A Day in the Life of a Didi

This is what it is like: I wake up before 8 basically every day because the sun shines in my window. I go downstairs and catch the tail end of breakfast while the girls go off to school (the last ones leave at 8ish). Breakfast is some random starch...often chole (a fried flat bread thing), but we've also had vaguely toasted white bread and some kind of chopped up thin noodle thing on occasion. Once there was egg; that was exciting. The girls pack a snack to take to school, maybe another piece of chole and some potatoes. While the girls are at school, we three volunteers (me, Elysia, and Raphaelle, who I am going to refer to henceforth as "the didis") have some tea, take showers, run errands, wash our clothes, and plan things to do with the girls. A few girls won't go to school, but they are not allowed to leave the premises, and we honestly have no idea what they do with themselves all day. The rest of the girls get home around 2 or 3, change out of their school uniforms, and have lunch. Lunch is rice, chappati (a toasted flatbread), dal (lentil stuff), and something else, maybe a vegetable or some yogurt-based soupy thing. After lunch, we help the girls with their homework for a couple hours, then play with them or hang out with them or whatever. Sometimes we take the younger girls to a nearby park, but often it is too hot to play outside much. At maybe 6 or so we have a snack, probably milk and this hard sweetish bread thing that the girls dip in the milk to make it soft, although I think there were mangoes once, but I didn't pay much attention because that was the time when Asmani had gotten hit above the eye with a cricket bat and we had to send her to the hospital to get stitches. There is a little more down time until dinner, which is at 8 something, and generally consists of chappati and maybe a little something left over from lunch. Ponder for a moment the starch-overload of a dinner we had the other night: a mushy mixture of rice and potatoes, eaten with an aloo paratha (flat potato pancake-thing). We don't have meat, as most of the girls are Hindu and many are vegetarian; and some of them don't even eat eggs, so we don't have those much. Yesterday at lunch we had a thing that looked excitingly like chicken, but it turned out to be made of cornmeal or something. Oh well.
After dinner the girls gather their school uniforms off the clothesline and iron them for the next day. Even the littlest girls do their own ironing, as well as washing their own dishes. The girls also are in charge of cleaning their own rooms, cooking dinner, and cleaning up in the kitchen. On one hand, they are remarkably responsible, although on the other hand, I'm a little dubious as to how clean the dishes get when a 4-year-old is washing them, especially because we don't have hot water. It's a wonder the girls are in such good health, considering the potential for disease spreading in a 42-girl home, as well as their rather unbalanced diet.
The girls are all responsible for putting themselves to bed, and although they don't have any enforced bedtime that I'm aware of, they go to sleep at pretty reasonable times anyway because they get tired. The really little ones can barely manage to stay awake for dinner. Last night the littlest one was outside the kitchen crying, so I brought her in and sat her on my lap to have dinner, and she conked out completely before I could get her to eat anything. I had a short adventure trying to eat completely one-handedly while my other arm held a sleeping 4-year-old, and then I put her to bed. It's good that the girls are trained to be so independent in taking care of themselves, but the little ones aren't completely up to it sometimes, and the "aunties" who are the permanent caregivers in the home honestly aren't motherly at all, they just discipline and oversee operations. The other night the little one wet her bed, and while Raphaelle was trying to talk to her about it, an Aunty came in and slapped the little girl in the head and then didn't wash her sheets that day either. Discipline is one thing, but being so harsh with such small children really can't be particularly good for them or even particularly effective, I shouldn't think. The little girl has enough trouble in her life as it is.