the station on the back of a motorbike, rucksack on my back and 2 bags with some supplies from Bhuba balanced on either side of me.  I'm sure D is a great motorcyclist but he seems to go very fast given the bumps and potholes and all the other road users.  Or maybe I'm just a coward. 

Back home I found the place overrun with builders.  There are 4 women doing all the heavy work, mixing up cement by hand, carrying cement and sand up and down the steps and putting it down for a couple of men to level out. 

There is now a wall around the roof and the roof is being properly graded so that any water that accumulates there drains down towards the front and a drainpipe that's being fitted there instead if just pouring over the edge all round the house.  All I have to do now is work out where to hang out the washing that I had to do on my return from Delhi - my line was on the roof to catch the sun and wind but not at the moment.

I'm told that the leak under the door onto the balcony will be stopped and that the faulty drainage in the shower will also be sorted out which is great news.  The shower should drain into a corner where there is a drainage hole covered with a screen with holes in.  I managed to ram the cement that had been blocking some of the holes out of the way with a piece of metal and a hammer but the slope on the floor takes most of the water in the opposite direction so showers have to be finished off with 5-10 minutes using a floor scraper to try to steer the water towards the drain.  But it's going to be fixed!  Although probably not tomorrow, I have learned that about India.  

On the way home

I've arrived in Bhubaneswar, Orissa's capital after the first step of my journey to my temporary home in Koraput.  Early start from Delhi to get the morning flight to Bhuba, fortunately a fairly uneventful journey to the airport this time.  Just got the overnight train to get back now.

I had an interesting time in Delhi.  I was attending a course on local fundraising for NGOs (i.e. ways to raise money from within India).  Easier said than done of course.  Most of the NGOs work in very deprived areas so there is little cash to spare among their local communities.  There are some very big and wealthy corporations here in India but some of them may provide headaches for the NGO leaders regarding the ethics of partnering with them.  If a huge factory has displaced dozens of tribal villages with little or no compensation, is it ethical (or even possible) to receive sponsorship from the corporation to work with the tribal people attempting to get them compensation or the return of their land?

However, India has a huge population including some very rich people so there is plenty of scope.  If you know where to look and how to approach them, which is what the workshop was intending to help us all with.  We were divided into groups for discussions and to do assignments and guess who was elected to be the presenter of the plan that we devised?  Yes, me so at the start of my presentation I had to tell them to stop and ask if they couldn't understand me or if I needed to slow down as I've been told that I speak too fast and am hard to understand.  It seems that American English is easier to understand than my RP which is a little irritating but I guess it's familiarity and what they are exposed to in the media.

We were interrupted by a power cut at one point, not a great surprise as they are very common in India, even in the cities.  Trouble is, when the power returned a strange smell started wafting around which we eventually realised was the smell of something electrical burning.  Time for a chai.  We never did find out what was burning but the air-con was off for the rest of the day which made life a bit less comfortable.

I met up with a friend and ex work-colleague from the UK on Friday night.  He is working in Delhi for a week or so and we managed to meet up for a very nice meal in Greater Noida.  He was recommended this place by one of his colleagues in Delhi and I found out that it was only about 2km from my residence so decided to walk there as I had plenty of time.  Not my greatest idea.  This 2km took 40 minutes to walk and felt more like 3-4km along a busy dual carriageway with traffic going both directions in each lane, trying to keep to the track alongside the road, dodging the 10 foot deep pits in the ground, the bikes and cars zooming along without lights and the odd cow and dog.

Crossing the roads is interesting as  there are either different road rules here to home or eveyrone ignores them.  Either way - cars can go the wrong way around roundabouts, drive opposing the traffic-flow down seemingly one-way roads, travel without lights etc etc.  But I made it to somewhere close to my destination in one piece at which point the sketch map I'd been given failed to reflect reality.  I asked a couple of people if they knew where the restaurant was and they tried to explain without much success but eventually a lovely old man escorted me across the road safely and explained how to get there.  Or at least nearly there.  I gave up trying to be independent in the end and hopped onto a cycle rickshaw for the last 5 minutes.

The rickshaw wallah wanted 20 rupees for his efforts.  Fair enough but my smallest change was a 50 rupee note and he didn't have change (or said he didn't).  I think he cycled away a very happy man but I was also happy to have arrived safely and had a great meal and chat with Tim.  Followed by a lift back in Tim's car driven by a man who spoke no English and didn't know Greater Noida but he managed to find enough people to give him directions en-route.  It felt very strange meeting up with a friend from home for the first time since I arrived in India in July but I was relieved not to start wishing I was back home enjoying the little familiar luxuries.  Like hot water out of a tap, broadband and a pub down the road selling very nice real ale.

