Everyday Life, in Copious Detail

Here’s a little more detail about my work and homelife, as requested:

I work for the NGO organization Mann Vikas (I’m shortening some names here), which also serves as the umbrella organization for a micro finance institution, Mann Deshi, a cooperative bank for rural women. In addition, there is also the Mann Vikas Udyogini Rural Business School for Women, which is literally a bus converted into a classroom which travels to remote locations and offers trainings in financial and computer literacy, tailoring (sewing), yogurt making, and other useful entrepreneurial skills.

The projects I’ve been assigned are broad and yet nondescript at the moment. I will be teaching, as I said in an earlier post, a weekly English class (I’m bolding all my projects for emphasis. There’s a lot). I am also inheriting several projects from Barbara, a departing intern (the Scot). She, bless her heart, is an uber-productive individual who has never said ‘no’ to anyone and therefore is handing off more projects to me than I would have ever allowed myself to become involved in. Those include:

-Developing a financial literacy curriculum for the rural business school based on her notes and materials from a training she received in Mumbai;
-Establishing a Global Giving account for the NGO, which is an online website through which people can donate money to Mann Vikas. Because this is a U.S. website however, we have to endure a lengthy process of due diligence by proving through extensive documentation that we are actually who we say we are (the equivalent of a 501(c)3), and not scam artists or funders of terrorism; and finally
-Smart Card technology…roughly put, it’s an electronic version of a passbook which I have just learned from our resident Brit is some sort of documentation of all your bank transactions which you take to the bank with you. This technology allows bank “pigmy agents” (the very P.C. way people here say field agent) to electronically access information about rural clients without the paperwork.

In addition to Barbara’s projects I’ve got plenty of my own. After hearing I was interested in agricultural issues, my mentor decided I should help realize her long burning ambition to have a pomegranate tasting contest amongst growers in Maharashtra. Apparently, there are some damn good pomegranates here, and she’d like to promote them. Or something. I’m not totally clear on why this is a priority, but it’ll be fun nonetheless.

Also, I’ve just been handed off the project of helping to develop the terms of a new partnership with Baja Allianz, a life insurance company that is pitching a Woman and Child Insurance package for us to provide to our clients. I sat in on a scintillating 2 hour meeting, all in Hindi, about their services, from which I have some fantastic doodling on notebook paper to show for. Baja is the world’s self-purported largest and most trusted manufacturer of two-wheelers (motorcycles), and this somehow makes them very interested in life insurance. I’m new to the business world, but this amuses me.

And lastly, I have just been informed that I may well be providing computer training to….judges. This is really all I know. Vanita, the communications person in the office, just told me that I will give her a copy of my resume. I, then, ask why I will be doing this (this is my only form of rebellion around here: having the audacity to ask “why.”). And she answers by saying that I will possibly be giving computer training to judges. Judges who sit in court with lawyers, I ask? Hm, she answers with the classic Indian sideways headbob that can as easily mean yes or no depending on the intent of the bobber themselves, known only to them. What I then said I won’t repeat, but needless to say, I have no idea what they may expect to find on my resume that would qualify me for such a task. Oh goodness.

I think that covers it. These are my projects—seven in all, and these are just the ones they’ve bothered to tell me about. I should acknowledge that this NGO is a very well respected organization with a large client base and internationally recognized success. But as you can see, they spread their interns and fellows very, very thin. Rather than focus on one thing from beginning to completion, as I would prefer, they expect you to keep more than a lot of balls in the air at once, and all the while giving no time to actually work on them as they fill up most of your office time with the regular tasks of report writing, editing, email composition, etc. It’s an office culture I’m going to have to learn to navigate and negotiate within, lest I go insane!!! Different coping mechanisms are arising as time goes by….the mid-morning tea break……the pre-lunch guava snack…long lunches…utilization of the ipod, the universal signal for “I need to be left alone for awhile” which doesn’t always work…and finally, another tea break. The final strategy, which Brenna has begun to masterfully employ, is flatly saying “no, I can’t do that right now.” If they so much as suggest an 8th project to me, those very words may fly out of my own mouth.

As for my home life, it is the EXACT opposite. Overly tranquil doesn’t begin to cover it. I live with Jaishri, the branch manager of the Mann Deshi Bank in Mhaswad (there are multiple locations), her husband Dr. Narale (as he is known to his family, a veterinarian whose connections bring the household fantastic buffalo milk), and their 9 year old daughter Shweta. I walk to work with Jaishri most mornings, but come home before her, so those of you who have gotten phone calls from me are usually helping to fill my time during the long walk through town, filled with hundreds of staring and bewildered eyes, and then down the long stretch of country road to the house, all the while dodging sleeping donkeys, honking trucks, whizzing two wheelers, and most deadly of all, huge turds of poop everywhere. Once home, I usually engage in some sort of wordless but laughter-filled game with Shweta (last night she picked the heads off of some flowers and we threw them back and forth to each other for about an hour). When Jaishri gets home she usually makes tea, refuses all offers to let me help her, and delivers me a steaming cup of my favorite ginger chai. Drinking this kills only about 5 minutes of my evening. Then I read, write emails, do laundry (in a bucket, in my bedroom, just because I can. There’s a woman who does the family’s laundry, but I’ve decided to spare my clothes the heavy discipline of being beaten against rocks and rubbed with metal brushes), and usually devour a lot of peanut butter as I wait rapaciously for dinner at around 10 pm. After dinner, sometimes we sit around and watch an Indian TV show, or if I’m lucky, some really great American movies being shown on the English station like First Daughter or The Pacifier. Then I retire for the night, take a quick cold shower to wash off the grime of the day, read more, fuss with my mosquito netting, kill any killable bugs, and then attempt to sleep under the white noise of my fan and the soothing melodies of country music. (I’ve had some pretty terrifying mefloquine dreams, but I’ve found that honky tonk must scare any subconscious and negative thoughts that nightmares feed upon. So far so good.) Behold, my terribly glamorous village lifestyle.

Despite the ongoing frustrations, there are, of course, beautiful moments that I am awed by. Like fording a shallow river at dusk as boys in the village wrestle and dive in the beautiful water. And seeing someone I’ve met only once as I walk to work, and though I don’t comprehend a single Marathi word that he’s saying I wind up getting whisked away on his two wheeler and receiving a welcome and unsolicited ride to work at exhilarating and breakneck speeds. And like Monday night, when we had an unusually long power outage for a few hours. The family and I lit candles in the kitchen and ate strawberry ice cream in the dim light, and then took our cups of chai up to the roof and sat under the blurry streak of the Milky Way while Shweta narrated stories to us in the dark. Later, I realized what a fitting metaphor that was for my experience here. In the midst of the unexpected, of being deprived of what we take for granted and come to rely on, we can experience something uniquely beautiful, intimate, and simple. I wish those moments of realization came to me more, but I’m learning to appreciate them as they come. Food for the soul!

That’s it for now…how’s that for some detail! Whew. Kudos to anyone who actually read this. Be well!