Day of the Deputies

Kaptaan: What’s the craziest thing you saw today?

Deputy N: A tractor doing a wheelie.

Damn. I missed it again.

“You should have been there,” says Sheriff. A tractor got stuck in the sand with its rear wheels up in the air. They had to get a JCB to get it free. Sheriff describes it like something out of Transformers meets Star Wars.

It’s been a good day at the site. Mostly. Deputy V says that if we go to the site blindfolded, we wouldn’t recognise it. The entire plot has been trimmed and flattened. But not cleared.

The local labour doesn’t share quite the same passion as the team.

Deputy V was bewildered the whole day. They got ten people but he can count only seven. 

“They must be on a break,” says Kaptaan. “Three people must be sitting down.”

“But there are seven people every time I count!”

Kaptaan is all praise for the deputies, though. And they look like they deserve it. Half of them have passed out before dinner. The other half have emerged fresh out of a chilled water bath at this time of the night.

“You should have seen them today,” says Kaptaan. “You know how everybody was stopping to take out those thorns the first couple of days? Today they were just going on with all that shit on them. And it was HOT! From twelve to two, boss. No one was in the shade.”

Lunar landscape. Solar flare.

Tomorrow begins at 6:30 again.

My camera is charged. My alarm is on.