What will I find at home?  Builders had arrived on Monday just before I left for Delhi.  I came home at lunchtime to find 2 men squatting on the doorstep chatting and 4 women on the roof hammering away at the concrete surface with large lunp-hammers in the heat of the midday sun.  Quite what they were trying to achieve is beyond me, maybe they had been told to demolish the place and nobody thought to tell us?

Back in Delhi

Interesting arrival in Delhi.  A car had been sent to collect us from the airport and take us across the city to Greater Noida.  I'm not sure how far this is but because of the traffic, I was told it would take a couple of hours of driving.  I should have smelt a rat when the car refused to start at the airport and the driver had to get a colleague to bump-start it with him.  We set off on our journey with me wondering if we'd have to get out to push it if the engine stalled and travelled for an hour or so until the driver decided he'd better react to the red warning lights showing on the dashboard and pulled over on a busy 2-laned highway.  He peered into the engine and poured water into the coolant, producing clouds of steam.  The car still wasn't happy so he peered again and I retrieved my trusty headtorch from my bag (I never go anywhere without it here).  There was coolant pooled in cavities and crevices in the engine.  Not a good sign. He found some more water to pour into the reservoir and decided to make a go for it.  With a helping shove from behind by the 3 of us to get the engine restarted.

Off we went and half a mile or so down the road pulled over again, just by a busy junction with lanes merging into and out of the main road.  Much head-shaking went on and he had animated conversations with my companions and someone on the other end of the phone.  We stood at the side of this road with cars and lorries roaring past, the odd one of them travelling the wrong way down the road to take a short cut to an exit.  About an hour later another car finally turned up so we transferred our bags into it, climbed in feeling a bit weary and proceeded to reverse a couple of hundred metres to the last exit.  Imagine doing that on a UK motorway?  He took us round to a shop for us to buy some drinking water and biscuits as by now it was too late to get a meal at our residence although I could only consume water by that time as I was very tired.  He then proceeded to get lost.  We arrived in Greater Noida, just outside Delhi but he didn't know where to find our base, the YMCA.  I remembered seeing an email that said it that it was opposite the jaycee golf course.  Noone else remembered this so we carried on touring around the highways of Noida for sometime before they started phoning people for directions.  We finally found it at 12:30am.  Opposite the jaycee golf course.

The Indian guys then proceeded to have an animated conversation with the security guards at the gate which of course was chained and padlocked at that time of night and weren't expecting more arrivals.  I got out of the car to get some air and was immediately spotted by one of the guards who ushered me through the gate and inisisted that I sat down in the lone plastic chair perched in the middle of the road into the huge carpark.  I sat there in the middle of the road feeling a little isolated to say nothing of exhausted and I'm embarressed to say that all that was going through my head was that Village People song YMCA, picturing the accompanying dance.  Whatever I thought about to try to divert my attention away from this song it just came back and reared it's head again.  Hysteria was clearly beginning to set in.  A dog came to say hello and try to get some attention (or more likely some food) before giving up and flopping down in the middle of the road nearby.  We finally achieved access to the building where I had to sign in stating that I was the wife of Jon Williams.  Nothing personal against Jon but why?

Tomorrow seems to have arrived. Almost

I've arrived in Bhubaneswar after an overnight train from Koraput, on my way to Delhi to attend a workshop on fundraising.  I met a lovely young woman on the train, an actor working for a theatre group working to raise awareness among their audience on all sorts of issues, whether it be people's rights, the environment or whatever else seems to be important at the time.  The shows sound exhilerating, I hope I can get to see one sometime.  They've performed overseas in Europe, Japan and elsewhere.  The group is Natya Chetana.  Look them up on the web, they do some exciting stuff.  And what I want to know is how did the lady across the aisle manage to emerge from her neat, tidy bunk this morning looking absolutely immaculate, not a hair or sari fold out of place while I disentagled myself from the sheets and crawled out all bleary-eyed, rumpled, disshelved and looking like I had slept in all my clothes (which of course I had)

I've finally managed to contact my UK bank on the phone, having failed miserably to extract cash from the ATMs again or to get through to them on the phone.  It seems that someone had forgotten I was still in India and will be for the best part of a year and had stopped all my cards from working overseas.  Anyone else heading out here be warned, it's not the first time this has happened in my family, bank security can sometimes get in the way of surviving!  Hopefully I will be able to get some money out now but I can't bring myself to brave the heat of the Bhubaneswar streets at the moment, it's like an oven out there.

