Wash Your Hands Before They Eat

Another Sunday, which means another trip to one of the local grocery store-cum-bakeries. Our project involves making 17 kilos of an energy-dense nutritional supplement each week - arguably too much for a domesticated little food processor to handle; the bakery has a heavy-duty cake batter mixer, accurate weighing equipment and people to help out, so production has been conveniently outsourced. With the advent of the project, my lazy Sundays have been transformed by grinding 5 kilos of roasted peanuts, hauling them over to the bakery and supervising the making of the supplement.

The production unit is above the main shop and connected by a curved set of stairs behind the cash counter. It's dingy, the air heavy with heat and filled with the metronome clack of the bread slicer, or the whoosh of hot air from the oven. The floor is overlayed with butter, flour, sugar and grime and the doughy mess sticks to your feet when you walk barefoot, having taken your shoes off at the entrance.

I think they've gotten used to my weekly visits since they don't excite as much apparent comment as on my first trip here, and the fact that I can make myself useful by lifting and carrying seems to make it less awkward. Language is still a bit of a problem but my Tamil's improving and they practice their Hindi and English on me; the pale-woman-on-the-production-floor gets talked about but less. Still, it's funny how you can feel so alien in another part of your own country.

What am I learning? 1. Getting your hands (or feet) dirty is a good thing when the people doing your work for you are. Skin washes. 2. When you know what you need you can find ways to ask for it even if people don't speak your language. 3. It's not always pleasant to know where your food's coming from!