I haven't had much time to write, as we've been pretty busy, or at least occupied. There is a certain amount of waiting around time that is inevitable when trying to organize a jeep full of 8 people, especially when many of those people are doctors with patients. Five minutes become forty-five, and you don't have time to start anyththing, or so you think.

The scope of the issues the people at JSS are dealing with are incredible, as there is widespread poverty, malnutrition, and lack of education. Even at the clinic, I am insulated from most of it. The patients are lined up and waiting quietly, and you can't see hunger or pain, but the doctors discuss their cases with each other on the rides to and from the clinic, so we hear glimpses of what is going on. Meanwhile, we amble around, take meals and tea, discuss agriculture and politics and poke at the computer like we're counselors at an activist summer camp.

Tomorrow we're travelling to Orissa if we can find train tickets. The plan would be to stay about a week at a research center there where they have had success with getting SRI adpoted. Still no monsoon, though there has been some rains.

Saturday is a work day in India, and we went out to the Ganyari clinic again, except this time we did not hang around for long. Instead, we jumped into an ambulance with one of the doctors and some lab staff and headed out to a field clinic, about 30 km away, which is run on a weekly basis. This was a small building, with two main rooms, and a large closet area that serves as a pharmacy. Like yesterday, a number of people waited patiently to be seen by a doctor.


After a few minutes touring the facility, Jacob, Dolly, and I continued on even further to a village where farmers are practicing SRI. About 200 families, around 1000 people live in this village. We stopped in the center, where there is a "people tree" and a small stage-like platform and patio which serves as the meeting area. A number of children, some of the younger ones naked, ran about. They are not naked from neglect or poverty - it is hot and they bathe and cool in the water. Most families own some livestock and cows and goats wandered around.

Jacob quickly found one of the farmers, who was skinny and had difficulty farming due to a handicap in his arms. Soon, another farmer showed up. This one is more successful - his yields are four times the state average. This village is lucky to have good soils, and they are located next to a river, so even though the riverbed was dry, wells a few meters deep provided easy access to groundwater. Even though the rains have not started, they had planted some of their rice fields about 10 days ago because they are able to irrigate.

We walked down the dusty dirt roads for a few hundred meters to the fields. The fields are surrounded by fences made of sticks and thornbushes, and are each around a half acre to an acre in size, subdivied into smaller plots. In the center of this farmer's field was a small hut next to a well which was pumping cool water.

Today was the day when weeding is scheduled, according to SRI principles. Some of the farmers looked very strong and musular, but not this one. He was a bit older, and his body sagged in places, but he was strong and energetic in his movements. He did a few rows of weeding to demonstrate for us - probably more for Jacob, as we advises them on their SRI practice. It looked like hard work, and to do the job properly involves doing every row, both horizontally and vertically between the plants spaced at 25cm. To do a 20mx20m plot involves over 3km of linear weeding. All the fields in this village had too much water according to Jacob, but the farmers assured us they had "improved" the method. This is apparently a common phenomena in the adaptation of SRI practices; a farmer will not feel comfortable giving up their traditional approach - in this case, flooding the fields, and will not adapt the SRI practices completely.

We saw a few more fields before returning to the ambulance where we went back to the clinic and eventually to Ganyari. We attended a brief coconut smashing ceremony (the local equivalent of a ribbon cutting) for a new structure constructed to serve as a covered cooking area for when it rains. A number of people currently cook with small brick stoves out in the open. These people or patients at the hospital, and their families, and they will now have a better place to cook when it rains.

This morning we woke up early and went to visit the JSS campus to get acquainted with the organization and the staff. JSS is a rural health care organization founded by 5 couples, all of whom are doctors. They provide medical services to underserved areas at rates reasonable for the local populations, a large number of which are tribal peoples and marginal farmers.

The staff ride out in the morning in a pair of Jeeps, and we joined them along with Jacob. The JSS clinic is in Ganyari, a village about 30km outside of Bilaspur, and it took about 40 minutes to make the drive through fields and villages.

The campus itself looks a lot like what I imagined it would, with sandy red soil in the shade of sparse trees, and simple buildings spread around. Three days a week, including today, they have what amounts to a walk-in clinic, so the main buildings were surrounded by a crowd of people waiting patiently for their time with the doctor.

There are currently twelve doctors full time at JSS, and each has their own speciality. The facilities are simple, but modern, including small hospital ward, and a new surgery building with two operating rooms. There is a mess where food is served, with a wood fire for most of the cooking, and everybody washes their own dishes - including the doctors. There are also office buildings, a conference room, an IT building (with wireless broadband!), pharmacies, some housing for workers and doctors who may spend the night. There are a number of support workers besides the doctors, though I don't know how many.

