PCRF

In response to the request to post more pictures from work, I have compiled a few just to give everyone a better feel of what goes down at PCRF (Public Cause Research Foundation). Today is Friday.... so I guess I only have 4 more days of work counting today... weird!

Here is a close-up of the thousands of letter we are sending out to citizens who have filed RTI applications. In order to appropriately assess all of the Information Commissioners to see who is most deserving of an award, we must ensure that when they ordered for information to be provided, it was! So the letters have been flowing...


Here is Ram (left) and Abid (right) working on the letters! This is also the area where I sat for most of my time here with one of those lovely desks on the floor. How Indian of me.

And here is Yuliya (one of the international interns from Ukraine) with all of the letters! Both her and Hanna (an intern from Poland) have been addressing and stuffing these letters as their full time job for the past few weeks. A bit mind numbing but they survive.

So from the left... it is Riya, Dennis (Hong Kong), Seema, Yuliya and Amit. This was taken fairly early on in my internship and these three were definitely the most welcoming when I first came. Riya was wonderful and invited Dennis, Yuliya and I to her home for dinner early on and it was delicious. Her husband and her were so welcoming and hospitable. She has been so wonderful this entire time - I'm really going to miss her!


Just a picture of where I work in the office - as you can see in the front, someone is drinking water from the huge water bottles we reuse. You don't touch it with your mouth ever .. just pour it in! After spilling water on myself for the first week I think I've finally gotten the hang of it!


Just a picture of the main part of the office.


Abid's birthday! From the left: Seema, Riya, Mehtab (the chai guy), Sweta, Swati (the boss) and Abid. And just to clarify about a few things... Mehtab's job is to most importantly, make chai and serve it twice a day in these adorably small tea cups. It is spiced tea with milk and lots of sugar and is incredibly common in India. You always accept chai if it is offered to you by someone! That is definitely one thing I am going to miss about this place!


Swati, the boss here (other than Arvind who founded and funds the foundation), is only 24! She is incredibly kind and really tries to be less of a boss and more of a co-worker when she can. Of course, she has to be strict to a certain extent sometimes. She is an avid and devoted social worker though, and only makes Rs. 10,000 per month. This equates to about $200 US dollars. It is barely enough to live on your own I think. But she is so humble and giving to the cause of working against corruption... I am consistently impressed. She also goes on meditation trips twice per year. The latest one she went on was for one month - no talking. I don't know if I would be able to do the same.

Here is Riddhi smashing cake into Abid's face - hilarious! I didn't know this was a tradition in India before, but apparently on your birthday, everyone grabs a piece of the cake and feeds you it whilst putting it all over your face!

Riddhi (the girl on the right above) is the main girl I work with here. She is a master's student right now in English and journalism. Her English is fantastic, as expected. She is very fun and bubbly, always with a smile on her face.

Below is a picture of the day we ordered pizza for lunch - such a special occasion that we took a picture! For some reason pizza is so gratifying here...


Yuliya's going away party... she left just about a week ago now. She arrived just a day before me so we went through a lot of orientation with the foundation together. She is such a colorful girl!

So from the left here is Dennis, who was here a month before Yuliya and I but will leave at the same time I do, Ram, Hanna (from Poland and arrived about a month after I did and will stay til October), me, Yuliya, Feroj, Amit.
Yuliya cutting her cake...



Even though it wasn't her birthday - we still got cake and kept up with the tradition! But this time Yuliya struck back at Feroj haha.

Ah and last - one of my favorite pictures. Seema looks so small compared to us! Seema was really a shining burst of energy and fun when I first started working at PCRF. We would constantly joke about how Amit loved Dennis... and Yuliya... and Hanna... and I would ask her questions about getting married. She is from a village and has very conservative parents, so she is required (or else she will be ignored by her family I assume) to marry a man who is Indian, from her caste and is older. Without these three requirements, the marriage simply cannot happen. So her family is on the search for her husband.

I learned so much about India's system of getting married from her. She really does not want a love marriage. She just wants to be married. She is a bit worried because she is "getting old" (she is 29) so she knows she needs to find a husband within the next year and a half or so. She has had some possible husbands in the mix, but they seem to always ask for too much dowry. (In India the women must pay a dowry to the man.) So she is still stuck in what she considers limbo.

She was fun and bubbly in the beginning and we would laugh a lot. However, after a few weeks she started to get more serious and the pressure was put on to get more letters out and get numbers higher for assessing commissioners and public information officers. Plus, she has a three hour commute from her village to work. Since teaching is her passion, she teaches a class for kids at her house at 6 AM, then takes the bus to work from 7AM to arrive at around 10 AM. Then she leaves at 6 when the day is over and doesn't get home until 9 PM, when she teaches another class! That is pretty impressive to have the kind of patience, if you ask me. So as a result of all this, she kind of died in a way and was no longer happy at work. Then eventually I think it all boiled up and she quit for various reasons one Saturday (the day we don't work)... so I was sad when I thought I wouldn't get to see her again. But luckily... she finally came in today! After a week or so of cooling off about her tiff with the bosses, she came in to bring back some information she had and to tie up any loose ends.

She also invited me to her house next Friday! So the plan is to end work on Wednesday and head straight to the train station to take a train to Varanasi with Thijs. Then we will spend the day in Varanasi (the holy city in the north along the Ganges River where they burn dead bodies), and return by Friday morning. Then I will pack, and take the 2.5 hour bus to Seema's village (I'm so excited to finally see a village here that I have heard so much about!). Then Saturday will be my last day in Delhi - so sad!! It is also Allie and Maria's last day in Delhi as Allie is coming with me to Mumbai Sunday morning and Maria heads off to Srinagar in Kashmir.

It is so weird to think that in less than two weeks I will be back in Arizona.... I can almost smell the Paradise Bakery cookies!

As for this weekend, I am off to Jaipur for an elephant festival! Not really sure what that entails, but I guess Kylie, Maria and I will find out when we get there!