Cracked heels make me sick!

MMmm, ok, so my time at the head office didn’t really give me the outcome I was hoping for. I was ready for heated debates and a good explanation, but that didn’t happen in the slightest! I went back to the head office a few days ago pretty angry with the field workers and CARD for being what I perceived to be a poorly run organisation with little communication. However, I got a dismissive response when I raised concerns over what work other NGOs were doing in our villages and also that our field workers don’t seem to have 2 brain cells between them. Well, actually I didn’t mention that I thought that our field staff weren’t up to much, as for one they were sat in the office with us as we discussed and I later found out there are no expectations from them anyway. It was explained to me they are not paid to think, only to do the work requested. It really shows you get what you pay for. The fieldworkers are actually paid less than what the fishermen received prior to the tsunami! The boss told me that we do the thinking and planning and they do the ground work, but there’s a pretty big problem with this, in that I don’t speak Tamil and the boss doesn’t visit us or the villages. Because he has 23 years experience he thinks he knows all there is to know about development, he even made assumptions about the work the other NGOs are doing, and told me it’s not necessary to contact them to find out what they’re doing (which I though necessary so we don’t repeat the same work)! How absurd! How can they know, yes they can make a lucky guess, but they can’t know what schemes the other NGOs are preparing, they didn’t even know that other NGOs are giving boats away for free rather than making people work for them, like he wanted to! An idea he has since dropped.

We have done absolutely no constructive work so far, and I was talking to the bosses about this. They say that other NGOs are prioritising in relief work, we are doing long-term rehabilitation, but need to secure funds to actually run any project. So far all project proposals to donor agencies have either been rejected or we don’t have a response. It’s my job to try and secure funding. I sympathise with CARD and will try and be a bit more patient, I’m used to the speeded up world of the west and have to take things slow, shanty and as they happen.

I was thinking to leave to organisation, go find a better one, one where I can learn more, have more involvement and work with an NGO that doesn’t feel the need to work in isolation. Just quickly – the boss came across a website promoting mangrove forests and saw there was an area of Tamilnadu coastline that needed plantation. It’s good for income generation and can buffer further tsunami’s (should another pone strike). I suggested trying to find out if perhaps someone else already had plans to plant mangroves there, or to contact organisations which already have experience in this so as to ask their advise and expertise. The response!? “Oh, that’s not necessary – why you want to do that? Other NGOs are bad people, we can just do by ourselves!”

I mean come on, what’s the point to do something when someone else has already done it and knows all about it. Apparently NGOs here are all in competition, and CARD don’t want to be seen as weak and needing advice from others. But goal 8 from the UN Millennium Development Goals (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals) says that we should develop global partnerships for development! Also there’s a good university in Chidambaram, I suggest getting some volunteers (Krish assures me students are keen to do this), but again, this idea to the bosses had no credit or value!

I was as I said going to leave, but they put an ad in the English paper, we only got one response, and they’ve hired her. It was only today that I spoke to her for the first time, but she seems better than the other girl. If she can understand basic questions over the phone she’s a whole lot better than the other girl. She starts next Wednesday. This gives me a bit of an obligation to stay as the only reason they employed her was for me! Actually they also employed another girl, I know her name, but can’t remember it right now. She’s also absolutely inexperienced and this is her first job ever!

I still probably will leave after a month or so. I’ll go volunteer in an international organisation that will be better funded, better run and will have people I can actually speak to. I’m going to visit Krish in Chennai (or near there) or a few days either this week or next, and buy some teach yourself Hindi books and CDs. Hindi will be a lot more beneficial to my as Tamilnadu is the only state in India that doesn’t speak it. I was thinking before to go to Sri Lanka, it’s still an option. There’s not much need for planning so I’ll decide later!

OK, so enough about work stuff – how am I? Well I’m, sick, and I’m going to give you information more than I know you probably want to know, but I have something I didn’t think possible. I have green diarrhoea! I’ve been laid up in bed for the last 2 days, yesterday I was feeling fine, but just needed a toilet close by, and the day before I had the most intense headache I’ve ever had coupled with stomach cramps, fever and body ache due to a night of no sleep. Oh, I also threw up, but it was just water and the most nasty tasting stomach acid I’ve ever had the misfortune to taste. Now I feel fine but still despite probably not having more than 500 calories in the past 60 hours trickles of green still come out when I pee. SORRY SORRY SORRY. But I feel if I’m going through this, then you’re coming with me! I went to the doctor 2 days ago who gave me a series of 5 different tablets to take, I didn’t want to go, as I am highly sceptical about local doctors. They just took my blood pressure and told me I’m fine. I’ve had the misfortune of having to visit one before, and they give you so many different tablets to take of worrying sizes and colours. My boss stood over me, so I had to take them, but I’m sure they’re just acting like a bung, stopping whatever’s inside from coming out of either end, instead I imagine it to be growing happily inside me, feeding it off what food I have now begun to eat! If it’s still green in a couple of days I think I’d better get some proper testing!

