The ever present choking haze has locals wearing scarves across their faces while out and about. [Photo credit: Anna Quinlan]
To put what I was talking about into context, here is some data from a few places for comparison (data from the World Air Quality Index www.aqicn.org). I picked places we have lived over the years so you can see what I mean and the snapshots were taken today.
It's no wonder that Delhi has declared a health crisis this week... and this is lower than I have seen it in the last few days!
Pune is not looking good today.
We are in southwest Pune, in a district called Hadapsar - marginally better but still not great.
The view from my kitchen in the morning... you can see the smoky haze above the slum as they burn fires to keep warm. It is winter now in India, and overnight temperatures of 18'C (65'F) are considered very chilly to the locals.
Houston may be a big city, but it's air quality is not bad.
The same is true of London.
Before we moved to the USA we lived in Reading, UK - nice air quality there!
And this Christmas we are heading back to the UK to spend some time with family... looking forward to breathing the clean Sussex air!!
For me, the 12 days of Christmas began yesterday. Twelve days of counting down until I leave India. I literally can't wait and I am yearning for it with every fibre of my being. Now, my darling husband is going to be reading this and internally cringeing. He will be feeling a crushing guilt and will be trying, right about now, to formulate a plan to 'fix' things. That's him, and one of the many reasons I love him. However, what he perhaps doesn't fully appreciate is that my current, somewhat negative, frame of mind is perfectly normal. In fact, it is even documented and has a name. And I have been there before. I am undoubtedly experiencing true culture shock right now. Being a teacher, I love a good visual aid, so I put together my own version of what this is like in a graph. Stage 1 - Preparation Getting our visas, packing up our home, parties & celebrations, saying goodbyes... this phase was a rollercoaster of emotions. For...
Yesterday I visited Nimgaon Bhogi, as I do normally on a Wednesday, but on this occasion I was given the opportunity to meet some of the mothers of the girls I teach to find out more about their way of life. First, we got shown around their cooperative dairy (set up 7 years ago by Ashta No Kai, the NGO I am working with). The women are helped to buy cows with interest free loans. Any surplus milk they get they are able to bring to the dairy room attached to the women's centre. Samples are taken to assess the milk's quality and they are paid accordingly ... Apparently buffalo milk has the highest quality but lowest yield, whereas the white desi (local) cows have lower quality milk in greater quantity. Many of the cows they have are hybrids with European milk cows. The milk is collected by a large dairy who process, homogenize and pasteurize the milk for sale. The co-operative dairy has really supplemented their incomes. The other main source of income for the women is farming....
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