big rats and cute babies

Okay, so for some reason I haven't been able to view my blog all week, but I seem to be able to post, so I will just go ahead and do that and trust that the rest of you can access it, since you seem to be able to. Probably some crazy Indian internet thing. God bless the third world.

We have finished the bulk of our surveying. We surveyed 60 different borrower groups; anywhere from 4 to 10 borrowers per group were surveyed. Our sample size is already above 400, and we'll do a little more surveying next week. The lack of bias in our sample is certainly questionable, but at least we have a really big sample (big for a student project, anyway). And again, my mantra: we're learning so much. Going to the group meetings has been mostly lots of fun; the women often seem vaguely amused by or in awe of you because you are a white American. At one meeting they gave me a bindi and some flowers for my hair, and many of the groups have been inexplicably excited to have their picture taken with me. Here is me holding a particularly adorable baby (at the meeting after the one where they gave me the bindi):

Next week, we will have just one group of enumerators out surveying, while the rest of them stay at the IMED office and translate some of IMED's records from Tamil into English for us.

One thing I haven't posted pictures of (or even taken pictures of) is where we live: Broadlands Lodge. It's not all that nice, but it is a very old building with lots of charm, and our room is large and has a nice patio area in back. We meet cool people there and we generally like it.

Last night, I was in bed, listening to my ipod, and M was out on the patio reading. She had one small light on out on the patio, and a small light in our room was on, but otherwise it was quiet and relatively dark. Muffled by my headphones, I hear what sounds like some sort of whooping noise. I ignore it, because India is as full of noise as it is of garbage, so you learn to tune it out. But then I hear it again, accompanied by what sounds like someone saying my name. I sit up and discover that M is standing on her chair on the patio, yelling for me. Apparently, she felt something around the toes of one of her feet; there are always flies and mosquitos and random phantom itches, so at first she just moved her foot somewhat mindlessly. At this point, she saw what she described as an enormous rat's ass followed by a very long rat's tail scurrying under the opposite chair and into the darkness. She wanted me to check to make sure the rat was gone before she got off the chair. It was gone, of course, with all the screaming and with me making whatever freaked-out noises I was making as I peered cowardishly around the corner to look for the rat (I know "cowardishly" probably isn't a word, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to make "cowardly" into an adverb).

We were aware of the presence of this enormous rat on the premises (I haven't really seen it, but I did catch it out of the corner of my eye once, and it appeared to be the size of a small beaver), but it usually stays away from light and noise. There are also cats that live at Broadlands (a male and female cat, who have four adorable kittens), but I think the rat is bigger than the cats are. I did see one of the cats with a very large mouse (or a normal sized rat, I suppose) in it's mouth.

So, yeah. The rodents creep me out, but not as much as I might expect. And happily, I haven't seen any cockroaches in our room, which would actually freak me out more, because I assume a cockroach is way more likely to climb up the side of your bed than a rat.