I visited the Andhra Bank again yesterday and was relieved to find that they have opened up an account for me although they couldn't pay in the 1000/- that I paid as a deposit as it's a cheque-only account (which I am hoping means that it will also accept electronic banking transfers).  I can't help wondering how the local folk manage to open accounts as this community is almost 100% cash-based.  Except for failed attempts to withdraw cash from ATMs I haven't had a chance to use any plastic cards here in Koraput.  It is hard to use anything of higher value than 100/- notes unless you're buying something expensive like a modem.  How different to home when I carried hardly any cash around with me as I rarely used it.  The downside is that the bank won't give me an ATM until there is money in the account.  I am a bit worried as I don't have a cheque book either - how many tomorrows will I have to live through after my VSO allowance is paid in before I can get an ATM + PIN code and get it all activated?  Time will tell.

A bit of tomorrow has arrived

We have toilet paper in Koraput!  I never thought I'd get excited about the purchase of such items but true to his promise, the guy in the 'best shop in Koraput' (as described by Ramesh, the supplier of my mobile phone and modem) has brought toilet paper to Koraput, possibly for the first time if you exclude that brought in VSO volunteer backpacks or in goody bags from home.  So that tomorrow is here.  We have decided to buy him out of supplies very quickly to see if it prompts him to get more stocks in.

The sad thing is that I still can't get money out of the ATM.  I've found 4 ATMs here in Koraput, all provided by the same banking corporation.  All have refused to hand out any cash.  It's happily handing out cash to people before and after me but has taken against me, refusing to give money out to either my debit or credit cards.  What do I buy food with?  I'm off to Delhi tomorrow evening so hopefully I'll be able to persuade an ATM to part with some cash. 

The Andhra Bank where I'm attempting to open up an Indian rupees account was open yesterday but as that was Saturday not able to process the application.  So back there tomorrow again with fingers crossed as that's how I'll be able to get to my VSO living allowance.  And be able to buy little luxuries like food.  And more toilet paper.

I've not had much chance to take my camera out with me yet.  I have a very nice digital SLR camera which can take great shots but is pretty heavy and bulky and awkward to carry around with me when I go out shopping for food or kit for the house (I've had very strange looks when spotted lugging around 2 stools, a bucket, a mop and other bits and pieces) so unfortunately I've not managed to get many photos yet.  Hopefully that will get easier when I don't need to buy house supplies any more and when I get more confident about carrying around a piece of expensive gear in a town as poor as Koraput.  It makes me feel very self-conscious and stand out even more as the affluent westerner.  But I do carry it occassionally and managed to get a nice shot of a girl who always greets us with smiles and welcomes us to Koraput.  Here's Megha:

 I was also asked to take a photo of a bit of tribal artwork knocked up by a local artisan a couple of days ago for my NGO, using some traditional designs.  I loved it and would like to get something like it for home

Maybe one day soon I'll be able to get someone to take photos of me wearing my salwar kameez.

What is tomorrow?

We are getting constant power cuts here and to add to my woes yesterday, TATA (the supplier of my mobile phone SIM and my mobile modem) had signal problems and my phone stopped working for most of the day and all night and my modem also went on strike.  I'm getting used to the power cuts and always make sure I carry a torch but phone and modem both packing up was somewhat frustrating. It also made me question the wisdom of having both modem and phone supplied by the same company.  I topped up the credit on my phone in the afternoon with my last Rs 1000/- only to find that I can't withdraw any money from my UK bank at the ATMs here despite me having plenty of funds in there.  I'm now wishing I hadn't bothered to top up the phone, food is preferable to a phone sometimes.  I'm told I should be OK to withdraw tomorrow.

