Meh...

It is one hot day here in Khedi Milak! We checked the forecast and we’re supposed to be getting scorching, sunny weather until Sunday, when it may rain. Everyone is getting sick of the hot season and the countdown to the start of the monsoon has begun!

To deal with the heat, air coolers have been set up in a window of each room. I say this like they were just rolled out today. No, there are air coolers in the windows year round, they are just set on high on days like this. An air cooler is in theory like a window AC unit, but not nearly as effective. It’s a huge contraption that must be occasionally filled with water. The bottom half is a water reservoir and the top half is a big fan. The water is somehow shot up through a fibrous filter, which look like hardened yellow Easter basket grass, and the air is cooled as is passes through. Although the air is in no way “cool”, it does take the edge off days like this.

One drawback, however, is that the fan in the big office is in a window that seems to be right where all of the men like to go pee. Instead of walking to the toilets, which are by no means far away, the men pee in a little alley behind the building. This alley is also near the kitchen. So not only the office, but the kitchen, too, always smells like stale piss.

So right now I have the option of sitting by a fan blowing pissy air in my face, or I can move and sweat my balls off. Decisions, decisions…

I really don’t know why no one else finds this offensive. The men’s penchant for peeing all over the place is the one thing I just can’t get used to. The littering hurts my soul, the burping is a bit gross, the spitting is still kind of nasty, but for the most part I can cope. I just don’t understand the need to pee on the side of the building in which you work, or ten feet away from where you eat, instead of walking a little further to a proper toilet.

Ok. Enough of that. I’m sure you are all beginning to notice I’m not too content here. It’s true, but I don’t want to fill my blog with complaints and insensitive remarks on another culture. There are great things about India. Those great things generally happen when I am not sequestered inside Gram Chetna, like field visits and eat and run marriage celebrations.

Ooooh! That’s another thing I wanted to tell you about. Back home, we would refer to marriage celebrations as weddings. I’ve always thought that having the word wedding, as opposed to some term like marriage celebration, puts an emphasis on a one day event of a wedding, instead of the lifetime commitment of a marriage. In a way, to me at least, this conjures up a subconscious notion that a wedding is a separate from the marriage. Really, when I go to a wedding, I’m not celebrating that one specific wedding day. I’m celebrating the start of a marriage, and two people making the decision to spend the rest of their lives together. Does that make sense?

Anyway, that’s that. I just felt the need to balance out my trash talking by giving some praise.

And yesterday I had a bug down the leg of my pants. I was using the internet and I kept feeling something tickling my thigh. I went to scratch it and felt a large lump. At first the lump felt like it was just another bug bite, but then I noticed I couldn’t feel it when I touched it, as if it wasn’t a part of my skin. I quickly realized it was a HUGE bug and started punching my thigh. I was screaming at the time, but I didn’t know it. I stood up, was shaking my leg and hopping up and down. I then realized I had to get my pants off, NOW! Since I was in the office on one side of the building, I had to run to my room, on the other end of the long portico. I was screaming the entire way, past Big Boss, past the head of education, past everyone. I got to my room, slammed the door, stripped my pants off and out fell a beetle the size of my thumbnail. I let out a loud, “God d*mn it!” and then stood in shock for a few seconds. I thought about what I must have looked like and laughed to myself.

I composed myself, walked out of my bedroom and back to the office. Big Boss looked very concerned as I tried to explain I had a beetle in my pants. He seemed to understand, or at least understand I wasn’t dying, and smiled kindly. I went back to the office and continued my business. But I couldn’t stop feeling bugs crawling all over me. Even as I write about it, I am imagining the little tickle of several bugs on my skin. Gross.

Love ya!