Hello all,
Fi
Well,
these last few months have been very stressful for us, for various reasons.
Geeta
I took Geeta to see the plastic surgeon and he feels
he has achieved all he can with the reconstruction and plastic surgery of her
arm and has recommended we seek further intervention with a specialist in
Jaipur with more skill and facilities, so were looking into taking her for
consultation and treatment. This is on hold because of Covid and other issues.
In a nutshell, we are not allowed to leave Udaipur district because of the
restrictions on foreigners moving between states because of the Covid epidemic.
She is working hard at her school work and training,
we had a few hiccups but it seems sorted now, just got to work through it. She
began to worry about training and it seems that she was bored with running up
and down the drive for forty minutes to warm up before her kick boxing, and was
anxious about it at school and affecting her concentration, as her training
followed this, we suggested running in the street which is safe but her trainer
would not agree so we are changing trainers.
Since then both her attitude and work have improved.
She had a nasty bout of fever last month, nobody
really knows why it happens, but lots of kids seem to get it as the weather
changes into the monsoon. A week of sympathy cuddles and her favourite food
dealt with it Most efficiently.
She is running around generally being loopy at the
moment. We have just completed three days Hard work on her bedroom. She has new
bookshelves and a workstation for a laptop and area for her to do any written
homework. The whole room has been redecorated and extra wiring installed to put
sockets where she will need them. It really is looking beautiful. I wish I had
had a room like this!
I (Kris) had a fall outside a few weeks ago, just stepped off the patio onto the wet drive and went splat putting my hands down to protect my knees and hips, as it was, I landed heavily on my left hand and initially thought I had a scaphoid fracture which I’ve had before, but pain and swelling increased and wrist was out of alignment. Off to orthopaedic doctor following x-ray at the local hospital. Colles fracture of left wrist and not one but three breaks!!! Ho hum. So specialist it was.
I had manipulation under anaesthetic and synthetic pop
applied. Six weeks later pot is off and
I’m undergoing intensive physio and boy is it painful.
Having to use taxis as I can’t ride yet. But I will
not give up and I will get full function back even if wrist is still misshapen.
Gita was worried as I passed out with the pain so that frightened her a little
but we explained and she was ok. Chris put to me in the recovery position and I
regained consciousness very quickly. I think I was only out for a few seconds.
He Has been a star looking after me and doing most of the cooking.
But not to be outdone a couple of weeks ago Chris slipped in the shower and twisted his knee badly, he had to wear a steel knee support for a couple of weeks, but it’s getting better now however still painful if he turns the wrong way. A few more weeks and he will be back to normal.
We have just renegotiated our lease for another three
years. The rent as we had expected, has risen, but we have an incredibly
understanding landlord who knows we are struggling for money right now. It’s a
lovely house and we have done a lot of improvements one way or the other. I
think he realises that this is our home as long as we can live here. He has
good reliable tenants who care for his property, not like so many in India, who
rent a property then move out, leaving it like a tip with fittings missing.
Our asthma has been very bad this monsoon, worse than
normal. We have both had to change medications and Chris got a really bad lung
infection, at one stage where he couldn’t climb the stairs without having to
rest at the top. Thankfully we have both improved tremendously over the last
month or so. I don’t know if it’s the weather or some other factor, but this
year, lots and lots of people seem to be suffering the same. We did wonder at
one point, if it was Covid related... Talking of Covid we have both now had our
second inoculation. We can’t believe that there are still some people who
believe they don’t need to take any precautions, they won’t even wear a mask.
To us, this has to be the height of stupidity, but despite all the warnings
from the government, health officials and the huge death rate they just
continue in their own sweet way.
Talking about Chris, he has for the last year been
suffering stomach pains and diarrhoea. Living in India. Our first thought was
food, were we eating from local sources too much? However, since I wasn’t
affected and Gita will eat just about anything. It seemed unlikely. It was very
much like food poisoning over and over again. Off to the doctor for tests.
Well, we got the results. Chris is now suffering from irritable bowel syndrome.
There is no known cure, and control depends a great deal on lifestyle and diet.
Needless to say, he is not happy!
Chris.
To say I am not happy is an understatement. I have to
now consider everything as a possible problem or not. For the first few months
we have discovered, fresh peanuts, peanut brittle, Kentucky fried chicken
(fried again at home its ok then), and what’s worse, my favourite beer. Funnily
enough, a lot of curries don’t seem to bother it so my love of butter chicken
goes on! Some very spicy soups seem to trigger it very quickly, so I still have
to be careful, especially eating out.