There are also a few fields, covering about an acre and a half, where SRI methods are practiced and researched. A number of animals wander the grounds, a few sheep (whose blood is extracted for some kind of serum or media) a cow, and the ever present stray dogs.

We spent the day touring the grounds, talking with Jacob about SRI, and generally trying not to get too hot. Temperatures here hit around 43C... I don't even want to know what that is in Farenheit, so you'll have to look it up yourself. It is supposed to get cooler when the rains come... but the monsoon is long overdue.

The delayed monsoon season is a subject that gets a lot of inches in the newspaper, and is the topic of much discussion. In the short term, it means that farmers get a late start in planting their crops. In the longer term, it means that at this time next year, at the cusp of monsoon season, water levels may be dangerously low, if the rains do not fall long and hard enough to replenish the ground water supply. This makes our work with SRI and water management even more important and immediate than we had expected.

Almost four weeks after arriving in Boston, we have finally made it to Bilaspur! The trip was long and difficult, due to our heavy pile of luggage, but we'll only have to do that once more on the way out.

We started on Wednesday afternoon, taking a cab to the bus station, where a number of coolies (porters) started trying to charge us ridiculous rates to move our luggage a few feet. Unfortunately, we didn't know where our luggage was supposed to go, where to load in onto the bus, etc., and we ended up paying them more than we paid the taxi driver for the 10km air-conditioned ride. The sitution was made difficult because of my whiteness, which identified me as "rich," or at least able to afford their inflated rates.

The bus ride started out well enough. It wasn't AC, but it was comfortable, and the open windows provided enough of a breeze. However, after a couple hours, the driver started letting on more people than the bus could hold, and as best we could tell was pocketing the extra money. This meant the once comfortable bus was now overcrowded, and I was getting face fulls of butts and bellys. The driver also got into fights with a number of the passengers along the way.

India does not have the equivalent of our interstate highway system, so many of the roads were small and bumpy. At around 4 AM we drove down a road that has to hold the record for worst potholes, as every few minutes we would slow down and drive over a huge bump or hole, jarring me from my sleep.

After fighting with more coolies and cab drivers, we made it from the Nagpur bus station to the Nagpur rail station (where even more coolies "helped" us to the platform). Credit goes to Dolly and her language skills for dealing with these agressive men as well as she did. As the early morning sun rose, Dolly once again made things easier by finding the air conditioned waiting room for the "upper class" passengers, where we escaped from the heat for the few hours we waited for the train.

We were in a 3-tier AC sleeper car, where it was cool and comfortable once we dragged our luggage in. We were hungry as neither of us had eaten much due to earlier intenstinal difficulties, and we were tired, but we played cards and slept and watched the other passengers.

The train took two hours longer than scheduled to arrive in Bilaspur due to construction delays, and by the time we got there we were exhausted. Luckily, JSS has a van, and two of the members met us and helped with our luggage, and brought us to a hotel where we arrived about 30 hours after we started our journey. We will be staying here for a few days until Jacob cleans his house - and we will stay there until an apartment is found in the colony where Jacob and the doctors stay.

We ordered a huge meal from room service, and Jacob came to meet us. After he had left, the boy working as the bellhop came with the bill. When he left for change, he left the door slightly ajar, which I did not notice at the time. When he returned, the door to the bathroom where Dolly was showering was open, and so I ran to the door to stop him before he came in too far. In doing so, I slipped on the wet floor, wiping out completely, and taking out a chair on the way down. I'm pretty sure that I heard him laugh a little while I was in midair.

Yesterday we met our contact at JSS, Jacob, for the first time. He is on the younger side of middle aged, with greying hair that looks like it is still youthfully dark underneath and a mischievous smile. He knows a lot of people working on SRI, and has been doing agricultural work in the rural areas for many years, and we will be working with him closely and learning what he knows. He seems to be an experienced and light traveller, arriving with just large laptop bag, which contains everything he needs, including the laptop. His train arrived at 2 in the morning, and he didn't think twice about sleeping in the train station (apparently there are simple accomodations for travellers, so at least he wasn't sleeping on the platform). He came to meet Dr. Gujja of the WWF, along with us, and other than that he was calling people he knew on his cell phone and setting up meetings shen he could. His mannerism and habits reminded me in some ways of a vagrant, travelling without a care with minimal possessions. His default expression is a sly smile, and in the short time I've spent with him I haven't seen any negative emotions like anger or being upset.