I went to the Andhra Bank on Thursday, complete with my NGO minder / motor bike chauffeur, passport, copies of passport and visa, letter from my NGO confirming I am working for them as a volunteer, a letter from VSO confirming my volunteer status, 2 passport photos and a copy of my VSO job description which included the living allowance I'm paid each month (or will be when I finally get an Indian account).  The manager scrutinised every word of all the documents and spent about 10 minutes paging through my passport, checking all the details in all the visas in there.  There were reams of forms to fill in and being a mere woman, had to give full name and occupation of the man in my life as apparently women can't open an account without providing such information (I had to bite my tongue when I got to that section or I would probably have been thrown out of the building as an undesirable).  About two hours and many forrms later I handed over Rs 1000/- to open the account and was told to return to collect my passbook and ATM card - guess when - tomorrow.  Well, today is now tomorrow (does that make sense?).  Off to the bank again - to find it locked up due to a strike.  So maybe today is not really tomorrow. 

I also went to the potential toilet paper supplier in town.  The man behind the counter looked at me oddly when I asked if they had toilet tissue (the Indian term for such products) and just said no, no toilet tissue here.  Margaret, my housemate and fellow pursuer of toilet paper supplies got a different answer.  Tomorrow.

Will somebody please give me a definition of tomorrow?

Is today going to be tomorrow?

Mike and I felt in need of a beer last night so I abandoned the veg.curry that was stewing on the stove (first remembering to switch off the gas) and we trudged down into town to hunt out the liquor store.  It's a strange little place, a sort of archway full of bottles and cans.  You have to stand outside the shop and tell the man behind the bars (yes, it looks like a prison or a cage) what you want and it's furtively passed out through the small gap in the bars.  I quickly hid the cans inside my rucksack as alcohol is not widely accepted here, especially for women.  I felt as though I'd visited a crack den as we sneaked back home with the beer sloshing around inside the rucksack.  I never thought that I would be so pleased to get hold of some Fosters lager - my normal tipple is wine or real ale but that's something I'll just have to look forward to on my return.

I'm gradually getting used to living here.  The cold showers are OK at the moment as it's still warm but may become less appealing when winter draws in and the temperature drops.  The squat toilet is fine although I'd prefer a flushing version rather than having to run water into a bucket to chuck down it.  We are working on one of the shops in town to get in supplies of toilet paper for us VSO volunteers - I'm sure there's a market that would be worth tapping there!  I visited that shop yesterday and he told me it would be in tomorrow.  We'll see.

I'm still dutifully filtering and boiling all my drinking water and only using filtered water for cooking.  The 2 ringed gas stove is fine for most things and toast can be made on a little griddle pan.  A small bird keeps visiting me inside the kitchen, hopping in through the grill on the window (no glass in my windows).  I think it's after my breakfast cereal and looking for fruit, nuts and helpfully rolled grains.  I try not to worry about what it might be bringing in on it's feet as it hops around the worktop.  Our resident house lizards are helpfully munching their way through mosquitoes, they seem to be thriving on the little blighters.  We seem to get power cuts most days, sometimes several of them.  I've given up trying to use the wireless router in the office, that doesn't work so well without power.  At least my laptop and portable modem keep on going for a while until the battery runs out.  We've visited a couple of Koraput's finest restaurants.  The new hotel food was OK and air-conditioning great although the toilet left something to be desired.  My favourite so far is the Jungle Restaurant, attached to the local tribal museum.  The food there is lovely and really cheap - I had a delicious paneer chilly for a mere 35 rupees.  I'll be back there again despite the incongruous looking plastic dinosaur outside.

But will tomorrow ever really come?  I visited the bank again yesterday in yet another attempt to open up a local Indian rupees account.  We'd been waiting to sort this out since we first arrived in Koraput as the manager thought he needed forms for foreirners accounts and had to wait for them to be sent from Bhubanewar.  We finally found out at the end of last week that he didn't need these forms so I hitched a ride on the back of Prasant's motorbike and had an exhilerating ride into town dodging dogs and cows en route to try to open my account.  Only to find that the manager was absent and noone else was able to deal with me.  "Come back tomorrow".  Let's see.

Sunday outing

Phew, finally got to the end of a long week.  Saturday is a normal working day for most NGOs here in India but today (Sunday) we went out to one of SPREAD's field centres in Jalaput, next to the Machkund reservoirs on the border with Andhra Pradesh.  We set out soon after 8:00am to travel the 80km journey and arrived 2½ hours later after weaving around potholes, travelling through paddy fields, over (and through) rivers, through tribal villages, weaving through the people, cows, goats and sheep wandering along the roads.  We were told that there are tigers, elephants and bears roaming around Orissa but sadly we didn't see any.  There are acres of eucalyptus plantations dominating parts of the landscape.  This is not a native tree but paper manufacturers encourage their growth to supply their industry; unfortunately they are on land previously cultivated for food for the tribal people and the water uptake inhibits all other growth around them.  There are also many cashew trees but they will not be producing fruit until next May and June. 

