Blog-like musings

Hey all, I've been accused of not updating in a while, and I guess the reason being that not much happens around here. I go out into the field everyday, manage far less than planned (Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum absorb about 20% of what they're told), and return home to an afternoon of data entry, an evening of reading, and go to bed by ten. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But I figured I might as well share some impressions I've had.

It's odd to feel on a daily basis how I swing wildly between optimism and deep depression as regards the situation of the poor here. What's even weirder is how my notion of "poor" fluctuates even more. When driving/shopping/just sitting on the balcony, I'm constantly surrounded by squalour (I found out last week that apparently this house isn't connected to the sewers- I thought it best not to enquire more), the kind that would absolutely shock me if I saw it anywhere else. But because I'm supervising these interviews for the better part of each day, I spend at least three to four hours in the houses of the poorest of the poor of the poor. So the pigs rolling around in muck next to the GMFI house don't even register. But even more to the point, the family of four living in a one-room mud hovel over eight feet at the highest point with a roof of old tiles don't register, because they qualify as non-poor.
Let that sink in for a second.
They don't count as poor.
According to that usual "one-dollar-a-day" standard
They're not poor.

A house like that is what our clients aspire to. And the loans that we give them (a first loan is usually Rs. 6000, or about 100 Euros) are enough to buy them a milk-producing buffalo, which catapults them straight into the moderately poor category.
What boggles me is that I don't think I ever grasped just how many people in the world are really and truly poor by our standards- when you hear the "dollar-a-day" thing, it's just a cover, because honestly, the people four times as well off are still dirt-poor.

It's hard to explain my thinking because I'm using the word poor to denote two different things, but the point I'm trying to make is that I feel mighty weird scolding a Branch Manager for taking on a new client because they're too "rich" for the programme (to be clear, GMFI's goal is "poverty-reduction", so they work exclusively below the poverty line), when I can see with my own eyes that they have nothing.

So, downer for today.

Another thing I've noticed is how, paradoxically, I seem to be able to cope with the weather/countryside better than the Indians can. It's monsoon season, which means it rains at least a couple of hours everyday (but not at a fixed time like in the tropics), and there's mud everywhere. Since we're in the countryside, we often have to walk a ways from the car to the client, if the roads can't take the car. I figured this out on, like, the second day, and have worn my sailing shoes every day since. Mind, we're not talking a lot of mud, but you make squeltchy noises when you walk, and around a centimetre at the bottom of your shoe gets dirty. Big whoop. I've seen a lot worse - at Herluf even!
But Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum haven't quite figured this out yet - after a week of the same routine. Dee still shows up wearing leather dress shoes and Dum wears these preposterous high-heeled (white! white!) sandals Every. Damn. Day. So they hate walking anywhere, it takes forever since they daintily hop around in an effort not to get their shoes dirty, and after every walk they ask for water to wash off their shoes, despite the fact that in an hour's time we're gonna walk back the same way. I'm honestly wondering how dim they really are.
It's the same story with the rain, they have an almost Witch of the West-like phobia of a couple of drops getting on their head. Hello, it's your country, how is it the Firangi (that's Hindi for foreigner) is better able to cope than you are? Gah.

I'm not going to go into detail on all the varied and creative ways these two manage to be incompetent, but suffice it to say I could hold a lecture series on the subject.

Let's talk about something pleasant, yes?

So it's official, I'm flying back to Europe on the 2nd! I have a layover in Delhi (where I'll probs be at the Airport hotel - I might faint with joy when I finally see my first western-style toilet in six weeks) and arrive in Hamburg on the 3rd. I'm scheduled to be in DK the weekends of the 16th and 23rd, and I'm flying back to Mtl the first.

I can't wait to see everyone again, and dazzle you with the beauty of my two Saris! :P you better believe I'm going to find occasion to wear them. Often.

Lots of hugs and such,
Gitte