Our return to ICRISAT was to find if we could work with them. Short answer, no - long answer yes. ICRISAT is a large, multinational organization, and there are a myriad of procedural hurdles to clear to get an ICRISAT employee badge, so it is not feasible to work for them. However, they do have a budget, and discretion to partner with other organization and fund certain projects, and it was clear that they were very open to that possibility of funding us through Jacob and JSS. So, we will be going into the field and getting our bearings and putting together a specific proposal. JSS does not have the resources of ICRISAT, and the supplemental income will be very welcome. JSS is looking for a place for us to set up house in their neighborhood, and until then we will be staying at Jacob's house.

We leave tomorrow night - a bus to Nagpur, and then a train to Bilaspur. It will be over 24 hours of travel, and I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, we are here to experience India, which we will be doing, but we are novices at Indian bus and train stations, and will have as much luggage as we can carry as we set out to establish our new home. And the travel time is as long as it took to get from Boston into Bilaspur, so our butts might just fall asleep.

We will have Internet there, but it will be dial-up, so posts may come more infrequently from here on out... but I will keep posting.

In London, a taxi driver must pass a difficult test called "The Knowledge" in order to be licensed. They must know all the streets and the best routes from one place to another, and study for years to become an expert on the city. The average driver needs 12 attempts over 34 months to pass. In Hyderabad, you barely need a running vehicle.

To be fair to the taxi drivers, many of the streets don't even appear to have names, and so formal addresses are mostly useless. Even a GPS system would be foiled by the lack of proper naming. Getting somewhere often involves getting to the neighborhood, and then either calling the store/restaurant you are going to, or asking people on the street until one of them knows where the place is. And sometimes, they point you in the wrong direction.

Additionally, the taxi drivers themselves often do not know where certain neighborhoods and landmarks are. Sometimes you have to flag down several autos before finding one that knows where you're going, more or less, is willing to take you there, and is willing to do so on the meter, not at an inflated price that is usually about twice what it should be. And sometimes, even if you agree to their price there are difficulties. Last night after agreeing to the auto drivers price, he had trouble finding the place and wanted more than he had said in the first place, even though he knew there would be some driving around to find the place.

The taxis sometimes are not in the best condition, and struggle to get up the mild inclines of bridges, and their engines stop while idling at stoplights. One taxi we were in recently had the most pathetic sounding horn, a sickly wheeze that no one outside our vehicle could hear. The taxi itself was not much healthier, and the driver puttered along, honking now and then anyway as we took our slow ride home.

To be fair, the drivers have a hard job, and we've always found what were looking for in the end We know ahead of time when they may not know exactly where something is, and the cost of the ride is usually less than what the tip would be for a taxi ride of the same distance in America.

We went to the Ayurvedic Doctor, located down a back road full of potholes. We passed the first domestic cows I had seen. There was an empty lot with a trough where they were sitting out, and there were two "farmers" milking the cows. Around the corner was a milk spot, where I imagine they sell very fresh milk.

The doctor proceeded much like a western doctor, asking some questions, taking some vitals, looking in my eyes and throat, and then prescribing some medecines, only they were herbal medecines, and I am to take them for 5 days. They are supposed to boost my immune system and alleviate my allergies. I'm also supposed to avoid alcohol and meat and eat many cooling foods for the next 2 weeks. Dolly got a blood purifying potion that is similar in smell to cough syrup. We tried asking questions about Ayurvedia and what the medecines are, but all we got was "Ayurvedia means 'science of life'" and "the medecines are herbal medecines". We were hoping for some education around Ayurvedia and our conditions and treatments, but in that respect we left disapponted. On the drive back the auto driver took a detour through a Muslim neighborhood, and I saw some cows being kept that looked like eating cows - along with a few beef shops.

Today and tonight we are in a hotel to get some space and time on our own. We are in a 3-star hotel, which is nice - the room is on the small side, but the bathroom is clean and stocked in a western style (shampoos, conditioners), there is central AC, a shower with hot running water, and the bed is big and comfortable. We had a buffet lunch at the restaurant upstairs, and it was an "expensive" buffet (720 ruppess - about $15 for the two of us, including tax and 2 bottles of water). They had a variety of foods, from salads to deserts, and even though it was Indian food, it was the most Western meal I have had since I've been here. I had (tandoori) chicken wings, along with spicy fruit salad, lamb vindaloo, chicken briyani and only a little rice.

Right now there is a movie on TV and in one of the dance numbers we recognized many of the locations from Ramoji Film Studio where we visited a few weeks ago.