We went to meet a group of project co-ordinators who work on various SPREAD projects.  The main task for the day was to finalise a report discussing SPREADs work developing "childrens' panchayats".  These are groups of youths organised along lines similar to the gram panchayats (local governments) of India, supported and mentored by SPREAD activists to encourage children to fight for their rights, learn about local governance and maybe to become leaders of the future.  One of their actions resulted in a local school of 100 children with only 1 teacher achieving an extra 2 teachers within 2 months of the initial request being lodged.  It was a great day and we were made very welcome by everyone we met and were given an overview of SPREADs work in that location.  The field centre is located in a 'temporary building' erected when the dams were being built in 1948.  It's still there, of course, made of corrugated iron which gets very noisy in monsoon rain with thunder crashing outside.

  

We were taken to the tribal market in the village by Laxmi and Parbati, two of the women from the group.  They looked after us well, steering us through the busy market and helping us with our purchasesGreat arrays of vegetables, fabrics, fish and a load of other th.  ings.  All produced by hand without aid of fertilisers and weekdkillers (excluding the hand-weeding of course)

 I splashed out 300 rupees on a 100% wool blanket - not that I need it now but I'm sure I will in winter when the temperature drops to around 4 degrees and I have no glass in my windows or shutters all round the house.

We sat on the floor to eat our lunch which was a great mixed veg curry with rice and dahl, served on plates made of leaves.  No washing up needed - except for me, I got very messy eating with my fingers and ended up wtih dahl dribbling down my chin and arms, much to everyone else's amusement.  I don't know what they found so funny.  I had to be taught how to eat properly which consists of mashing the rice, dahl and curry into your hand, balancing it on the 3rd and 4th fingers then shoving them right into your mouth to deposit the contents.  At least I know how to feed myself now but I have yet to master the Indian art of drinking from a bottle without touching it with my lips.  They make it look so easy but I daredn't try it in public as I end up pouring the contents all down my front when I try.

Laundry day

I had a fun start to the day today and did my laundry.  I decided it really was time to wash the sheets I'd been using ever since I arrived here in Koraput.  That might seem a bit rash given that I've not been here a fortnight yet but the room is so damp that eveyrthing gets to smell musty very quickly.  Washing sheets in cold water bent over a bucket is a challenge.  I ended up sloshing the sheets between buckets while I took them through the rinse cycle but the spin cycle was more awkward and I had to resort to wringing them out on the roof where the washing line is hung.  You mean not everyone has washing lines on their roof?  At least the 4 dogs I found curled up on there yesterday had vanished, I was glared at out of one eye which followed every move until I went back downstairs.  There are hundreds of feral dogs living on the streets (and roofs) here, some of them in miserable looking condition and rabies is endemic.  I'm glad I've had the jabs.

At last my boss has returned to the office and I've started to get a better idea of what I need to do over the next few months.  This was the first opportunity I had to start to understamd  my NGO SPREAD, it's structure and the work that they do.  Very impressive work it is too, supporting and activating the tribal people (or Adivasis) in the district to achieve their rights.  The Adivasi comprise around 50% of the population in Koraput.  They have many problems mostly as a result of displacement and dispossession of their land.  Historically, tribal people did not own their own land but tribal groups made use of their area during their lifetime so that it remained within the jurisdiction of that tribe in perpetuity.  During the time of the British occupation there was a drive to collect as much tax as possible from landowners and to do that, land had to be held in the name of specific individuals and many tribes lost the use of their land as a result.  Over the last couple of centuries more and more Adivasis have lost their land - mining, reservoirs, factories and probably a host of other reasons I haven't heard about.  Many of them suffer serious problems including food insecurity (malnutrition and starvation is not uncommon), lack of resources, lack of capital (some borrow to try to make a living or pay hospital bills and may be charged up to 150% interest), lack of education and a host of health problems.  The Indian Constitution has laws that give them the same rights as anyone else in the community but they are often not able to achieve their rights.  NGOs like SPREAD (Society for Promoting Rural Education and Development) are working with these people to give them the support and knowledge they need to try to attain their rights.  It would be great if I can make some small contribution to helping their work, it's impressive.  I've been told they need organising so I'd better start bossing people around!


