Nomoshkar abar,

So Tim's quite popular with the girls at Freeset - they give him biscuits and flowers. We enjoy the chai (tea) breaks twice a day - the tea they make for us is very sweet, looks like coffee, but tastes like strong milky sweet tea. 'V' for indians Dan (another volunteer) says. Factory hours are 10am til 7pm with a lunch break between 2 and 3.

The other day, I went up to help with the screen-printing which Tim has been working on, and Tim introduced me as his strii (wife) to one of the women. She promptly told every woman in sight and they all 'oooed', pointing to us and telling us that we were a bhalo (good) couple. One woman asked why I didn't have a red paint mark in my parting - this is what symbolises a marriage - not a ring.

We are having quite big problems here at freeset with power (in the past couple of weeks). The power often goes off, and we are having meter/ circuit issues. It doesn't help when the electrician blows fuses then overcharges for his work - because it is the religious holiday Durga Puja, they are struggling to get an electrician, let alone a good one (like Christmas here, electricians can get plenty of well-paid work wiring up temporary lighting displays, hence we're not of that much interest to them at the moment). Apparently the wires may have fused together with the intense heat.

It is neat to start to understand Bangla a bit more - most of the women here don't speak any English, so we are very keen to get to the level where we can have a decent conversation with them.

Oh, and we should also be promo-ing our stuff to you - you can help these women too.

There is a minimum order of 100, so if you know anyone who has retail shops, or organises conferences, please tell them about freeset bags (and soon, tees will be available too). See freesetglobal.com for details.

We have been finding our way around the markets near freeset - there are no supermarkets close-by. We get our yoghurt in a terracotta pot strangely. We thought they must have been lending it to us because we hadn't brought our own, but no, when we took it back to the place they were quite confused. We found out subsequently that tea also comes in little terracotta pots, and people just chuck these out on the street when they've finished their tea. Luckily they seem to be biodegradable as they are not made strongly (much more sensible than using plastic cups, now we think about it).

And a lizard lives in our kitchen. I'm simultaneously frightened and intrigued by it. Actually there are about 3 that live in our current place, so I'll have to get used to them.

We have explored town a little- Tim was coaxed into playing cricket for a while at the park and the group really wanted us to come back for a game of soccer at 7am the next morning. The streets are very dirty - there is definitely a problem with rubbish, and right next to our local vege market there is one of many mini-tips - but a lot doesn't even get there.

Also, there are a fair number of people who live on the foot paths, under a tarpaulin (or not). It is hard walking past mothers with very young babies who only have a small amount of fabric to lie on the concrete with. It is a very different life here where many hang their washing up on the road barriers, wash themselves and clothes under outdoor taps, and sleep day or night on the pavement. Sadly, you wouldn't know for a few days if they had died there.

We have found a church in town held at the YMCA which several people from Freeset are involved in. They are part of Emmanuel ministries and sound like they are doing amazing things - have a children's home, a home for HIV/Aids patients, and other community initiatives. Have met neat people so far.

Hope you're all well,
Tim and Sarah

Nomoshkar!

Nomoshkar from Kolkata,

Having spent four days in Kolkata, we wanted to share our first impressions. A bizarre mix of first and third person with either or both of us writing, sometimes changing within the sentence - sorry!

For the first few days we stayed with Karl (general manager of freeset) and his wife Lyn who also works there. They are two fantastic people (and we will be living with them off and on throughout the year) who have three kids at a boarding school in South India and they have both been wonderful in letting us settle in and showing us around. They currently live near Kalighat (45 mins from freeset by foot, bus and metro) but are moving closer soon.

We went in to Freeset on our first day as it was Freeset's birthday. It was a holiday in West Bengal where Hindus worship machines (if our limited understanding of Hinduism/Bengali culture has not betrayed us), so Freeset decided to celebrate that day and be thankful for the women, the opportunities, and freeset (and the sewing machines, of course).

