two surprises are better than none.

Where have you been? I hear you asking. What have you been doing? You wonder aloud.

Well.

Everyone.

If I don't have some news for you.

You may be able to sense what is coming, spider-sense style (that and the title of this post...). Surprises! Two of them! Hurray!

Everybody...most people...OK, some people like surprises. (I hope. It's what I'm basing this post around). Anyway, here goes:

Surprise the first: Some people already know this (in fact, I had to wait to post this til some people found this out, hence the gap between posts) but...WE ARE HOME. Really and truly and for serious. I am writing this in my lounge room; my recently reunited cat skulking around the bedrooms and my Dad completing his TESOL course in front of the fire. The fire! Because it is freaking freezing and not at all the sunshiny spring weather I was hoping to step breezily (how I thought I would be stepping breezily anywhere after a 36 hour flight-transit pancake I don't know) into from the plane. But no problem (maybe a little problem). We are back!* Back in Radelaide. Back in our normal lives- sans money, jobs and routine. Back.

Surprise! Gotcha, right? Good.

Because now it is time for surprise the second. Except this is more the announcement of a surprise that will be coming to you shortly, a surprise in the making. But it is thus: I have made a book! I spent three months in HutLand cooking, scribbling, writing, drawing and painting and now I have a book. It is a book of the Keralan food that we ate all the time at Our Home (it happens to be delicious so this was a good thing) and I am going to be selling it to raise money for my favourite bunch of Indian kids. Except that right now, I only have the one copy. The original, definitely not for sale, it took me so long to do that it is bizarrely precious to me now copy. We were going to get it printed in India but because I enjoy the rush of leaving things to the last minute and this doesn't work in India because it is India, it didn't happen. So we are making a plan. When that plan is made, I shall let you know.
Keralan food for everyone!

But now here are some pictures of our house at Our Home. Our favourite place in India and a place that wasn't as sad as I thought it would be to leave because we know for certain we will be back within the year. Except when we told some of the small boys we were leaving and they stood and stared at us with the blank faces of the 'just-awoken', tinged with sadness (I'm sure I didn't imagine it), I thought I might cry. But I didn't. So I win.

It feels strange to be back at home so suddenly. Whisked from the busy dirtiness and chaotic noise of the Indian streets and planted in the staid quiet of an Adelaide Tuesday. It's odd. It feels like I am on a little break from Our Home and I will be back there, building a toilet, playing chasey and sleeping in our bamboo hut in a day or two. I miss HutLand already but I am glad to be home. I think. I am pretty deliriously tired from some stupid long airport-y travel so I don't really know how I feel just yet. Except that I am happy to hang out with my dad and my cat. And my bed is reeeeaaallllyyyyyy comfortable.

Welcome home us!

*There is a little delay between when this post was written and when I published it. There is a reason though, not laziness I assure you. I wrote on the eve of my homecoming, so everything would be fresh and true. But I had to wait to post, because I had decided to surprise certain people and I can be a bit stubborn so there was no way I was giving this up, so this could only be posted after said surprises had been surprised.

P.S. Yes, I really did light a campfire inside the bamboo hut. Because I was halfway through cooking a curry when we ran out of gas in the HutLand kitchen and the daily downpour was about to start. And I was NOT giving up on that curry.

it's finished. finished. FINISHED.

OHHHHH EMMMM GEEEE. It is finished! Our palace on the hill-side, our best ever egg farm in the history of Kerala, our main frustration for the last two months...it. is. finished.  

This is what we were thinking when we began this project (now I think about it I really don't know what we were thinking). We were thinking 'a big chicken coop, easy, should be done in two weeks tops.' We were thinking 'well, obviously we need to make some kind of snazzy laying-boxes-poking-out-of-the-back-of-the-fence situation, for ease of collection and all.' We were thinking 'oh, and why don't we make the front walls lever up so we can clean it easily and I think the floor should be split in two, and have some kind of ridiculously over-complicated lowering system for some reason that I can't even recall right now'.

What we ended up with, two months later (!!), is a fairly simple hutch made almost entirely out of bamboo and coconut rope, with your basic floor and walls and nesting boxes strewn thoughtfully about, a snake/eagle/rat/dog proof yard for our hens to peck about in and a design that is so un-Keralan that everybody keeps asking us when we will be putting the tin roof on, concreting the floor and installing the light. And we keep telling them that our chickens don't need those things. Our chickens are going to be happy, earthworm digging hippy chickens. Our chickens are going to be the happiest in the land. And they accepted that (sort of). But then we bought rice-sifting baskets for laying boxes...