For those of you who followed my blog on the VSO site, you may remember me complaining about the cost of a phone call that I received on my UK mobile, whinging that it cost me £17 to receive at 13 minute call.  Jon happily informed me that it cost him £1.06 to make the call.  Now that just isn't right.

Daily life in Koraput

After struggling to use the VSO blogsite for a couple of months I've decided to move to this site which I find easier to use and hopefully I'll be able to create nicer looking blogs.  The VSO site is fine for just adding text (once you work out how to get round word-wrapping problems) but harder to add photos.  All I have to do now is take more photos!

People walk miles to get to work and school, here from the reservoir in the valley below the SPREAD office

 The first week and a half here has been a strange mixture of good and not so good.  People in the town have been really friendly and the guys in the office have gone out of their way to make us feel at home.  Rosie, a young woman who lives in a small house just around the corner greets us with huge smiles every time we see her, has invited us into her home to drink cha and talk to her (she speaks excellent English), translating for her parents who sit listening but not understanding much of what we say.  She said she was really excited to be able to talk to foreigners for the first time and has pledged friendship for life, wanting to know all about our families and why we had come to India.  Her family has very little possessions and their survival is clearly tough-going but they seemed very happy and Rosie is learning computers at college.  She is worried that she won't be able to get a job to help her family, it would be nice to think that the work done by us volunteers may go some way towards helping to improve work opportunities for the locals.  I wonder if I could employ her for a while to help me learn Oriya?

My new boss had to go away on business just after we arrived in Koraput and we haven't seen him again since although we've spoken briefly by phone and email.  Hopefully he'll be back soon as I am struggling to find work to do to occupy myself while at the office.  At times like this I wish I was a Communications Adviosr as you can make quick wins by looking at existing documents and proposing style improvements and standardising the formats, creating templates to help the process (that's Margaret's job).  However, I don't know that I can start to advise on creating an organisation development strategy without first talking to the NGO director!   I'm sure that when he arrives I'll be able to make a start and Margaret and I are likely to need quite closely together on some things and pool our expertise to make real headway.

But at least I've had plenty of time to settle in and sort out some of the essential things.  Except for opening a local bank account.  We are still waiting for the manager of the bank we've chosen to get back to us as he's waiting for special forms needed for foreigners accounts.  We've gone to see him a few times and each time he's said he'll chase it up.  Maybe it will be tomorrow?  The house is slowly drying out as the monsoon rains have slowed down a bit, I'm learning to live with those pesky mosquitoes and am getting a few more essential things sorted out.  We now have a saucepan that doesn't fall over on the stove and yesterday I found the spice stall and came home with little newspaper parcels tied up with string containing mustard, cumin and coriander seeds, cardomom pods and more fresh ginger roots.  I had another go at making baingan bartha last night and it does taste better with all the spices, much tastier.  I now need to find containers for the spices to keep the ants out and stop the seeds escaping all over the kitchen.

 

Morning view out of town

We entertained our first house-guest last night.  Mike, another new VSO volunteer arrived in town on Wednesday and is now living just a minute's walk up the road from me.  Mike has a very nice house but all the kit left behind by his predecessor has vanished from the place and he doesn't have a pot, pan, plate or anything to eat off.  So he now has our small saucepan that tips over on the stove to keep him going for a while.  Good luck Mike!  Mike is another British volunteer, working with one of the other Koraput NGOs SOVA, an organisation that specialises in HIV & AIDS issues. 

I reckon I'm losing weight quite rapidly in India.  It started in Delhi where it was so hot that my appetite disappeared and all I wanted to consume was water.  Koraput is much cooler and more comfortable but my diet has changed.  I'm now eating vegetarian all the time though at the moment this is very limited as I've not got round to doing any real stocking up in the house.  Banana sandwiches start to lose their attraction quite quickly when they're all you can find to eat for breakfast and lunch.  I'm sure this will reverse when I settle in more and find where to buy more different foods to give me more variety.  The office is right at the edge of town around a mile away and we walk to work every day and back home for lunch.  Nice walk when it's not too hot although there have been a few days when I''ve arrived at the office and proceeded to create a large puddle on the floor as the rainwater drains out of my clothing.  I put on a pair of trousers that I brought from home yesterday, deciding to revert back to home style instead of Indian clothes for once and they were far too big.  I now need to find a belt!

Morning commuter traffic on it's way into town, below our office