Sunday, June 7, 2009

Sunday, June 7, 2009--Day 25

To finish up on the topic of Government which I started yesterday:
The biggest mistake made by the Communist Government as far as helping the people is that there has been no industry created and no foreign investment. There are many educated people in Kerala but no jobs for them. People here do not pick up and move for jobs. They might temporarily go to school in another place like Dr. Baji spending 14 years in Chennai getting his medical/ayurvedic training. But otherwise you stay where you were born. Please don't think that I am in favor of communism. It's just in this case it has benefitted the vast majority of the people.

Other tidbits:
Everyone here calls me Madame.

STD does not mean sexually transmitted disease. It is the place where there is a phone and a post office. I'm trying to get a picture of the many signs. At first I thought, Wow! There sure are a lot of STD clinics around here.

Faritti's friend missed her flight so she won't come in until tomorrow.

I now know what a monsoon is. For the past two days there have been brief periods when there is no rain. Brief periods when there is light rain. And many periods where it absolutely pours. It was so hard earlier that I thought there was hail--but no hail. That would be a real sight here in India. The rain is still warm so if I go for a walk and it starts raining, it isn't a bother. This morning a woman sheltered me with her umbrella until we got to her house where her husband told her to give me the umbrella. I told her that I couldn't take her umbrella--I might never find her house again. There are water shortages here in India on a regular basis so the people don't mind the rain. There is a river in N. Kerala that people are afraid will disappear because so many people are drawing from it for drinking water and other uses. The river is now very low and only 20 feet across. There used to be a lot more ponds and backwaters according to Colonel Babu, but they have either been filled in or used up. Dr. Baji said when he was a child everyone knew how to swim because they would hang out at the local watering hole swimming and playing. Now the children do not know how to swim. A couple of years ago 18 children were on a field trip with their teachers, and the boat overturned drowning everyone. Now the government is saying that at least some of the schools have to have swimming pools and teach children to swim. I am positive that not all schools have complied so I don't know if just high schools or what. He made his children and wife take swimming lessons this year at one such swimming pool.

Well, it's Sunday. My last Sunday. The internet usually lasts long enough for me to get excited before it poops out.

Speaking of poop. Five students at one of the technical colleges have figured out a way to make elephant poop into paper. I'm NOT kidding. This is super for more reasons than one. Remember the elephant farm we went to with 60+ elephants? Your average elephant poops about 400 pounds of poop a day so the poop plant will take care of a lot of that. PLUS, there is great concern about the deforestation that is taking place in order to make paper. 80 tons of paper can be produced from 350 tons of elephant poop saving 2000 trees. Well, I don't know if you had fun reading that, but I surely was laughing while I was writing it.

This is probably not the best time to tell you that I finally learned how to read comments from the readers. Although it doesn't always work or I can't always find the right thing to click on.

Sorry, Jenny. The word poop just makes it so much more fun than the word dung.

I hope you all have a pleasant day.

Love,
Mom, Peggy, Granny, et al