Village life in India certainly is a bit different from the hustle and bustle of the cities, but it's reassuring to know that those "Indian Moments" still happen! Like:
- Chasing a flock of honking geese out of the shower so you can throw your bucket of water around in peace.
- Its perfectly acceptable to bless your house by reading the Hindu verion of the bible over a four speaker PA system for over 24 hours straight....at full volume. Don't forget there's no electricity here, so you need to hire a generator and loudspeakers for the job so that the whole region knows what you're doing and doesn't get any sleep.
- You use cow poo for everything. Fuel, gap filler, and resurfacing common areas.
- Live stock have right of way on the roads. You can go around them, but you're never really sure which way they're going to turn!
- People give you an honest opinion. Do you like this bracelet? No not really. Do you like my hair this way? No not really. Or people will just laugh at the funny looking foreigners when they do something different.
- Spending all day getting not much done.
- Getting three different conflicting answers to a question.
- Getting beaten up whilst having a hair cut. The barber looks at you in the mirror, grins, and says "Indian style cutting?" like you have a choice, its all he knows how to do. So your hair gets pulled, combed, chopped so that you look almost Indian. Then he starts on his head "massage" which involves pullin your hair out of your head, going through three series of punching you in the head before he pulls your hair out again! There were nearly tears more than once let me tell you...its as hard core as a Shepp myotherapy session!
- Having goats, cows and chickens running through your treatment area in the middle of treating patients, while a crowd of waiting patients watching on.
- Transporting your building tools and materials 3kms up the road to the work site by bicycle, including bags of cement, 10 metre long steel rods, water pump, shovels etc.
- Collecting and carrying huge pieces of stone (some up to 400kg) from the quarry wearing thongs or just going bare foot.
- Chasing a flock of honking geese out of the shower so you can throw your bucket of water around in peace.
- Its perfectly acceptable to bless your house by reading the Hindu verion of the bible over a four speaker PA system for over 24 hours straight....at full volume. Don't forget there's no electricity here, so you need to hire a generator and loudspeakers for the job so that the whole region knows what you're doing and doesn't get any sleep.
- You use cow poo for everything. Fuel, gap filler, and resurfacing common areas.
- Live stock have right of way on the roads. You can go around them, but you're never really sure which way they're going to turn!
- People give you an honest opinion. Do you like this bracelet? No not really. Do you like my hair this way? No not really. Or people will just laugh at the funny looking foreigners when they do something different.
- Spending all day getting not much done.
- Getting three different conflicting answers to a question.
- Getting beaten up whilst having a hair cut. The barber looks at you in the mirror, grins, and says "Indian style cutting?" like you have a choice, its all he knows how to do. So your hair gets pulled, combed, chopped so that you look almost Indian. Then he starts on his head "massage" which involves pullin your hair out of your head, going through three series of punching you in the head before he pulls your hair out again! There were nearly tears more than once let me tell you...its as hard core as a Shepp myotherapy session!
- Having goats, cows and chickens running through your treatment area in the middle of treating patients, while a crowd of waiting patients watching on.
- Transporting your building tools and materials 3kms up the road to the work site by bicycle, including bags of cement, 10 metre long steel rods, water pump, shovels etc.
- Collecting and carrying huge pieces of stone (some up to 400kg) from the quarry wearing thongs or just going bare foot.
Only in India!
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to see the results of this haircut - photo please??
You guys are going to have big guns when you get back - 400kg pieces of stone, bags of cement - phew, i'm tired just reading that!!
GFJ xx