A Day In The Life Of

I woke up yesterday to electricity, had peanut butter and banana on miniature slabs of white bread, showered with cold water (which is increasingly more difficult to get into as the weather changes), and then proceeded to meet with 19 other interns from every continent (excluding Antarctica and South America) to discuss the progression (or lack thereof) of our different projects. Lunch was, again, peanut butter and white bread and the last banana. During the education meeting I looked up to see through our open compound door that that a horse and wooden cart had brought metal shelves for my bedroom from the next village over and, unfazed, returned to the discussion.

I hopped on a rickety bus to D. at 13:10, opened up the metal doors of the Cluster Center by banging a lone red brick on the lock, read Orphan Polluck alone inside while waiting for students to show, and finally, after twenty minutes of waiting for an entire class of no-shows, decided to close once again. I crossed the highway, dodging buses and motorbikes to the vegetable stand, spent a hundred rupees on cauliflower and ladyfingers, and then made my way to the nearby intern home-stay.

I napped while watching a Lebanese South American from Montreal fold the German intern’s shirts, Coldplay playing in the background, and rose from my slumber an hour later to begin dinner preparations for twenty people. I then made my way back to the highway with a Polish man, selected the two chickens for slaughter simply by starring at them (I was unaware of how the chicken selection process worked), and waited outside the wooden hut while the man cut and plucked the chickens on a log, passing the time by discussing one of my student’s wishes for a white wife.

I then crossed the highway--plastic bag full of chicken bits in hand--to the sketchiest restaurant ever seen, and handed the green plastic bag holding two fresh chickens to the man with dirty hands, who was preoccupied by cutting other meat on his own bloodied log. Contemplating the things we can eat without dying (and without even getting dysentery) I sat and waited on a red plastic chair while the frying process commenced.

I returned back to the intern home-stay with fried chicken wrapped in newspaper, spent two hours in the kitchen preparing dal and boiled vegetables and rice, taking momentary breaks to dance in the cooling night air with a Brit and Vietnamese man and Finish girl. After dinner and beer in a teacup I danced with said Vietnamese man and British girl and Dutch girl to “Church” in front of the entire team as a part of my boss’ attempt at “organized fun” and getting everyone to “freak out,” was told by the Pole that I “move like LA,” and finally returned to my own home hours later in a car with 8 people crammed inside--including the Indian man sitting in the boot, legs dangling downwards, trunk door open, as we made our way through the beautifully cooling Punjab night.