It’s Electric…

… and I’ve used up my bad line dance reference quota for the next year. But really, there’s nothing quite like walking around a small city in India in the evening as the power goes out.
It’s certainly nothing like a power outage in the U.S., which almost always has a readily identifiable cause. [...]

The Real Challenges of International Development

Today we had a fun little visit to the office of the Soil Chemist.
The soil chemist’s office in Berhampur is a big building in an out of the way place with a doorman. I don’t understand why there’s a doorman, as I’m quite certain that no one ever comes to the door. When [...]

Yehoodi just ain’t good enough anymore

There needs to be a discussion board for students alone abroad in random places.
The discussion would move at a snail’s pace I’m sure. Next week, you’d check back and Joe in Zaire would finally be able to leave his village to get online and write about his experience. But I don’t think that [...]

Here’s to Hoping it Rains

The monsoon is a curious paradox. India needs the monsoons. Without them, crops will fail. Farmers will migrate or starve. The rickety, clattering wheels of society in rural Orissa will stop. And yet when the monsoon rains happen, they do anyway.
Today I witnessed the first good monsoonal rain since I [...]

The Indian Second Line

I passed a funeral procession yesterday on the way to the field. It was small, maybe only 10 people. Several of them carried the dead man on a plank of some sort. There was no coffin, but his face was surrounded with bright flowers. His face was red and bloated. [...]