December 19, 2010
It's 7am and we're waking up in Abishek's house as we have forgotten the key to ours - once again. We came back late last night, so it didn't seem fair to wake everyone around us to break in.
Outside it sounds as if it's raining, yet the sun is shining through the cracks in the door. It's more of the sound of a waterfall, I realize then. But no, it's not that either. At the most, it's the 'local waterfall', one of the four water sources of the village just outside Abishek's house. It's such a waste of water but hey, as it turned out recently, it's pretty unsafe to drink anyhow. Lucky enough, of the 25 water sources in the panchayat with 3 villages, one (1!!!) is reasonably low in nitrate at least (and the other nasty stuff, especially the high fluoride content, can be resolved through the process as developed by Prof. Sudhakar Rao of the Indian Institute for Science (IISc) in Bangalore).
Before having a delicious hot coffee prepared by our ever so thoughtful host, we have to brush our teeth. The village slowly wakes up and the first kids have seen me or discovered Kalyan's car. I'm taking some snapshots of the village coming to life and within minutes I'm surrounded. There goes my idea of clicking through the morning. Now the kids are taking over the camera and some have gotten pretty good at it too.
By the time I make it to our house the local 'mechanic' (who also plays the flute wonderfully as well as performing the most acrobatic acts) has opened our door already. The family next door puts a bed outside for us to sit down in the sun but of course, there's not much sitting quiet with the kids around.
Kalyan 'Sir' sits down immediately to prepare for his trigonometry tuition with Harathi who has an exam tomorrow and has asked for his help. Abishek prepares a yummy egg curry breakfast for us and the neighbor next door makes the best ever chapatis to go with it. Everything as usual. And yet there is a difference. It's gonna be my last Sunday here for quite a while. Tomorrow we're going back to Bangalore, from there I'll leave to Goa for a few days and then the big 7-months journey starts.
Kalyan still has to make sure the clean water enterprise is taking off as planned before leaving ProtoVillage for such a long time. This humble but so important start-up is only the 1st in a planned series of businesses 'for the villagers by the villagers', all focused around their the 12 dimensions needed for a life in dignity and adequacy.
Meanwhile, I won't lie idle either. I'll attempt to get our IT equipment ready, e.g. our stylish Sony video cam to cooperate with our laptops again. It just stopped doing so and there is a lot of photos and films to be backed, edited and uploaded. The photo gallery on our blog is playing up (has anyone noticed at all?) and there's my favorite subject: the research questions. No, they're not finished yet…
When Kalyan is finished he'll pick me up on the way to our first stop on our big trip: Mumbai. From there it's Central India for approx. 90 days as a first leg on the cycles.
So, tonight will be about picking what to take and what to leave behind, weighing it all out and then probably deciding on what else to leave behind… And so on repeating this process until I'm down to 10-15kg including laptop (2.1kg), all sorts of cables and rechargers (approx. 2kg), 1x of the cameras, accessories and tripod (at least 2.5kg), 2x phones (250g??), spare parts, tools and torches (2kg??). Ooops. That's already 8.75kg… No clothes, no toiletries, no shoes. No therm-a-rest mat (640g), no sleeping bag (close to 1kg). No food, no water. Oh nooooo, and no books!!! And the bags themselves weigh something too!! Aiaiai, I think we have to watch that video on packing again.
No comments:
Post a Comment