Bhola and Nilambar have gone on village visit. Bansi is pottering around. Khagen is playing with the kids. Suman is busy in the kitchen. And I'm writing the blog.

It's been a humid day. Mostly sunny but patches of cloudy periods. No rain as yet. I can deal with the heat. But not this humidity. However, for once I am not complaining because the sunny moments helped me to recharge the batteries.

In the afternoon, everyone went out to the well to test the new hand pump. It works. In fact they used it to draw water from the well to water the plants. They also used a bucket to draw out water. The idea was to empty the well and clean it out. But there's too much water and even after trying to draw out water all afternoon, there was about 2 feet of water left. So they gave up. Meanwhile, the trees got watered. We'll probably need a pump to empty out the well to clean it. I'm sure Bhola will organize this soon.

We still haven't found a mason. Their tomorrow does not arrive! Anyway, someone's promised to be here tomorrow and hopefully work will start. This is the most frustrating part. Not finding skilled and non-skilled people when you need them. It's so difficult to plan ahead. I think it was a big mistake leaving the project when I did. I should have stayed and got the jobs completed before going to Bangalore.

But then, had I not gone to Bangalore, the computer classes wouldn't have started! Today the kids learned how to type. I started them off on asdf ;lkj. It was Prahlad and Anjana's turn today. Tomorrow Radha and Kartik are going to do this exercise and the day after it will be Raiman and Lalita. The kids now start the computer confidently, open a document on their own. Type, highlight words and save their work without any supervision. They know how to shut down too. It's amazing how quickly they learn.

Today the staff: Bhola, Bansi, Khagen and Nilambar learnt how to start and shut down the computer. From tomorrow they will have classes on alternate days. One day it will be Bhola and Bansi and the next day it will be Nilambar and Khagen.

Well, that's the only bit of exciting news today. Otherwise the day has been routine. Oh yes! Someone stole a few of our ripe mangoes! We suspect someone -- and ex-student. But since we can't prove it, we just let it pass. It's bound to happen. I used to steal mangoes when I was a kid!