People say it is completely debilitating. But I have
found an herbal remedy that is used widely in India that really does work. It
doesn’t stop it entirely, but it’s certainly a huge improvement on not taking
it. Without it I would have been concerned to be out of the house too long.
With it as long as I don’t break the diet rules while I’m out then it’s usually
no problem.
Because of all these various problems I have not been able to ride for some time, so the poor outfit is sitting under the car port waiting for me. Maybe soon. I have to do one modification to it. Since Gita arrived, she has loved the outfit, now she has got too big to share the sidecar with Christine, so I have to refit a detachable passenger seat on the bike for her. I take it off to carry luggage. I put it back to carry Gita.
Christine has had the worst bout of food poisoning
either of us has experienced since coming here. The culprit was some frozen
fish, in retrospect, it had probably thawed and been re-frozen. vomiting and
diarrhoea for three or four days, then stomach pain and continuing diarrhoea
for nearly 2 weeks. I didn’t have the fish. The doctor has given her a range of
tablets for her bowel and has heavily restricted her diet. Today is the third
day on the medication and she seems so much better, even eating Dahl and other
fairly bland foods. Apparently, according to Christine… This includes fried
eggs and chips. I’m not sure I believe her, but it is really good to see her
enjoying food again.
The monsoon is still dumping heavy rain as it has been
for some weeks now. Please don’t misunderstand this is not continuous. Mornings
seem to be fairly clear. Then around lunchtime thunderclouds move in and then
rains on and off heavily too late in the evening. It is quite common for it to
rain overnight as well. Seeds are coming up all over the place. Sadly, some get
battered to death with the rain. In many ways it is a horrible time of the
year. Hot and very humid. 90% humidity and 25° C temperatures means you sweat,
but don’t evaporate... The whole house can feel damp and this includes bedding.
There is nothing worse than climbing into bed on damp sheets. We resort to
lighting our wood burner and leaving it to blaze away for a few hours with all
the doors to the bedrooms open and the balcony doors open to get a through flow
of warm dry air. This seems to work wonderfully. Although it does get touch
warm downstairs. On the plus side, it is wonderful to see so much green growth
and flowers bursting into life. The lakes are full and the underground aquifers
are filling and everywhere you look there are young, newly born animals. So
much life suddenly appearing all around is truly a wonderful site after the
long dry summer.
It won’t be so long until our annual guest, a female
panther brings her young to the area to hunt.
She appears inside the colony quite regularly
depleting the puppy population. Although this seems sad it is the natural
balance. Without her, we would be overrun with wild dogs. As it is, there are
perhaps 15 in different groups on the colony. We have five or six in our
street. Most of the dogs are fed and watered by the residents and in return
they give fair warning of any strangers on the colony. They are also very
protective of who lives here.
Snakes are appearing all over the place now Because of
the wet ground. So, we have had to make absolutely certain Our chickens are
well protected. Both of the dogs have seen a snake and thankfully, instead of
attacking it, They both stand back barking furiously. We tend to leave them be
as they are only passing through. This year we have only seen two Cobra and a
small rat snake. We have mice and various other rodents coming and going to our
pond.
We have also greatly reduced the mosquito population
in our garden by providing them with a pool in which to lay their eggs. The
larvae hatch and are promptly eaten by our fish. Really, truly, the mosquito
population here has crashed!
Sadly, in a way, but necessary. We have sold our jeep.
We have had is for five years or so and it has been a brilliant piece of kit.
We have a friend who has always loved it and driven it many times more than
once, who we gave first chance of it and he snapped it up. So, it is going to a
good home and we understand, it is going to be modified, similar to an open top
jeep. We had to make a decision was it really worth keeping? Now that we don’t
use it. It is very rare, perhaps once a month that we take the jeep out.
Besides which, the money for it came in very useful. My 12-year-old laptop
couldn’t cope with the processor hungry Windows 10 and the voice to print
system I have. The poor thing kept freezing halfway through a sentence, very
annoying. I am actually writing this using speech to print rather than typing.
