Settling in with the chipmunk and the puddles

 Dede here. Today was mostly a day of settling in and exploring the clinic. We woke up at 5 to a long, flat, ancient sounding melody blaring from a nearby mosque. Much of the community around the clinic in the neighborhood of Qazi camp is muslim so the calls to prayer throughout the day have already become natural time markers in our day. It was raining and the puddles in the corridor outside our room grew all day as the rain strengthened, promising luxurious homes for the mosquitos to sit in and congratulate themselves on being so quick, tiny, quiet and ubiquitous. Above is the view from the roof outside our room. Anyway we had some time before the sunrise so Ruth and I read (Moon Palace by Paul Auster for me and Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry for her) and listened to David Bowie while Alizarin dozed. The we got up and ate a quick breakfast. Long story short Ruth got an oreo crumb stuck in her eye kicking off the day with a long, hard bout of laughter.
 This is main portion of the clinic including the library and research area. After breakfast we cleaned the volunteer kitchen hardcore with boiling water and rags that turned black with dirt, dust and grease as we wiped the surfaces, walls, sink and bottoms of cans clean. Later, we unpacked and then spent some time in the library reading about ayurveda, practicing hindi and meeting some nice men who work doing surveys in the community and statistics about the effects of the gas and water pollution. They found our hindi hilarious.

   viny area on the roof
  solar panels that pwer the clinic and play area for the kids made out of recycled car tires
 ahhh the futility of raking water...
 garbage goats. yum.

sheets provided by sambhavna hanging after our fellow volunteers (two nice but somewhat disillusioned women from Nottingham) washed them because they are planning to leave in the next few days. We also live with a softspoken, very smart woman named Rupa who is an ayurvedic doctor working at the clinic and whom has lived in this room for 2 years. Rupa has been showing us the ropes a bit,  including giving us the down low on the cafeteria schedule (we ate a delicious and mindnumbingly spicy meal there for lunch at a table with 8 people who work at the clinic- who chatted away in hindi- and one very brave chipmunk who jumped up on the table and crab walked intimidatingly at all of our metal platters of dal, chana and rice til a woman across from us in a tear kurta and with baby cheeks tossed it a little flake of chopati).