OK, I’ve finished explaining the gore of my health, I’ll cut in now to tell you more interesting facts I’ve recently learnt from Bill Bryson and his “A Short History of Nearly Everything”:

1) The proportions of the earth in which we are able to inhabit is just 12% of the total land area, that’s 4% of the whole surface if you include the seas
2) A bolt of lightening travels at 435,000km/hour, and can heat the air around it to 28,000 Celsius, which is several time hotter than the surface of the sun. At any one moment 1,800 thunderstorms are in progress around the globe – some 40,000 a day
3) Clouds are not the great reservoirs of water we might think, only 0.035% of the earth’s fresh water is floating above us at any moment
4) The speed of the spin of the Earth depends on where you are standing. It varies from over 1,600km kmph at the equator to 0 at the poles. In London the speed is 998kmph.
5) The White Cliffs of Dover are made up almost entirely of compact tiny deceased marine organisms and a six-inch cube of Dover chalk will contain well over 1000 litres of compressed carbon dioxide
6) Each year the belching of volcanoes and the decay of plants sends about 200 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, nearly 30 times as much as we do with factories and car emissions
OK, I got more, but I’ll save those for next time!

Back to India – I took a night bus from the head office back to Chidambaram last night and it’s an impossibility for me to sleep whilst on them, so I made a quick note those you who’ve never been to India should know about the roads. Oh, before I begin, we hit a motorcyclists who came speeding out of a side road either without looking, or thinking he make it crossing in front of us and out onto the other side of the road without being hit. He was wrong. I don’t know if he was alright. We didn’t stop for long, and everybody run to the windows so I couldn’t actually see any carnage, I presume he was ok, or at the very least living and eventually taken to a hospital.
OK, so what do you already know, I think I’ve mentioned to all of you, or perhaps just some, the use of the horn is in a different way from the UK. Here it is used when overtaking, and this includes overtaking a pedestrian or cyclist who is at the very edge of the road and is really not likely to move to the middle. And it’s used every time, vehicles even have painted on the back “please sound horn”. This is why it’s an idea never to take a hotel near to a road, as there is always, ok, so sometimes you may be fortunate to have as much as a 5 second gap, but there is always a horn to be heard from somewhere. When we had the jeep here, our driver Nadradj would sound his horn periodically on an empty road, probably just because to him the silence felt a little strange. I think because of their excessive horn use, Indians don’t look when walking or driving. They will pull out without looking or cross the road with the assumption that if something is coming, it will blare at them!
Drivers at night drive round with their full beam /main beam on, what ever the name, the one that gives you the blue indicator anyway, the one only supposed to be used when there is no oncoming traffic so as not to cause temporary blindness. Well most out of town roads here have no lighting, and having passing vehicles with their main beams on certainly blinds me as a passenger who tries to look the other way, so God know how the driver feels!
Walking Indians walk at a very slow speed- kind of strolling along the beach pace. It seems they are not really in a hurry. Put them behind the wheel of a car however, and all patience has gone. I think it’s more of a mind set to overtake the vehicle in front as soon as you approach it, regardless of what’s coming the other way and how far away it is. I tend only to overtake when I can see enough in front to know that I can over take and pull back in in time before an on coming vehicle would collide with me. There are no thoughts of that here, and over taking on blind corners seems to be the done thing also! Oh, and they don’t really accelerate too much when overtaking either, so it can take a while, and even if you’re about to have a head on collision as you’re taking so long to overtake, the driver will persevere, almost running the other driver off the road.
I don’t know how it’s done, but road users understand other road users. The people here are fearless,they put all their faith in God and believe accidents will only happen if it’s their time. No one (do I even need to mention this?) ever wears a seat belt and whole families are transported on one motorcycle, babies, shopping and all!

OK, I’m going to have to sign off here. I gotta get to the market so I can buy myself some veggies. I’ll be writing again soon I’m sure.

I’m not getting as many mails as I used to. Tell me your stories, tell me you’re reading mine, tell me about last night’s documentary, a decent new film, a news story or personal matters, tell me if you’ve made a prat out of yourself, but had a good laugh about it, just tell me something!

Oh quickly one more thing-the room I have at the head office I share with lizards and frogs. I didn’t realise that the frogs actually like to sit inside the toilet where they can’t be seen. So down I go, squatting to pee and a frog jumps up, and I jump up! Fortunately it didn’t touch me, and I didn’t scream at all, although I did manage to get piss on my ankle, which I of course washed straight away!

Until next time - Shalom my friends
Ruth xxx