Janet's Entry January 25, 2009

Our landlady has been very good to us. The first day we were here she took us to the market just a short disance from our flat. It's really an unbelievable place. The shops are all so tiny with usually just barely enough room to squeeze down one isle. The goods are stacked from floor to ceiling. Sometimes there will be a tiny little storage room in the back, usually just a little cubby hole. Everything seemed so dirty to me at first and covered with who knows what, but now that I've been here for two weeks it doesn't seem so bad. The people are for the most part just so nice and treat us so well, they have really made us feel at home. But back to the little shops at the market. Although there are always mouse droppings and other various bits and pieces of trash everywhere the shop keepers have their own strange way of organizing things and they can usually find just about anything you need.
There's a barber shop called Snipers (snippers misspelled), several tailers, a dry cleaners, internet services, cell phone dealers, copy machine stores and laminators. There are several juice stands and fruit and vegetable vendors, shish-ka-bob makers, candy makers, flat bread makers and we just yesterday discovered a very good ice cream store. We also have a resident herd of Brahmas wandering aimlessly around the market but sometimes they like to take a stroll down a side road or lay around over at the park.
We saw a beggar woman almost get killed at the market the other day. She had been following us around with her baby hanging from a sling and her little three year old daughter (a very lively little urchin) running circles around us.
We had stopped at a small store, buying a few items from the Sikh owner and the beggar was waiting off to the side. The Sikh and his wife were both telling her (speaking in Hindi) to go away and motioning to leave. Then suddenly an old Sikh man from another stand came racing up yelling, with a heavy plastic crate ready to smash the beggar's head in. Just before the crate came down our store owner ran to the rescue and stopped the crate, but as he turned to go back behind his counter, the old man tried to kill the beggar again. This time both the store owner and his wife stopped him. Everybody was yelling at the beggar and then the old man went back to his stand across the road. The beggar was crumpled down on the ground wailing. It was a very pitiful sound like a small child crying.
Sister Brown (another missionary) said that the government is trying to get the beggars relocated and improve their situations. It's illegal for them to beg but it's next to impossible to enforce the law. I've learned that the little kids who are out selling books, magazines, flowers,etc. in the middle of traffic, are some who the government is trying to teach to sell instead of beg.
We have the best situation here in some ways. All day long we have vendors coming right past our door calling out their wares. They sell fruit, vegetables, cloth, plants, and all kinds of services. Each person specializes. One does toilets, another does floors, and another will cook but nobody does it all. We've gotten so confused. I think Fred has hired a new person every day to take the trash.
The trash is another interesting thing. People will come and get your garbage then they go through it, take it down a couple of streets and dump it at someone else's corner. I think they have no such things as land fills here. The beggars, dogs, birds, cows , and rats just tend to clean most everything up. But then things like broken bricks and broken glass and various other non-etable trash just gets left in heaps here and there.
You have to be very careful not to step in dog doo here. I stepped in some and didn't even know it until I was in the church waiting to teach an investigator. I had to excuse myself and go ditch my shoes behind a door until after the lesson was over.
There are many, many dogs here and they are very strange creatures. You never see them hardly ever move. Most of the time they are just curled up in some dirt hole or on the sidewalk which people never use here. People walk right in the road and when they hear a horn beep behind them, they move over. Even we do that now. We walk miles every day and it's always so dangerous but God must have a higher purpose for us and he has been allowing us to keep on living.