Hi all, Well December in Ranikhet has flown by. We feel thoroughly at home with Grassroots / Umang and the staff and have been getting stuck into the charity work. The cold room design is progressing well; I have been investigating earth building techniques and am hoping to get it ready for implementation in February / March when we get back from the south. When feeling a bit restless and the need to bash stuff I have been building a small chicken coop from scrap wood in Kalyan and Anita’s garden. On a visit to the wood store, I was quite surprised how expensive wood is, so this has kind of ruled out using it in a Chicken coop design for the masses. Bamboo however is in abundance and cheap so I am looking in to making use of that and building some prototypes when we come back in February.
Lenka has been cracking on with the knitting product organization, itemizing and cataloguing which is a mammoth task. She is now at a stage when Kalyan, Anita and the ladies have bought into the process and in February / March she is hoping to implement all the changes.
We have also both been teaching computer skills to two of the staff. Lenka has been going on a daily basis to visit, Sunneeta, the manager of Umang and I have been helping Jaqdish, the grassroots technical manager. We have both been finding the experience challenging but rewarding, it sometimes tests our patience but is satisfying when they start to get the knack of it.
In the middle of December we took a four day trip to Mukteshwar where Raju (the grassroots head forester) has a guest out. It was a good chance to spend a few days away from the cold north facing hills of Ranikhet and get some warmth into our bones. Even though Mukteshwar is 400m higher at 2200m it was much warmer due to the south facing elevation. Raju imparted some of his vast forestry knowledge on us during some walks in the area, we also visited an apple tree nursery and also the vertinary institute which was based there (which gave me a chance to inspect their cold room which was carved in top the rock in 1900).It was a nice long weekend and a change of scene, though I was forced to have a haircut and beard trim which I wasn’t best pleased about. On the way back we visited another NGO called Arohi, which runs a local school and hospital and also makes natural apricot oils and scrubs which it sells locally and also in the Umang shop in Ranikhet.
With the Christmas Festivities Lenka obviously couldn’t refuse a chance to do some baking and let Kalyan and Anita sample some Czech Christmas cookies which worked out a treat even though the chef, Ranjeet, didn’t seem to understand that we wanted the oven on a low temp and kept cranking it up to 280 deg C! For Christmas Day we went to church in the morning and sang some rather different versions of English Christmas carols and a new song which went Happy Happy Christmas, Happy Happy Christmas day , Repeat * 100. Then afterwards there was a massive party lots of food and drink and some games which included beer fishing and bingo, which I won, which was a little embarrassing having been given the ticket for free. They insisted that I went to the front and collect a prize in front of 500 or so Indians. In the evening we had a nice meal with Kalyan and Anita and some of their friends from Delhi. Lenka picked up some easier knitting techniques which she has been using ever since and occasionally I even have a go. For New Year we visited a local hotel, where Suneeta’s husband worked. There was some traditional Kumaoni dancing (which we eventually got involved with) and a massive fire and even a few fireworks.
On New Year’s Day we went for a walk with Ranjeet and his three lovely children. We had a long walk through the woods and stopped at a tea shop for tea and cake. Lenka had tried her best to get Ranjeet’s wife, Laxmi to join us as well but unfortunately she was working. Shortly after we finished the walk at Ranjeets home, Laxmi appeared with a massive amount of grass on her head (see pic). We both felt a bit sad as the women here work very hard (and most of the men don’t) and don’t seem to have much of a life. We will try and persuade her to join us on a trip when we return.
Delhi Belly Update – Currently the scores are Lenka 2 , Matt 1. All hits of stomach upset were relatively unexplainable as we hadn’t been anywhere and been eating the same food from Ranjeet. Lenka’s first score came the day after mind, so not sure if the counts as foul play on my part, maybe a Brown Card at least. Expecting some more fireworks in Delhi next week!
