A Day in the Life

Thinking further on blog topics after a bit of a breather, one thing I recall being asked is "So what do you do all day?". I have two types, field days and not-field days.

Not-Field Days

• 7:00 AM (ish): Wake up. Caused by combination of light, noise (usually from daily morning power failure and resultant generator start-up), and (usually) someone bringing me a cup of tea, one of precisely three special privileges I've claimed.
  
• 7:30 AM: Shower, shave, etc. Since returning to Bhorugram, I do actually have a genuine shower. With hot water. Didn't request it, but not complaining.
  
• 8:00 AM: Walk 1km to school (not uphill both ways, but fraught with the peril of rogue sheep). Take breakfast in school cafeteria. Generally, I will ignore the breakfast entree of the day in favor of a plate of fruit and a cup of tea. (Second special privilege: daily delivery of breakfast fruit.)
  
• 8:30 AM: Get to office, start day of work. "Work" is variable. There's at least one phone call to someone regarding whatever is going wrong this day, usually some time spent doing queries in the database, debugging of some non-working program, teaching the staff how to do some particular task with the programs, tracking down source of a data entry error one of our techs is having, and meeting with other Bhoruka Charitable Trust staff about whatever it is I need that day.
  
  
  The list of things that are not working on any given day has included, but is not limited to:
  
  • Lack of electricity to computers or lights
    
  • Wasps building nest on main ventilation duct
    
  • Computer teacher stealing our OS installation CDs and our Oracle CDs in mistaken belief that we are hiding a new version of Oracle
    
  • Tech unplugging the server to charge his mobile phones
    
  • Dustbin in room overflowing with trash due to not being emptied past three/four days
    
  
  
• 10:30 AM (ish): Tea break. Cup #3, for those keeping count. Obtain copy of The Hindu, my preferred English-language daily. (Special privilege #3.)
  
• 10:45 AM onwards: See work above.
  
• 1:30 PM: Lunch. Meals other than breakfast are a fixed menu of roti (bread), chavval (rice), sabzi (vegetable; the potato is considered a vegetable), and dal (lentils, chickpeas on a good day). Pure vegetarian, although they do use ghee.
  
• 2:00 PM onwards: See work above. Follow up on whatever's gone wrong in the morning. Yell at people as needed, feel bad about constantly yelling at people.
  
• 4:00 PM: Optional cup of tea #4.
  
• 6:00 PM (ish): Attempt to finish work and switch over to typing blog entries, reading email, writing Scope & Scalpel, other personal work for day.
  
• 7:30 PM: Dinner, see also lunch. 8 PM is student dinner time; either take dinner early and get hot food, or wait until 9 and get great personal service, but cold food and not much veggie left.
  
• 9:00 to 10:00 PM: Finish up residual work and personal Internet use, head back to quarters (1 km walk back, lovely view of night sky, stray dogs not aggressive).
  
• 10:15 to 11:00 PM: Read book, relax, maybe eat a biscuit or chocolate from the secret stash. Suppress mild craving for glass of Scotch and some ice.
  
• 11:00 to 11:30 PM: Bedtime. Turn on geyser so that hot water will be produced overnight and thus will not be prevented by morning power failure.
  

Field Day

• 7:00 to 9:00 AM: Same.
  
• 9:00 AM: Jeep arrives, with Hanuman the driver. Fill up water bottles, grab lunch from cafeteria (if ordered the night before), start interminable process of getting crap together.
  
• 10:00 AM: Depart Bhorugram. Spend rest of day bumping over sand dunes to sound of various Punjabi, Rajasthani, or Haryani music tapes. (See also, prior post re: roads and lack thereof in most of district.)
  
• 11:00 AM(ish): Arrive first of usually three sites. Spend about an hour sitting with village women looking through their registers, cross-checking their data with our data, and trying to explain to them why exactly it's important that they fill out all these damn forms (in between herding children, cooking all the meals, fetching water, keeping fire going, obtaining clothes/food, and doing every bloody other thing that keeps their families alive).
  
• 1:00 PM(ish): Lunch break. Lunch is eaten by spreading newspaper under the shade of a random tree in the middle of a desert, placing whatever food we've brought on the paper, and sharing as best we can.
  
• 1:15 PM(ish): Back on road, see above.
  
• 4:30 PM(ish): End of final meeting. Pick up one or more health supervisors who need a ride home, shuttle them home, and head for Sardarpur or Rajgarh.
  
• 5:00 PM(ish): Start running what occasionally seem like interminable errands in Rajgarh. Errands can include, but are not limited to:
  
  
  
  • Pick up generator or water pump parts for school
    
  • Collect school/BCT's mail from our Rajgarh mail drop in a little copy center
    
  • Tea, sweets, sugar cane juice, or fried snacks
    
  • Recharge one or more mobile phones
    
  • Collect more REACH data sheets
    
  • Process photos for school/BCT publicity (a nightmarish hour-long task of computer incompetence)
    
  • Pick up random people from various bus drop-off points
    
  • Any other shopping the organization may need done.
    
  
  
• 6:00 PM(ish): Head for home, reach Bhorugram around 6:30. Remainder of program as per non-field day.
  

Sundays are a bit lighter; I generally only work a half/quarter day, and there's usually something special for breakfast. Other than that, this is the pace of life here in Bhorugram. I've gotten pretty used to it, but I'll still be glad to come home.