New Year – New Job
Its been a busy week here in rural India, the water buffalo have been scrubbed clean in the local bathing pond and look very shiny. Some of the children could do with the same treatment, they are ok from a distance but when you get up close you can see they are filthy. Surprising, as the men seem to be always bathing.
I took the water buffalo by the horns and spoke to my boss about my role here. It seems that I am expected to : develop and implement HR systems, prepare a forward plan, train her in management, teach her English, prepare and implement a documentation plan, set up a management framework for training staff, reorganise their marketing, set up a web site etc, minute meetings of the board, train someone to do this, file, type etc. Not sure how I go about all this without any resources. Even getting a piece of paper seems to be a difficult.
I also met an interesting and locally significant person and went to a Children’s Fun Day, we organised in a local village to celebrate childrens week.
After my questions about my role, the boss lady took me to meet Chaco, who seems to be her guru, and he may become mine too! He was very well read, spoke perfect English and he told me he now spends most of his time (he must be around 65) reading, tending his medicinal herb garden and practising yoga. He made me tea from some of his herbs – for my stomach – goodness knows what was in it but it made me feel fantastic and I drank 4 cups of the stuff. He also gave me some Madeira cake – which he had bought specially because it was Christmas. Lovely man! We talked about India, herbs, religion and my job – which he believes is to organise them!
The Children’s Fun day was a bizarre and totally mis-named event. Children and their mothers had been brought in from surrounding villages to have ‘fun’. The day included playing musical chairs (a totally alien concept for them as there isn’t even a word in oriya for chair) reciting poems and sitting for a couple of hours listening to dignitaries making speeches, which I took to be the real point of the day.
Most of them fell asleep and I had trouble keeping my eyes open. After that we had food – served out of galvanised buckets onto plates made out of large leaves, no spoons but getting quite good at eating with my hand. Everyone received a prize to take home, a plastic box containing pens and pencils but no paper. The children , who were from a number of different villages, speaking different dialects, seemed overwhelmed and were very well behaved. There was no shouting at the kids, no crying, no cheek or fighting.
I found out a few intersting things – to prevent evil spirits from stealing new babies, they make them look ugly by painting large black spots on their faces. I thought they all had large birthmarks at first. All marriages are arranged and having a son gives a woman her status. the mother son relationship is considered to be the most important of all. So they think I am greatly blessed! Some of the women have so much nose jewellery it’s difficult to see their noses. I think its quite ugly, but it’s gold so it’s a sign of wealth. Anyone want any gold or silver jewellery brought home – its very cheap here. but not hallmarked.
Just like to add that the contents of my blog are my own personal thoughts and observations and in no way reflect the views of VSO India