Our favorite Watchman

At Sangam, as with most compounds in India, we have a watchman. A watchman is a guy that sits at the gate all day making sure people that shouldn’t come in don’t and making sure people that should come in, sign in and out.
Recently we have a new watchman, he works for a security company so we never know who we will get, day to day, but this guy has been with us for a while now. He is great!
He smiles all the time, he learned our names so he can sign us in and out as we come and go, we suspect he even thought the other watchman to do the same! He gives us a cheery wave to let us know he has everything under control, keeping us safe and happy.
He also makes sure our forgetful foreign guests sign in and out too!
He must live close by, as is daughter goes to school in the area and his wife keeps him company from six to eight each evening. His daughter sometimes brings him his lunch and they eat together under a tree by the gate or giggling in his hut when it rains. Him and his family always seem happy and they laugh a lot together.
If I go out in the evening before eight, he works eight to eight, he will sign me back in before he goes home for the evening to save me the bother when I actually do come home. This is very sweet, but somewhat defeats the purpose of signing in and out!
This can be especially tricky when the night watchman locks up the gates because he doesn’t know I am out.
Climbing over the Sangam gate is not as easy as it looks or very dignified.

Pandemic Partys

India is in the grip of a Swine Flu panic. Pune, my city, is the epicenter. It started in the schools, and with the government issuing a ban on all foreigners or Indians that have traveled outside India from entering schools. A young girl died, in the posh hospital. Queues formed outside the government hospitals for H1N1 testing, people on the streets are wearing masks, more people are not going on the streets. The Schools closed, then the cinemas, then the shopping malls, the vegetable markets and now whole shopping districts are closed. There is a fear of foreigners here, when I go outside the gates I can see fear and people reaching for their masks when they see me coming. Waiters in cafes put masks on before they come to take my order. Rickshaw drivers don’t stop for me, or for our guests.
The funny thing is there is not one case of a foreigner here in Pune with Swine Flu!
It’s not going to be very funny when our next guests arrive on Friday, 65 people fresh from the UK, where they have Tamiflu and safe hospitals and not a lot of fear and panic. It is difficult for them to understand the fear here. If you suspect you have H1N1 in the UK, you go online, fill in a survey, get a drug number and you can get the drugs, quarantine yourself in your house and ride it out. If you get really sick you can go to the hospital where you can be confident of receiving decent care.
If you suspect you have H1N1 here and you, like most people here are in the low earning bracket, you stand in a queue with other people that might have it, (if you didn’t have it before, you probably do after) for several hours for a test, the results of which takes two days to return, If you have it you can try and quarantine yourself in your home, where you might live with anything from 4 to 14 family members, where you might have just one room, you miss work, which may mean no food for your family, hopefully you can afford drugs. If you get really bad you can go to a designated government hospital where conditions are so bad, and over crowded a healthy person would be unlikely to come out unscathed by infection. There are several designated Swine Flu Hospitals. More each week, in the newspapers yesterday they reported the numbers of doctors and nurses in infected each hospital.
So taking 65 foreigners by rickshaw to a busy shopping district may not be the best or easiest thing to do, even if the district is open! Not everyone is panicking, there is a core of reasonable people that still go out for coffee and meet their friends, take reasonable precautions like hand sanitiser in their offices, but not going mask mad.
There is also fun to be had, people have started having Swine Flu Parties in their homes, as most of the bars are shut or empty. The dress codes for these parties range from just silly masks to whole hog bio suits! There are also advice emails regarding the medicinal benefits of vast quantities of alcohol.
I had to take one of our guests to the hospital two days ago, she had asthma, a cough and chest pains, (quite common given the air quality) anyway, we couldn’t get past the gate without masks. She was sent to one of the swine flu hospitals for a H1N1 test, before any of the doctors would see her. Of course, the test takes two days, so it doesn’t make any difference to the doctor who sees her. When we finally did see a doctor, he wouldn’t touch her, made her wear two masks, and only asked her about swine flu symptoms. She could have had anything else, he was only interested in Swine Flu.
I have had a sore throat for a few days, no temperature or any other swine flu symptoms, I wasn’t going near any of our regular doctors, one of the girls had a similar experience to my hospital one with our regular doctor. I asked an Indian friend to recommend someone so he took me to his doctor. Never have I been able to describe a visit to the doctor as a pleasure before. So civilised, not a mask in sight, no fear in his eyes, a real gentleman. I almost look forward to being ill again, just so I can go to see him again!
(I just have a throat infection, in case folks are worried, I already feel better)
It’s ok for me, I’m a foreigner with money, so I can get the best of care.
Dead Irish Girls make too many international headlines...

Sweet, Sweet Irish Blood.

I have been in India three months now, I have grown accustomed to the food, somewhat, the heat, the noise, pollution and most aspects of everyday life in India. Everything that is except the mosquitoes. They love me. It doesn't matter what I do, they find me. They find me and bite me and suck my blood and leave itchy red bleeding lumps all over my pale pale skin. When I first arrived I got bitten quite badly, as was expected, so a week or two in I decided to try insect repellant and a net around my bed, I had 50% Deet, tropical strength spray on repellant. Every morning for a week I sprayed it on after my shower in the morning, a top up at lunch time and another top up after dinner. I also sprayed my window screens and net. No difference. not a bit. I still got bitten to bits. So I tried something a little stronger, 100% deet, maximum strength, toenail melting stuff. Full week, same routine, no difference. I gave up for a week or two, surrendered to the insects, expected to die from blood loss, but strangely, no difference. Still a steady 10 to 15 new bites each day. An Indian friend recommended an Indian product with 12% deet, Indians use it with success, so I reasoned it might work for me. No joy. On day one, I got over 20 bites on each foot, and similar numbers on my arms. I was nauseous and dizzy all day from the sheer number of bites and exhaustion, because its hard to sleep with that number of itchy painful bites. It’s like the indian cream was catnip for mosquitoes. I had enough. I got a new repellant oil lamp and burning coils for my room, and now that I have the lamp plugged in the right way up, it seems to work ok, there are fewer of them in my room anyway. I bring burning coils to meetings and events. Now I have had four long sleeved blouses specially made to wear under my clothes, new socks to wear all the time with my ankle length skirts. I fear the world will never see my knees, ankles or elbows again. The only parts of me exposed now are my hands and face.

Guess where I’m getting bitten now.