Here is our last two months in pictures. The satisfying digging and planting of the poles, the kind of frustrating kind of hilarious days when the kids were helping, the tedium of stitching together 60 metres of netting for eagle protection, the triumph of putting the roof on.

A moment when we were so sick of roping together bamboo to make walls that we had a quick 'look at how pensive and meaningful I am, staring into the distance, sitting in a chicken coop' photo shoot.

The painting of the hen-house. The time we were having a cup of tea and a sit down and we heard coconuts falling form the neighbour's trees...

And finally, the Arrival Of The Hens. We drove for half an hour with thirty hens cowering in terrified clumps under our feet in the back of the jeep. Then we arrived home and I handed them out, one by one, as you would with lolly bags at a birthday party, so the kids could take them up the hill and plonk them into their new home. As you can imagine there was much squealing and giggling.

And some very happy hens. Thank freaking god.

an indian moment.

When you have been here for a while, you start to notice these moments. They are unique to the sub-continent and if you are in good spirits they make you laugh. If you are having a bad day they can tip you over the edge. They are called 'Indian moments'. 

The other morning, after a night of relentless head scratching, I begged mum to check my hair, yet again, for creepy crawlies. So we were sitting outside the hut, in the sun, and she was diligently searching my scalp. And then some of the older boys wandered up, for whatever reason, saw what we were doing, and stood and watched. They said nothing. Just stared for five minutes or so until they got bored. Then they left. Mum and I just looked at each other in acknowledgement of this Indian moment. 

We went shopping the other day. Just because. When you live in the jungle anrd spend every day covered in dirt (and recently oil, thanks to an ill-conceived idea to rust  proof a fence) it is sometimes nice to be around things that are clean and new. So we went shopping. 

Traditional Indian clothes stores tend to avoid coat hangers, so to browse you must lean over the counter and point to what you want to look at and then the assistant will pull it out. You have a quick look, realise it isn't really you and then the scene begins all over again. This makes shopping for a top quite an investment of your time, but it is certainly an interactive activity. It also means that in most clothes shops the counters are piled high with colourful rejects. 

We went into one of these shops. I found a scarf, mum found some leggings and just as we were going to pay, she spotted something bright pink sticking out from the fabric mountain on the counter. They were cotton pants, exactly what she was looking for. She pulled them out and decided she would like them, they would go perfectly with a tunic that had not yet been paired (wearing a dress with no pants or leggings underneath is simply unheard of in rural India). She took them to the counter with our other choices, ready to leave happy and satisfied, and then this happened...

"Oh no madam, not those pants".

"Oh yes, I would like these please. Just these three."

"No madam. You can't buy those pants."

"I can't buy these pants?"

"Correct."

"Why? This is a clothes shop and I have selected these clothes and I now wish to pay for them."

(I suspect some of her responses may have been lost on the three men behind the counter, but they certainly amused us).

"No madam. They are part of a set. You cannot buy them alone."

"Right. I don't want a top, but where is it? I'll have a look anyway."

The two underlings then spent a good fifteen minutes hunting for the matching top. They rummaged through cupboards, scanned all the shelves and sifted through the fabric mountains. At one point they pulled out a new dress, with bright green pants and suggested mum might prefer those. She did not. We were all in fits of laughter by now, commentating on their fruitless search as they doggedly pursued it. They realised she wanted pink pants and pulled out numerous other pants of different shades and fabric and tried to convince us they were the same. 

After this had gone on for some time I thought we may be there all day if nobody said anything and I asked if, in fact, there even was a top that went with these pants.

I was met with laughter and renewed searching. 

"I don't actually want the top guys. If there is no top why can I not simply buy the pants?"

"No, no, no. It is part of a set you see."

"Uhhhhh huh. But you haven't got the set, the pants are all alone and why. Simply why."

"Ahhh, they are our last pair of cotton pants this colour. We have no more."

Finally we understood (sort of). The pants had no top but they were the last of their breed in store. So if someone happened to come in and want a top that these pants would match, the clerks would be in quite the pickle.

"Ok fine. That doesn't make sense but fine. We will just take these two."

And as we were paying, one of the underlings held up the offending pair of pink cotton pants and said "stitch?"