The medication I am on for my asthma has given me a tremble. Normally it’s not
a problem. It’s just one of those side effects that we have to cope with. But
when it comes to typing it can mean WSs double letters missed all sorts of
things. So, I now have a word to print system. I talk, it types. It has learnt
my accent very quickly and now only needs correcting for words I may not have
used before. We have replaced my laptop with a computer (desktop) far quicker
with masses of RAM and a good high-speed processor. We have a good friend who
builds and repairs computers, so this amount of technology we got for a very reasonable
price. The same friend cleaned and refurbished my laptop. A new keyboard
completed the rebuild. We have given it to Gita to use for the on-line
schooling and to learn to efficiently use a PC. A skill we are sure she will
use in the future. She is an extremely responsible child and understands
completely that this is not a toy.
In other not so good news…
This is time of year we have to renew our visa.
Normally this is done in country for five years but then has to be renewed from
the country of origin, unless you change employer then you have to return to
the UK.
We have been working for an NGO here for two years
since we returned. We were just coming up to renewable when they told us that
they would not be renewing our employment. They had no work for us.
When we joined the NGO, we signed a three-year
contract with them. Obviously, at that time, nobody expected Covid to disrupt
society the way it has. In India, as in most other countries the effects of
this have been life changing both were those who have lived through it and God
bless them, those that have not. As foreigners we were banned from travelling
so any work for the NGO had to be done at home. We have visited the main
offices several times during this period when infection rates fell for a while
and no mention was made was about any plans to cancel our contract.
Christine as usual, got the paperwork together for
renewal and arranged that the money to pay for it, roughly about £ 800. She
told the Son of the NGO owner; he then told his Father. Kris phoned the son the
next day to see what his father had to say as the son implied that he may not
wish us to continue working for the NGO, he said he would get back to us. The
son then sent us a WhatsApp message which said “I had a chat with my father
yesterday. He said ‘he won’t be able to issue the visa to you’.
This by WhatsApp, nice eh.
A little more warning would have been nice as 15 days
is not a lot of time to make alternative arrangements. We don’t blame his son.
He after all, was just the Messenger and give him his due he had tried it
appears to change his father’s mind.
To say we were very hurt by this attitude would be an
understatement. The least we expected would be for his father to contact us
direct, not to pass a message via WhatsApp through his son. Maybe it’s just our
English good manners expecting this sort of consideration. Who knows? We were
deeply hurt by the way, this was done. We both feel a little consideration
would have been nice and certainly a little more notice.
Even the foreign registration office, whom we register
through were surprised and asked why it had been cancelled. We told them due to
lack of work and Covid. Interestingly, they had telephoned us at the height of
the epidemic and insisted that we work from home because of the risks of
travelling. Eventually I think half of the population here were working from
home! An awful lot of people still are.
For a while, we were looking at the huge cost of
having to return to the UK and be quarantined at our own expense. By the time
you include airfares, hotel bills and travel costs. It is a really, really
expensive business for us. Luckily, or perhaps I should put it a little better.
God had other ideas.
Because of the Covid epidemic no flights are going to
the UK so we have applied for an extension to our visa’s. We don’t foresee a
problem until international flights resume, then we will have to make a quite
serious decision about our future here.
Because of all the problems we’ve had with NGO’s we
have decided not to work for another one. Never again will we put our futures
here in the hands of an NGO. We are both quite determined on that point after
the way we have just been treated.
Working at the college teaching before Covid was
probably the happiest time we have had. Sadly, the college isn’t an available
option for us.
Sadly, however, with the NGO not renewing our visa. It
has proved seriously detrimental to our chances of citizenship. Part of the
requirement is for continuous residency in the country. Within 12 years we can
only leave the country twice. Obviously, if we left now is would negate our
chances for the next two or more years. In simple terms, we just cannot afford
to do that. That is why we were so pleased when the NGO agreed to a three-year
contract. It would have completed our 12 years. So, we were very disappointed
that the NGO was not a little more considerate. Anyway, enough on that subject!
We are working on a plan to solve all these problems.
More to follow.
My first science fiction book is now available on
Amazon. I have written several books, but this is the first that I have
published so if you fancy a read, please support me. It’s called ‘The time
traveler’ as there are so many listed it is quicker to go via author C R Hyde.
Well, that’s about it for this blog. No doubt we have
forgotten things that we should have mentioned. Never mind we will include them
in the next blog.
God bless you all and keep you safe in these difficult
times.
Chris, Kris and Gita.
Rajasthan, India.
