The other day, I have to go to the Post Office to mail a letter. But because every building here looks as though it could potentially be a house, I'm really not even sure if one exists in town. Luckily Illivaranso was ready to help out, and Baptiste, quite sick of sitting in the stuffy office, decided that he too wanted a ride in the jeep. We find the post office, I mail a letter and although we take off in the direction of the ODAM office, I find that we've taken not a short cut, but a long detour.
"Factory, Factory," says Illivaranso, as he stops the jeep on a dusty little road lined with small houses, a tiny store, a batch of kids and the requisite piles of trash. I look out the tinted window towards where he's pointing. I see another squat house. Baptiste steps out into the heat. I follow. Illivaranso starts talking to a woman who has a shrill but happy voice, and before I can ask about the "factory," Baptiste and I are being shuttled into her house/room. It is dark, though not cool, and Baptiste and I sit on her cot. A puppy tries to bite Illivaranso, who, without second thought, kicks it. The woman laughs and leaves. The puppy follows only to return a little more peeved a few minutes later.
"Qu-est-ce qu'on fait la?" asks Baptiste.
"I don't know what we're doing here." I respond, attending to a bug bite on my ankle and staring at her carefully folded saris.
She returns with two Indian sodas, which Baptiste and I had been quite keen on trying the day previous. Although we are touched by this very generous act, knowing how much soda costs in India, our enthusiasm for the syrupy soda quickly wanes. Baptiste tries not to laugh after taking a first sip. Warily, I try it and marvel at how it has managed to maintain any sort of market presence. A mix between a generic brand of cough syrup and smelted Laffy Taffy, the soda surely begins turning my blood so sickeningly sweet that every mosquito from here to Bombay is presently yahoo-mapping the address of my cement room. I look at my already chewed up ankles and wince.
The woman is part of a microfinance group administered by Odam, and between obligatory sips of crazy-soda I ask her questions about her experience. She has bought a rice grinder with her money, and sells her product to local families who make a sour dosa (crepe) from it. She shows us pictures of all the women in her self-help group, and tells us too about her children. Illivaranso finally gestures for us to leave, still muttering something about a factory. Baptiste and I sport grins while downing the rest of our drinks, making nice sounding exclamatory remarks in French "Comment ils boivent ca??" Although we are loath to admit it, this may be the most exciting thing that's happened to us all week.
Once outside, we head across the road, to the squat house. I am hardly prepared for what I find inside. There are fifteen woman, surrounded by clouds of flour, sitting on the floor, each holding a tiny, 4 inch long metal baton which they are using to smooth out small circles of dough. A man is punching away at a wad of yellow dough, flies in his wake. Another man, shirtless and sweating, greats us. He is the owner of this "chip" operation, and he brings us through a hallway to another room. I step over a naked child fitfully snoozing away in a pile of flour.
"Our women can make up to 80 rupees a day ($2)", he explains, pointing to another woman who is loading the little pancake like forms into a splintered wooden crate. "Each can make up to 75 kilograms in a week." I nod, unsure if this is impressive. I certainly couldn't eat even 1 kilogram in a week, and especially don't want to now that I've spotted another hoard of flies heading for an especially slick looking pile of chips. "We ship this to Madurai, and big companies buy them for manufacture. Follow me." We return to the other room, the women stare and smile. I'm probably doing the same. The man pushes some pungent spices into my face so I can smell the special ingredients that go into his chips, he even goads me into tasting a bit of baking powder which he had ever so wily convinced me was salt. It doesn't settle so well with the taste of soda that will linger for the next ten hours on my tongue. "Thank you." I offer. And we leave.
At lunch, I am presented with one of the chips. I eat it.
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