This set us off. We were in hysterics. We had just spent well over half an hour discussing the sale of these pants, which was 'not possible' as they were the last pair and now they were telling us they could stitch us some...

They did not understand why this was funny. We paid, thanked the men, and left the shop laughing incredulously over our Indian moment. 

You could go mad in this country. So sometimes it is wise just to sit and stare at the skies. Thankfully, they are often magnificent.

bubbles and biscuits.

There's a change in the air here. The monsoon is thinking about leaving, like that party guest who rises from the dinner table to make his goodbyes and then half an hour later has everyone standing by the door, surreptitiously checking the clock, while he recounts for them yet another tale that just must be told. It is thinking about leaving, but it hasn't gone just yet. And though the days have been getting drier, the sun is still scarce; the sky a cloudscape of thick grays and whites. The mornings have been perfect- reminiscent of those days in the height of summer when you wake up at six and sit outside while the sun is still bearable and you can smell the heat that will arrive to blanket everything later in the afternoon.

The ever-drier days bring herald many things: the excitement of a changing season, the opportunity to turn brown again, after two months of cloud, and snakes. Lots and lots of snakes. So what have we been doing the last few days? Snake-proofing! Which is just a different way of saying weeding (it does sound more dramatic though, right?). So much weeding. The thing about living in such a fertile place is that as soon as you pull out a weed and turn your back on it, it pokes its little green head right back out of the ground in some kind of "hilarious" magic trick.

But one can only weed for so long without turning into a crazy person and so in between ripping undesirables from the earth we have been bubble blowing and biscuit baking (and alliterating). Because everyone loves a good bubble and baking outside is fun. Although to be totally honest we were not baking as we have no oven, we were deep frying. But for good alliteration that does not make, so I'm sticking with baking. They're biscuits, after all.

 

 

a techno rainbow.

Stepping onto a town to town bus in India is like stepping into a rainbow (if you'll forgive that sickly sweet image...before you gag, read on). The outside of the bus is painted luridly, with neon flames, flowers, rainbows (funnily enough) and even sometimes a blown up photograph of puppies, kittens or a white baby (?). They always have 'SuperComfort' or 'Deluxe' or 'Grand Bus 2000' painted right across the front windscreen. The bus we caught this morning sported a large photo of the Taj Mahal welcoming us 'to delight'.  Inside fake flowers of all colours festoon the windscreen, sometimes there are little fake pots of little fake flowers on the dashboard. There are pictures of Jesus- brightly coloured, of course- and usually a bit of gold decoration hanging about. It is like stepping into a rainbow that is also a tiny, sweaty, usually dark dance club playing really bad techno music. Very loudly. It sounds awful but it is actually something I quite enjoy, purely because it is so India.

You crowd on while people crowd off, squeezing yourself on to a bus that in any other country would have reached capacity half an hour and 20 people ago. You watch the ticket man struggle down the aisle towards you, past the 30 people blocking his way, the whole thing smelling like sticky sweat because Indians love a bit of polyester and they have not yet caught on to deodorant. The ticket man finally reaches you and you grab on to the roof bars, the bus careening around corners honking its warning to other motorists, and try to fish the equivalent of 20 cents for your ticket out of your pocket without collapsing into the five people surrounding you, with their armpits in your face. You give your money, get your ticket and then the poor ticket man has to make his way back to the other end of the bus, because 3 new people just got on.

The other day when we were on our way home from Kalpetta, clinging on to the roof railings while trying to avoid squished toes, I was watching our bag of shopping that was sitting on the parcel shelf to make sure nothing flew out and hit an old lady in the face as the bus screeched from town to town. I was watching our bag of crackers inch ever closer to freedom, ready to escape its plastic prison at the first chance, and thinking of the only other time in my life when I carried groceries home on public transport. It was in Canada, four and a half years ago, when I lived in Toronto, in my first rented room, on my first overseas exploration. It was a world away from here, in every way possible. Not least because where people on the subway in Toronto gave me dirty looks for clogging up space with my plastic bags full of cheap, shitty noodles, bread and peanut butter (I was 19 and poor...), people on the buses here gladly move out of the way when I am maneuvering my shopping out of harms way and smile tolerantly when I accidentally whack them with said shopping...

I'm about to get sentimental for a minute, so if that's not your thing then go now...make a cup of tea, eat a biscuit. Ok. A lot has happened in the last four (nearly five?) years, since my first tentative, Doc Marten-clad steps into independence in a dodgy neighbourhood in Toronto. And I am happy to say I can look back on everything that I've done, everywhere that I've been and everyone (mostly) that I've met, and smile.  

what is it?

