For Those Who Are Interested...

This update is dedicated to the every day differences between India and Australia….for those who are interested in all those sorts of details! Heads up, it’s gonna be a long blog, so feel free to skip it!

It’s amazing how the every day things that we don’t even think about are completely different over here. The process of setting up our own flat has given us a good insight and made us aware that there are many things that cannot be taken for granted. 

In Nagpur, they don’t have what we might refer to as ‘mains’ connection for gas. There’s no main gas line that’s connected to each house. Instead, each house has a gas cylinder which is connected to a portable stove. It would be very rare to find a kitchen which has a stove that has been built in to the bench, or an oven. To us, the stoves look similar to our camping stoves. You can get them in different sizes, depending on how much cooking you’ll be doing and therefore how many burners you need. The gas cylinder is stored underneath the bench, and there’s a hole for the line to go through and connect to the stove. There’s actually a gas shortage here at the moment, so there’s a wait on getting a new cylinder – they are only available every 15 days and the gas is being rationed somewhat. This is something we did not know! We have heard that in some of the larger cities such as Mumbai and Delhi they now have gas lines to the houses, but this sort of thing has not yet reached Nagpur. 

The gas cylinder

Our stove

Water is directly connected, but when it comes to flats / apartment blocks, there’s an extra step – water from the mains line goes to some sort of tank / water storage for the flats. From there, someone has to pump the water up to the flats so that it’s available for use. If the water is not pumped up, it will run out. There are also areas which don’t have access to water in this way, and so trucks deliver water to these places. Slums of course do not have these facilities. 
I’m sure most people will be aware that you can’t drink the water here if it has not been filtered in some way. We were aware of this as well, but it’s one thing to be aware, another thing to get used to. We have clean water stashed all over the house – in the fridge, in the kitchen for cooking, in the bathrooms for brushing teeth – such a luxury we have in Australia!

Hot water is a bit of a different story. Rather than having a hot water service that supplies hot water to all taps in the house, a geezer is connected to the particular tap where you wish to have hot water. It seems that generally, there will just be one geezer connected to the shower. This means all the sinks have only cold taps, and there’s no hot water to washing machines. You can purchase washing machines which heat the water internally, but generally all the washing is just done in cold water. So Marty and I are becoming accustomed to a life without hot water – we have a geezer in our shower, but it’s so hot here that we basically have cold showers anyway! Get some hot water happening at the start to take the edge off, then gradually work up to a completely cold shower. Otherwise, you are already sweating when you get out! Have to admit that a steaming hot shower is a luxury I miss!

The geezer (our little luxury in India - hot water!)

Electricity is pretty good – we were prepared for a lot of blackouts, but it actually hasn’t been too bad. The power does go off fairly regularly (once or twice a day), but it’s usually back on within 15 minutes, so it’s not a drama. Oh….it just went out as I’m writing this!!

Ladies, for those of you who are not in to housework….don’t live in India!! Floors will be swept and mopped daily because there is such a great amount of dust here. It settles everywhere, so it’s a full-time job to keep things clean. You can get dishwashers, but they aren’t a standard thing, so it’s back to washing all the dishes by hand (in cold water). Vacuum cleaners aren’t the done thing here (oh, electricity is back on, yay), so the house is swept….but we have struggled to find what we would think of as a ‘normal’ broom, so we have reverted to the Indian way, using their style of broom. Floors are also mopped by hand using a cloth…but we did find a mop, though I mopped by hand one time just to get into the swing of things! On the flip side of all that, labour is very cheap in India, so it’s the usual thing for most people to have someone come to their house daily to do the dishes, sweep and mop the floors. So on second thoughts, if you aren’t into housework, then perhaps India is the place for you. Generally the women who do this work are poor ladies from the slums. From what we can gather the going rate is somewhere around 1000 rupees per month. If a woman worked at five or sixes houses each day, that amounts to something in the region of 6000 rupees per month, which works out to be around AUD100. Not much to feed, clothe, shelter and educate a family.

Indian broom

Cooking is a full-on experience that takes a good part of every woman’s day. People usually have three hot meals every day. There are a range of yummy breakfast dishes! Lunch and dinner is chapatti, rice, dhal, a vegetable dish and maybe some sort of meat curry. All of this is made fresh daily – it’s not really the done thing to keep food in the fridge or freezer, or cook in bulk. And you don’t serve chapattis from the day before! Plus you grind your own spices and make your own fresh curry paste. Cooking is completely different here – using pressure cooker and pots without handles (I’m still getting the hang of using the tongs!). So, cooking is an intense process – but the food is amazing!!! I am doing my best to learn so hopefully I can treat you all to some curries when we get back. 

Kaz working the tongs!

A couple more driving stories – so the other day Marty and I were on our way to the children’s home, when we got stuck in…a herd of goats. For real, there were shepherds herding like 150 goats up the road! There were a lot of baby goats, so I was really scared that I would run over one of them!! I’m almost through to the other side of the herd, when a big truck comes down the road the opposite way. Since the road is not wide enough for us to pass each other, I have to pull over to the side and allow the truck to pass. While I’m waiting, the whole herd of goats also goes past and I have to start driving through them all over again – aaahhh!! 

One cool thing in India is that a lot of the traffic lights have timers on them, so you can see how many seconds until the light changes. I was driving with Marty and Sattu Uncle and we were coming up to an intersection where I had to turn right – there was four seconds left of the green light to turn. Both Marty and Uncle are saying, “go, go, go,” so since Uncle was also saying this, I entered the intersection. However, the standard practice here is that once there is less than four seconds left on the red light, everyone starts to go. So I find myself with a mass of two-wheelers (motorbikes) and cars coming at me!! It was again scary, but I managed to manoeuvre through without hitting anything. 

My driving’s pretty good, but I have to admit I try to avoid driving at night. It’s difficult to see, and as well as cars, motorbikes and people, you also need to keep an eye out for dogs, goats and cows. Cows can be crossing the road, sitting in the middle of the road, fighting in the road etc. There are also black cows / buffalos which are particularly difficult to see at night!

Random cow waiting for us in front of the stairwell to our flat

Another random thing – something I’ve realised I really take for granted are the opportunities we have for music in Australia. Marty is in major demand here for his musical abilities. Due to the huge temperature changes in Nagpur throughout different times of the year (ranges from 10 degrees in winter to 49 degrees in summer), it’s virtually impossible to keep a piano here. If you had one, it would need to be tuned at least every three months – but there aren’t any piano tuners in Nagpur! So we have yet to find an acoustic piano here – poor Marty! But there are keyboards around here and there. They don’t have the range of instruments readily available here like there are in Australia. In Marty’s school back home, there are students learning drums, trumpet, saxophone, flute, violin, piano, clarinet etc, etc and the list goes on. This variety of instruments is hard to come by here and there aren’t even many people who play either guitar or piano. So WCCC peeps, be grateful for our amazing worship team! Many churches here will only have someone playing the organ, or a CD or a Capella! 

Final comment is regarding mosquitos….I cannot imagine why, but for some reason the technology of fly screens hasn’t really made it big here. We’ve asked around and they do have them, but we haven’t been to one house or one venue yet that has fly screens installed, including our flat! The first few weeks Marty and I were basically permanently covered in bites, particularly all over our feet. But we seem to have gotten past that now and developed some coping methods for avoiding mosquitos. 

Ok, so I think that’s about it for now. For those of you who have stuck with it and read this whole blog entry – thanks, you’re awesome!! Sorry for anyone who read only to end up not all that interested in the random info. 

Trying to get more pics up, but internet is slow – keep checking for updates!