Chirag, Day 2

Second day of the Chirag trip, and the first day of work (for us). We walked to Rita in the morning with Gopika, who had been working with some of our group yesterday. It was raining. We met up with Zaffie, Ben and Ushashi, and sat inside for a while whilst our work was chosen. We then went to go collect some grass from near the village which we carried on our heads (mostly) to the place where it was going to be planted. We made this trip three times, and as I hadn’t brought anything to keep between my head and the basket, my arms were very, very sore. It continued to rain. We planted for the rest of the morning in the rain, and went back to the Chirag office in Rita for lunch. Lunch hadn’t been prepared for Viveka and me, so we had Maggie from a shop nearby. After lunch, the rain abated, though there were still occasional showers. We continued to work in the afternoon, when it was humid and the soil was difficult to separate. After we finished work for the day, I went to a shop in Rita and bought a deck of cards. Viveka and I went back to the Chirag office and I taught some card games (cheat, snap, trumps) to some of the guys there. It was difficult at first because they didn’t speak English, so we could only play snap, but later Shrish arrived and he was able to translate.