Getting the ball rolling

Well things are finally looking up! Well, not totally, but it’s perhaps a start.

I was contacted by a Bangalore NGO who give funding for projects involving technology. I asked about cold storage for fish, they told me to submit a project proposal to them, and they’d consider it. So I’ve now got a lot of thinking to do. You have to plan everything yourself. I know nothing about refrigeration systems, especially those that can be used here or ones suitable for fish! Going to try and get some kind of solar powered thing and electricity here’s a bit dodgy. I don’t think the donor organisation has so much money, so it’s gotta be pretty small scale, but hey, it’s a start anyway, finally one positive feedback!

Another bit of good news, I have a friend, Linda. Well I call her a friend, but I’ve never actually met her! She’s from USA working in a different village a few hours away, I’ve spoken to her and e-mailed her a few times. Anyway, when I called her last night, there was another person there with her, an English guy called Nick who’s representing a Jewish UK based organisation. They have pots of money they are trying to get rid of it to help tsunami affected school children. So I put a proposal in to him to get stuff for the kids of our village. It seems quite likely that the children will be kitted out with new uniforms, shoes or sandals and have a whole bunch of new stationary equipment. I also requested a bicycle for each secondary aged kid (166 in total) and a full time counsellor to work on rotation in the schools. Out of the 363 school going kids in the 4 villages, 64 had lost one or more members of their family. It’s pretty heart breaking when you meet a man who’s lost his wife and all his kids, or a woman who’s lost her husband and baby. I don’t have a clue what to say to people in that kind of situation, they’re really in need of a village counsellor, but counselling here isn’t really the done thing, so there’s a total lack of qualifies people to help.

I’m going to Krishna’s for the weekend, well I leave on Thursday. I’m going to have broadband, so will finally be able to upload some photos. We’re also going on a boat trip, going to visit a burns hospital he volunteers at, and also will go to some of his tsunami villages. It should be a pretty interesting weekend. Also there are other UK people volunteering at the hospital, so I’ll get to talk to them! How exciting, meeting my first other westerners since arrival!

This is just a short note, have got more work to do as can’t do any thins weekend.

Oh, congratulations to my brother who just got a job working for Formula 1 on the Williams BMW team! It's about time he got a proper job!

Hope you’re all good

Ruth x

p.s. I got asked what the other blog is I write for. You can access it at http://desimediabitch.blogspot.com/ I don't write that often for it. It's all tsunami stories, well my section is. The other stuff is pretty random.