Day 20 – Saturday, March 22
The dogs always bark during the night;
loud, and pretty much just outside the windows. Last night was
especially viscious. Lots of angry barking, with intermittent sounds
of shrieking. One must have been mortally wounded, though there was
no body laying outside this morning as was the case a few days ago.
Apparently this is an extremely rough time for the dogs. Rabies is
rampant, especially in slums. Just a few days ago, a little girl was
bit. Her family got her initial shots, but did not get her the
follow-up antibiotics. She died a few days after being bitten. So
glad I went ahead and had my shots for that – it won't stop you
from getting rabies, but you have more time to get it tended to.
Head over to Manav Sadhna for morning
prayers at 10am. Saturday prayers always lead to a meeting, mostly
of the Hindi staff, but the western volunteers are invited too. Have
no idea what they are discussing, but they make sure to summarize in
English for us. And when we are there, they always include updates
on what we have been working on. Nora and Jose are there too. It's
good to see Naroda getting some attention now, even at this level.
The main reason for going in today was
to meet Nora to try planning next weeks projects. Then it's another
day out to shop for more supplies. We needed a bookshelf and a
storage locker, so we talked to Ajay and Neeta and were steered in a
good direction for some lower cost, second hand items. Neeta even
walked out to the gate with us to tell the ricksha driver where to go
in Hindi so we wouldn't get lost – unless you have been to some of
these places, you would never find them on your own. The riksha got
us to corner where there were piles of old bookcases, desks, storage
units, and a whole bunch of other things. Nora and I split up and
started digging. Everything is outside in the dirt and dust. We
find one thing, then another. After almost giving up on this place
and planning to go to another, I spot something that looks promising.
Sure enough, it's perfect for what we are looking for; it needs a
good sanding and painting, a few screws are missing on a couple of
the hinges, but other than that it seems to be built solid and no
obvious cracks or fractures in the wood. Better yet, this unit will
fill our requirement for both a bookshelf AND storage space. There
are three lock areas, all with keys that work. Things are just going
too well. Ask the price. Five thousand rupees. No way. I start to
walk off and of course, they pull us back. I tell him one thousand
rupees. No, no, no they say. I figure at some point it will wind up
somewhere in the middle . . . the unit is certainly worth it. Nora
joins the bartering game. After back and forth for a while, we
settle on thirteen hundred rupees, plus two hundred to have it
delivered to Manav Sadhna via peddle ricksha. I pay them one
thousand and tell them I will give the remaining five hundred when it
is delivered.
To set the record straight, 5000 rupees
is around $80, 1000 rupees is around $16, and 1500 rupees is about
$24. Overall, I'd say we haggled a pretty good deal today. Nora and
I are both pretty pleased.
It was delivered shortly after we
returned to Manav Sadhna. Paid the driver the last five hundred
rupees . . . he apparently wanted more, but that didn't work. Nora
and I just sat there admiring our find, thinking of what we will do
with it. To start with, it needs a good sanding, a good base coat of
white paint, and a good dosing of termite solution to keep those
little guys from destroying this thing through the heat and upcoming
monsoon season. After that we intend to outline drawings of birds
and flowers and other things the kids will like. Then we will let
them paint it. If it gets too messy, we can just repaint it white
again and start over. If the kids get involved, they will take more
effort to take care of it in the years to come.
After lunch, back out in town to get
more supplies. Paper and matting for framing the photos I have been
taking of them. Then back to the old city to pick up where we left
off yesterday. We wanted only two things, tape and velcro. When you
go to the narrow streets of the old city, never plan on just getting
what you have placed on a pre-planned list. The old city is a
wonderful place. Up and down narrow pathways filled with people,
rickshas, cars, people, cows, dogs; each step you take can fill your
olfactory glands with sweet scents of flowers at one step, followed
by foul scents from animal and human excrement at the next, then back
to savory scents of the street food venders that so are so thick you
nearly trip on them as you attempt to maneuver through the paths. So
what did we find today . . . velcro (10 rupees per meter), colorful
beads (10 rupees per gram) and threads for making bracelets, two
badmitton bats with bird (two extra free birds), a kid size soccer
ball, some kind of bubble making apparatus from a street vendor, a kg
of nails for an art project, and a few other things I can't remember
at the moment.
I spent around 5000 rupees worth of
school supplies over the last two days; that's about $80. If I had
purchased all these things in the US, or even in a larger retail
store here, I could easily have spent well over $200.
Two weeks ago I took out 10000 rupees
at the ATM. That was about $160, plus a $3.50 bank fee. I spent
half of that on these school supplies; about a quarter of it on
government fees and SIM card and a few other basic things I need to
live here; and another quarter on just daily living like food, water,
ricksha and bus fares. That one quarter, about $40, is for living
expenses for two weeks. This is the first time I have sat down and
reviewed my finances. Living on $20 a week is pretty good in my
book. Plus I am still paying a few bills back home, but that is at a
minimum now, so financially, I am in a very good place.
It's been a long, but very fulfilling
day. Neither the kids nor the teachers at Naroda have any idea that
we have been doing this. There are going to be some extremely
excited students come Monday.
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