Freeset seemed to be an amazing place - Anne and Kerry (the founders) have something very special going on there: the women all seemed very happy, and had brought various family members with them for the celebration. The children would just smile with these beautiful smiles that made you melt, and the women all greeted us with nomoshkar. Occasionally one of the women would say something in English - either teasing Kerry, or telling me that I should be wearing a sari (haven't had a chance to get one yet). They celebrated by dressing up, having some speeches (of course we couldn't understand a word as they speak so fast and we have about 200 words of Bangla between us), lots of dancing, and the westerners showed them how to do the makarena.

Because you can't safely drink the tap water here, we are fortunate in having access to filtered drinking water both where we are staying and at freeset. Freeset have recently put eight water filters into the new factory with the aim of making 30,000 litres of clean water available to the Sonagacchi community. They are currently struggling with this as they are sourcing the water from the Ganges, which means that although the water has no germs, it is a murky colour - which doesn't really convince people of its cleanliness when the town supply, although quite bad, is clear. They're currently working through how to sort that out.

Today (Monday) is our first day at work. Up till now we're been trying to learn some Bangla, and get used to the culture and the climate. The women at freeset don't speak English (apart from a few words) so learning some more language is definitely a priority. Karl has given us more of an idea of what we will be launching into this week and beyond. Tim will be first learning about the printing process, and then setting up a training programme for the women who join freeset. I will be helping out with designing the bags, and with promotional and communication materials for the launch of the t-shirts. Today is pretty laid back. Because it's another public holiday (the end of Ramadan), only 4 of us are here (normally around 150) - we've just come in to get our bearings before the chaos starts tomorrow. Annoyingly the power was out on 4 of the 6 meters at work, so we had to work in the dark some of the time, but hopefully will be back on tomorrow when everyone comes back to work.

Other than that, we've just been acclimatising really. The place we were staying had a lovely park 5 minutes away so we went walking around the lakes there and got invited to join a laughing exercise club by a nice man named Arjun. I think the no 1 surreal Kolkata experience so far. It's also coming up to Durga Puja, the festival of the Durga, who if I understand correctly is an incarnation of the goddess Kali and the regional deity of Kolkata. All around the city there are temporary temples/shrines (pandal) built in the middle of streets, or sometimes in parks. This seems to be as much a competition as an act of worship (or perhaps the competition is part of the worship?), with different areas competing for the best pandal. The creativity and dedication of the people is just astonishing. Beautiful structures with intricately carved plaster arches and walls seem to have sprung up around every corner, and traffic just has to find a way around them. It's perhaps something like Christmas light competitions in the US raised to the power of 10.

This afternoon John (the designer Sarah will be working with) took us around the little lanes near freeset. We waded through water which we didn't really want to know what was in it given the colour - was flooding as we had just had a couple of hours of heavy rain. And the water was not restricted to the lanes. The lanes are packed with people, piles of rubbish, dogs, cats, crows, and various creatures whose species was less discernible (Tim saw rats and a massive red insect which he has only just now told me about (lest I might have screamed perhaps)). Most people seemed to have somewhere undercover to live, but very very basic.

We visited a woman who works at Freeset, who was in this little room with her husband and one year old baby. The baby had just had an operation to remove one eye, as she had a cancer there that they detected too late to save the eye. Now the poor kid's in the middle of 6 rounds of chemotherapy (the Freeset Trust managed to raise money to have her treated at a private cancer hospital in Kolkata). She was remarkably resilient though and tried to steal Sarah's bracelet with incredible energy. Her smile was just amazing too! She was very beautiful.

That's all for now. Hope you are all well,
Sarah and Tim

You can see where we're living on this map:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=ramesh+dutta+st+kolkata&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Ramesh+Dutta+St,+Kolkata,+West+Bengal,+India&ei=dHK4SvOhKo7gswPl89gT&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1

Freeset is right near the middle, and we're currently living slightly to the North, just past Dari Gosh Sarani. Sonnagachi (the big red light district) starts just to the North of that.

Edit: fixed link, hopefully