This week was kind of a riot.
For the past 2 weeks we have been in Medak. It's about a 2 or 3 hour bus ride from our apt in Hyderabad depending on your bus selection. We've been working with SKS. We each were assigned to a field officer and everyday they pick you up on their motorcycle and take you to a village where they try to find people for their program. They find people who are ultra poor and help them out by giving them a cow or something that they can use for a business. We all had some surveys (mine was on nutrition) so after talking to the villagers about their program, they would do our surveys. They were our translaters, but they weren't too awesome at English.
I was with Jailsingh. He's pretty small, like most Indian men. He had a mustache, like all Indian men. He picked me up everyday and I rode on the back of his motorcycle. We'd go get breakfast, which was super good, and go off to a village. When we got out of town the scenery was awesome. It was super green and rocky. What's even more awesome is that as we drove down the road, there were people squatting just on the side of the road, doing their business. I saw at least 5 people a day doing this; kids, teenagers, and old men and women. There were also herds of water buffalo, goats, sheep, and cows blocking the roads. We would get back to where we were staying at about noon or so everyday (we left at 6:30am), then get lunch, then just hang out.
We stayed at some little dormitories next to a Cathedral. I shared a room with Grace. They had squat toilets and a fan. No AC. It was bearable, except for that in India, the power goes out at least once a day. It could be out for 1 minute or 2 hours.
There were monkeys all over the Cathedral grounds and some around our dormitories. One day, Grace and I were just chillin in our room. The door was open a bit because it was so hot inside. I was standing on the opposite side of the room away from the door. Grace was sitting on her bed, which is right next to the door. All the sudden she was like, "Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh." I looked over and there was a fairly large sized monkey walking into our room. I froze. I didn't know what to do! So we both just stared at it. It started rummaging in Grace's duffle bag. She had some goldfish with her so I told her to throw some out into the hall. She did, but the monkey wasn't interested. He moved onto Grace's grocery bag full of goodies and grabbed a package of crackers. Then he slowly decided to leave, so I ran to the door and shut it. It was terrifying!
On Wednesday, after we visited a few villages, all of our field officers took us to a Hindu Temple called Durgabavani. It was pretty cool. They had to take a billion pictures with us. They each wanted one with Kurt and me. Or just him. Or just me.
Some of the field officers.
Jailsingh and me.
Me, Jailsingh, Ravinder, Praveen
They also took us to a dam, where we took even more pictures.
On Thursday, the craziest thing happened. Jailsingh and I were driving back into town. Some old lady (I would guess age 70, but Indian women always look 15 years older than they are) was walking across the street. Traffic is always crazy. She saw we were headed straight for her and froze. Jailsingh didn't know which way to go and she didn't either. So what happened? We ran right into her. She was facing us, so we flew right into her stomach. It sounded like a belly flop and she flew back, leaving her flip flops behind. I jumped off and so did Jailsingh, so we were totally fine. He went to park his bike while a crowd of more than 50 people gathered around. The old lady started screaming and punching Jailsingh. It made me so mad! We had to take her to a little health clinic and get her blood pressure checked and her heart rate. She had a bit of a scrape on her elbow and kept moaning about that. She also had a coughing fit after drinking some water. I think she was totally exaggerating her injuries. Then Jailsingh had to take her to a bigger hospital. This made me so mad because I think if she was okay enough to get right up and start punching Jailsingh, she's probably not too injured. But, whatever. Some other SKS guys picked me up and took me home, while Jailsingh went to the bigger hospital, where he spent 700 rupies on this old woman for a 'stomach problem'. That's about 15 bucks, which is kind of a lot here. These field officers make about 100 or less American dollars a month. So 15 is kind of lot.
So, it was a bit of a crazy week. We took a bus back to Hyderabad Friday afternoon. I leave back to America on Tuesday. I CANNOT wait. Seriously.