The building is complete, we have moved into our hut and we are so comfortable we have decided to stay here an extra month.

 

So what else is happening at HutLand (as I christened our little cluster of huts underneath the banana trees)? What is it about this place that is going to make it so hard to drag ourselves away?

 

It's sitting in 'The Snackery', drinking tea and eating cookies as we take a break from whatever work we find ourselves doing, to listen to the jungle and have a wee chat.

 

 

 

It's being with the kids: painting, skipping, wrestling, walking or crafting. Or even sometimes, if they are being extra adorable, sitting through a Malayalam movie complete with singing, dancing and cartoon sound effects. 

 



 

 



 

 

It's filling our shopping bags with kilos of tropical fruit that costs less than a cup of coffee at home. It's listening to the coconuts fall from their trees in the neighbour's yard and then sneaking over to try and find them (the day of this picture was a particularly successful harvest).  

   


It's watching the boys play football in the mud and listening to them sing with glee as they beat Will at chess too many times for his ego to handle. 





 



 

It's the incredible food Sudha cooks in her tiny, airless, wood-smoky kitchen, day after day, for all fifty of us. (Of which my camera is not up to capturing properly, but it really is delicious). 

 

 

It's all of these things. And it's listening to the kids sing at prayer time and giggle at most other times. It's working in the morning on whatever project we have (it always, always, always involves digging and moving stones) and seeing the monsoon roll over in the afternoons, ushered in by grumbling thunder.

 

There is lots going on here at the moment, both physically and in our heads. Issues that are here and things that have followed us on the .com, all the way from Australia. Projects that we have started already and things that are still being thought about. Plans for what next? after we leave Our Home. Sometimes at night, when I inevitably wake up for whatever reason and try to gather my thoughts and put them in their appropriate boxes, my brain feels like those people you see in the supermarket, clutching a whiny child in one hand and 3 heavy bags in the other as they frantically try to catch the oranges that are rolling all over the floor after having fallen from the fourth split bag.

 

But then in the morning the sun shines into our hut and we eat breakfast looking over palm trees to the mountain skirted in morning cloud; we work and eat and sit with the kids, see their smiles and hear their laughter. We drink tea. And we are thankful to be here. I really don't know how we will leave.    



 

where do butterflies go when it rains?

For the second night in the row we are still awake at midnight. I know, I know- we are grown ups and that is pretty normal for people who aren't ten and all, but...this is the jungle. We sleep in a hut made of bamboo with palm fronds for a roof. It is glorified camping and everybody knows that when you are camping your days are determined by the sun. And here the sun sets at 7.30. So what's going on??

Yesterday we worked (quite) hard, digging holes and building stone paths and transplanting some peachy hued flowers, and so we celebrated our physicality with a few hard-earned beers. So we were still awake at midnight.

Tonight it was the Our Home talent show (the initiative of some visiting Americans) and we watched our kids sing and dance and impress and entertain us all. Then I played an abysmal (on my part- my 10 year old opponent had nothing to be ashamed of) game of chess and we ate rice with green banana curry and turmeric spiced curd. And then we drank TicTac flavoured vodka. And so we are still awake at midnight.  

And elsewhere...We have been building huts and learning Indian curries (soon there will be a book, illustrations and all) and playing playing playing. Chess, mud soccer and skipping are what's what at the moment. Between us we have it covered. Will is all over the chess; my game is, as I said, abysmal, an embarrassment to the sport. I think I'll stick to skipping. The other night Neha and I did 100 tandem skips. The fact that she and Will managed 248 does not dampen my spirits. I am good at skipping. We have been dodging the monsoon, and admiring the rainbow of enormous butterflies that flit about the plants in front of our huts when the monsoon rests. Now I know where butterflies go when it rains (does anybody else remember that book?). They hide under the leaves of the benevolent trees. Or, if they are unlucky or unprepared, they freak out and fly like mad things through fingernail sized raindrops.

And so it goes with our family in the jungle. Our Home is starting to feel more and more like our home and I am beginning to get worried about how hard it is going to be to leave this place, these people. But that is a fret for future me...right now I am happy to enjoy the love and smiles and insanity of this family of forty.

And this table- the very first thing we built here and of which we are inordinately proud. As you can see...(there isn't a lot you can't do if you have coconut rope and electrical tape.)

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