Back to School

I’ve been staying at the BREDS office, which has been pretty nice. It’s a simple room with a view of the rice paddies out the window. There’s a TV and an air conditioner. Neither of them work, but they’re big and make for good furniture. A few species of lizards to keep me company and some dogs to steal my chappals (flip flops) every now and then (no shoes indoors). Chinnamuru manages to make the curries spicy even though I say no chili, and I get to practice my Telegu greetings with BREDS staffers daily. I’ve never seen brighter smiles or more graceful greetings than here.

One day, Sir told me I am moving to the girl’s hostel at JITM, a small college across the border in Orissa. (Sir is Ramakrishna Raju, the head of BREDS. Everyone just calls him Sir). And the next day I ‘shifted’. Sir lives on campus at the faculty housing (he lectures at the CSREM college next door) and his wife is in their apartment all day, cooking 3 meals. Both their boys are away at school, so I expect she’s a little bored. She doesn’t speak any English, but somehow we manage to communicate a little, I treat her herniated lumbar disc with Su Jok, and we laugh over the hammy Hindi TV serials (soap operas).

When I first moved in, they were constructing a building behind the hostel, but no road reached there, so they had to carry bricks and plaster and rebar through the girl’s hostel. Most of the workers were females who carried their loads in wide, shallow bowls on their heads. Lines of ladies in sarees, heads loaded high, would wend their way through the ground floor of the building. They seemed very interested in looking at me and despite their loads, would step out of the way to watch me go by. One even managed a head wobble greeting from under a huge sack of cement.

There is internet available more frequently here, so I can use some online resources to research and prepare the trainings, and correspond with some experts who may be able to help future projects. The plan is basically to save the environment, rescue humanity from poverty and disease. I should be done in another few weeks.

Here are pictures of the local laundromat and the ox-wash.
Soundtrack: Khaled and KanYe this week!