home again...

Good to be back home...I think.

I met Praveen in Kalkotta and we had a few very busy days meeting various women's stitching co-operatives, looking at ideas for a furure textile tour in the east....purchasing items for Pukka Finds and

starting to check out Kalkota [so interesting - the jungle is growing through everywhere, great feel to the city] and coping with the heat wave already hitting the north of India...people are worrying that their has been a scarcity of rain and they won't be able to put in the summer rice crops....more stories about West Bengal later.

We finally got home, only to find some of the hotel staff really playing up....rude, not working when we are not there...ahhh. It is hard, I expect to give feed back like I would in Australia, a pat on the back when  good job is done etc...but here that can be seen as soft, you only mention when things are not done right, if you praise -people get puffed up and think you can't do with out them and so they can take liberties.

Locally people refer to workers as servants not staff like I do...I dislike the word but obviously the system is far different to what I am used to...

Anyway Praveen has been very busy while I was away...I mentioned the idea of a privacy wall at our new place and he has had this wonderful 10 foot high wall built [so glad I did not say I wanted to be very private!! it could have reached the stars...

Load is stone being dropped off, you can see the rest of our plot, all ploughed to put millet in if it rains

some of our motley crew of workers...

Two or three ladies are in the team...they carry sand and stone and make tea at the imprtant tea breaks throughout the day...really yummy chai -it always tastes better when made on a fire...

Some of the people working for us are such interesting characters...

Looking at our new kitchen, once the wall goes up that is ....I really love this place already, finally I feel like this is home, this is it....I have built a house before in Australia and renovated another one, both were lovely but easy to move on from...this one feels like MY HOME....a lot of this is sharing it with Praveen and some is simply India and living on the edge of the desert...

location, location, location, choose somewhere that makes your heart sing!!

We are lucky, we have good ground water so will be able to make a little oasis in this dry enviroment, most poeple locally don't have that luxury and so it is much harder....