DE Ops: मुन्ता, नही मुत्रा

Jeff has been living in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, running his survey. He came back for a few days for Holi and setting up Data Entry, but before he came back, I was helping oversee some preliminary data entry for him. Basically, we hired some temporary workers (Data Entry Operators - DEOs) to read names off a government website and type them in Hindi in Excel (they can't be copied and pasted, unfortunately). This means learning to use the really nifty English-phonetic Hindi font that we use, which is really straightforward except for some weird conjunct characters.

Hey! Where's MY Rs 1200!?

Recently, I was in a village south of Ghazipur when I stopped to eat lunch with a survey monitor at a middle school. The headmaster of the school was very excited to meet an American - he said that since he would never go there in his life, this was his one opportunity to learn what life was like over there. So, with pen and paper in hand, he interviewed me (through a translator):

होली! The Festival of Colors

Yesterday was the much-awaited climax of Holi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi. Jeff was in Uttar Pradesh, India for Holi last year, so he already experienced the craziness of the Festival of Colors:

Jeff in UP in 2010:

Grandma likes coffee but she doesn't like tea

A lot of unfair things are said about Bihar. But a lot of fair things are unsaid. This is most unfortunate, since those fair but unsaid things usually rhyme. An example? "The tea in Bihar is often sub-par."

Banana (बनाना, नही केला)

We hired our first female supervisor this week (Mala, माला), and besides the fact that it's great to start having female field staff, she's been an additional blessing for an unexpected reason: she doesn't speak English. Plenty of our supervisors and surveyors don't speak English, but she is on a mission to teach me Hindi, so I'm learning fast.

Nimbu!

Wonderful news to share! The Bihar Voters Field Manager Girish and his wife Data Entry Operator Neetu just had a baby! We've all been in suspense for several weeks, and we're really excited that it was a healthy delivery and everyone's doing great. I'll have a follow up post in 5 days when we all throw a big party.