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Published: December 8th 2009
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Ive been working in the office for about a week now and it has been more of a fun and wild learning experience than I would have ever imagined! Aside from Joyo bringing me and the other two Canadian girls in my office chai two times a day, there are also some other very Indian - and very interesting - things happening throughout the day.
The sun and the craziness begin pretty early around here. It is usually dark around 5:30 at night, so on the flip side the sun is up before 6 in the morning. At that point, water buffalo are cruising along outside my window and my neighbors are up banging pots and pans, so the day has begun! I get my water for a bucket bath from a tap in the middle of the dorms along with everyone else in this part of campus. Then I have to bring the bucket up the stairs to my room and use a measuring cup to wash myself - needless to say, I don really shower very often ha ha!
We start the day at about nine after having breakfast in the mess hall next to the office.
Breakfast is the meal of the day where we have the most variety, ranging from a sort of rice-compressed ball called idlly with chutney to spicy chowmein with ketchup? Yes! Ketchup right on top of chowmein, for breakfast! Like I said, very Indian and very interesting happenings! Though definitely different from breakfast at home, it is delicious and of course, accompanied by sweet, hot chai so I am happy!
Once at the office I work on my project- uploading water project information to the peer water exchange site. The organization Im working with here has installed toilets and brought piped water to almost 50,000 families in the area! Its nice to be able to see their records because as I sift through a lot of the paperwork I really get to see how their projects were accomplished and an awesome feel for the world of rural development with a really successful and mission-driven organization. I had the opportunity to help with an award application for the organization also - which had to be written in Indian English, naturally, so some of my spellings and sayings had to be updated to fit a different style then Im used to!
Throughout the morning there are often power outages and other incidences that remind me that I am indeed in a village in the middle of India! One strange office practice Im trying to get the hang of is shoe removal. The main office is a circular building with a grassy area in the middle and the offices around the outside. It seems that with each office the rules are different about whether or not it is ok to wear shoes inside. Some offices allow shoes and some simply do not, and the only way to really distinguish between them is the pile of shoes outside the door of an office. I have no idea why this is really - at the printing room door, there is a pile of shoes, but in the records room its no problem to wear shoes. Beats me! Anyway, that has really taken some getting used to.
Then there is the printing itself. Ive been really amazed that this organization is so technologically advanced. They have dozens of computers, wifi, laser printers, even Apple computers for some of the big wigs. But when it comes to printing, it is quite an interesting process. First
none of the computers in the office have internet connections, even though there is wifi available in the whole building. That is so strange to me! Everyone who has a laptop and the assistant to the Executive can use the wifi on their own computers, but for some reason all of the desktops cannot access the internet. Anyway, to print I have to put my information on my jump drive, take it to the printing room (with my shoes removed of course), and give my drive to a lady at the desk. She then has to take it to the back room, scan the jump drive for viruses, take it to her computer and copy the document I need to the print folder. Then we have to stand by the printer and load each piece of paper into the printer for it to print the correct number of pages. It is quite the process!
My new friend Misha and I have also been trying to master the ways of the post office here. We have been asking around for the best way to send something back to the states or Canada and we were once told, "If you send
it by India Post, I can guarantee you that it will not arrive to your destination!" Well that is faith in the social systems! Oh the things Ive learned to appreciate!
We have lunch at one in the afternoon, usually rice and vegetables of some sort, and then it is back to the office until 5:45 when the office closes - and oh yea, the chai wallah brings chai again at 4pm so there is that to look forward to as well! I
n the evenings we sometimes watch movies or play cards, but there is a lot of reading and down time which is nice too. There is a bus from the village we are in going to the nearest big town that leaves at 6:15 each evening and comes back at about 9. We have taken that a few times also, running errands or picking up any thing we need in town. We make sure to get a special treat called jalebis each time we get to Berhampur. These are essentially deep-fried sugar candies and while my teeth actually rot while I eat one of the little twisted sweets, its absolutely delicious and only costs two
Puja in poop!
Here there are holy days all the time and in one village it was the holy day of Laxmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity so to bring good grops, they offered puja in poop! cents! If we don go into town dinner is at 8:30 at night which is just so late, but it does provide some evening entertainment. There are about 10 to 15 people that eat at the mess hall and everyone else that works here eats with their families or lives in a near by village.
The head chef here, Na Na, is such a nice man and is always taking really good care of me and the other interns here, laughing at all my horrible attempts to speak Oriya! Actually everyone here has been so outstanding - Jacob is the head of "hospitality" making sure everything is always taken care of with our room, his wife Gloria even sewed me a curtain (they are also my next-door neighbors and were very concerned about the "wall-breaking exercises" I was doing last night - jumping jacks ha ha) and Donald is the assistant to the Director and he has been so wonderful in helping me understand all of the work I have to do here. Basically everyone Ive met here is so welcoming and helpful and everyone is doing such great work. I love being a part of it all!
The work week here is Monday through Saturday, so the weekend is really only Sunday. This past Sunday we walked around to some of the neighboring villages in our area and I tackled some laundry, but in one of the next two weekends I think I will try to get to a wildlife park nearby. Thats pretty much the typical week here it seems. I will keep posting pictures of my adventures on this site so check back frequently!
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