A day in the life of a rural Indian village below the poverty line

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So much happened today that I hardly know where to begin. It's been a very long day. We travelled out to a village near Puri (I think) in a convoy of 4x4s. When we arrive, for the short walk from the road to the village I feel like an A-list celebrity, as hoades of crowds gather round us, cheering, throwing flowers and floowing our every step along the dusty track. A cloth shelter has been set up which is our base for the day. We sit like VIPS on plastic chairs around the perimeter, whilst women in colourful clothes and wide-eyed children gather cross-legged to fill the floor, and men stand around the back. A big sign reads 'Welcome to the Delegates'. Coconuts with straws are handed out, speeches are given...
And then it's back to real life, in one of the poorest parts of India, where nearly everyone in the village has no access to a toilet and is forced to defecate in the open, often on the banks of the same stretch of filthy stagnant water where clothes are washed, people bathe, and that families cook with and drink.
I spend the day with a family of 6, who live in a small mud hut. Suraj, the lady of the house, who has been blind in one eye since birth, gets up at 4am every day to go to the riverbank, collect water, cook food, clean the house, tend to two cows, look after four young children, and many days also go to work as an agricultural labourer, where work is seasonal and wages are very meagre. Yet this family welcome me and my colleagues into their home as guests.
During the day we walk across dry cracked earth fields to collect dry leaves for use as fuel on the stove. It's around 35c with no breeze. This place reaches 45 in summer.
This village currently has one privately-owned handpump with a shallow bore that frequently dries up, and another intermittantly working one where the water is heavily contaminated by iron, so most people still get their drinking water from the pond, and people suffer regularly from diarrhoea. I'm really glad that WaterAid will soon be helping this village.

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Photos

Suraj in her house
This is Suraj, whose family I spent the day with.