April 7, 2008

Photo: Our new sign on the School.

It's starting to get hot.

We've made some progress. We were able to have installed a battery - inverter setup to power the school during the daily electrical outages. This is enough to power a fan, a couple of lights, and a PC for eight hours before needing to be recharged. The installation involved alot of shouting and stamping of feet, multiple cell phone calls, and many fantastical discussions. The quality of work, appalling. But this is what happens here in India. I was quite worried about the fragility of the equipment, but it was given the acid test. Within 2 minutes of the inverter system being switched on a compact florescent light bulb experienced a short circuit condition. The circuit fuse is rated at 32 amps and didn't blow so a huge load, far beyond the capacity of the battery system, was applied, right out of the box. Fortunately the system protected itself and shut down. I think a few short years ago this technology was not available and the whole thing would have been wrecked.

We have been toiling trying to get Internet at the school. Our blue tooth antennae had a bug and was not working properly. We were able to have a computer guy come to the school. He is tall and handsome, well dressed, friendly, and a complete computer geek. Somehow some software was misplaced. So while Sheri stalled the guy, Curtis sprinted from the school across the dry river bed through the Bazaar, bought a blue tooth device, negotiated a tuk-tuk ride and rushed back before the man left. After hours and hours we connected to the net, albeit dial up, we are connected.

We brought a couple of coffee table 'Oregon' photo books. While going through them with a boy called Dhramdra we came to a photo of a lighthouse dramatically perched above the Pacific. The concept of an ocean is a bit difficult to explain to a boy from Bihar, but he asked a telling question. "What god is worshiped in this temple?". I looked at the photo and it appeared to me in a whole new way.

At some moments it's a little discouraging to see how completely f'ed up everything is. The Bihar government is a complete failure. We visited the government school that two of the orphans will be attending. It's new but unfinished. Most of the widows are broken, there are no lights in the fixtures, crap and feted water was standing all around. A dog with a huge stomach tumor was laying beside the hand water pump. The Rise Up school, though quite simply is better than this.