Stale

Greeting my friends and welcome a big welcome (for most of you) to blogs.
(I hope that it isn't too much of a confusion for you, if you prefer I can e-mail you instead!)

Please leve comments, I like ones that make me laugh!!

OK, before I get started, I should have said before, that if anyone is sending me something from UK, it will be much cheaper for you to send it to my old house mate, Eddie, who can then get it to me for free. It's also a much shorter address.

Eddie Fuller, 42 Hetley Road, London, W12 8BB

Thank you thank you thank you! Stuff needed is lightweight packets of whatevers you can just add water or milk to. Things that can be cooked on the hob only, and that don't require refrideration!


So to tell you the truth not much has happened since I last wrote. I had a fantastic weekend seeing an old friend I met travelling last time in India. In England you'd never consider taking an 8hr bus ride to go somewhere for one night, but in India these things are done without too much thought! It was, and Soum was worth it anyway. Bangalore is where I went to, India's high-tech capital and home to many western luxuaries. I drank beer and ate in Subway in a/c buildings, it was heaven! We also got out of Bangalore on Soum's bike to go to a fort type of thing on a hill. It was cool to see the view for miles and miles, very flat land there, apart from the mountain we were on of course. It's such a nice feeling cruising on the back of a bike with the wind in your hair and one of your best friends sat right in front of you. It's a shame Soum's now moved to Mumbai, which from me is a 27 hr bus ride away, this stretches a bit for a weekend visit!

So work here has gone a bit stale. There's not a great deal to do. We're waiting to get the responses from different donor organisations we've requested funds from. I'm still asking people for more stuff, but doubt we'll get anything. I've been contacting European consulates in India on the advice of my boss but doubt i'll even get a response.

We're now only going to be working in 4 villages - Channa Vaikal, Pilumedu, Mulukku Thurai and MGR Thittu as a kind of test. These are some of the worst affected villages and no other NGOs are doing any work with them, apart from perhaps building a new house, or in some cases the government has said they will do that.

So just to let you know the situation in our 4 villages - it's 433 families, 1705 individuals and they've suffered 208 deaths. All of these people used to live in houses made from woven coconut tree leaves, which have now all been flattened, and all families used to fish or work in fiahing related industries.


I don't really agree with some of the projects we intend to run thou. One scheme we've requested lots of funding for is training 180 men in boat manufacturing. The idea is to train men in groups of 20, in 5 subgroups over a 2 year period. Training will take 4 months, and by the end of this time each group of 4 men will have their own boat so they can fish again. One man is to stay behind and make more boats thou. Well, since going to the villages and asking if they'd actually be interested in this only 138 have said yes. Most see it as a waste of time as 4 months is a really long training time, and people not in the first group will have to wait a really long time.

Unfortunately I'm not working with the most knowledgable, intelligent, initiatived people so information that I tried to collect from the families isn't all that helpful. many of the families have rejected all our schemes of income generation, and I tried, to no avail, to get information on how the villagers intend to make money again when they have lost everything.

We are in the process of getting a new worker, which I said last time I hjad 5 or 6 girls to interview, well, I only interviewed one. One was married and therefore couldn't live with us, 3 didn't want to do any field work (only office work), and the one who did show us couldn't understand a single question I asked her, also wasn't too keen on field work and had to ask her parents permission if she could live with us, and partake in field work. She was 29. We never heard back from her, thank God. We are in the process of putting an ad in the English paper to try and get a new translator / worker, but I'm a little doubtful. The salary they originally were offering was Rs. 2000 per month, this is £25, oh, and they are looking for someone who has finished at least a bachalors degree, but hopefully masters too. They have since decided to up the salary, but I don't know how much by.

I've had no work to do for the past 2 days and am thinking about going off again. I mean at least I can keep myself entertained by doing variuos things, Sasi Kala, the 23 year old girl who's working with me spends her days sat in a chair staring at the wall or sleeping. It seems really pointless to wake up at 5:30am when you have nothing to do. I tried to ask her why she does it, but she didn't understand.

Oh, Sasi had her first pasta experience yesterday and she was not impressed. After receiving some herbs from my Mum and buying tomato puree in Bangalore I was able to finally cook something. Ok, so it was pretty tasteles, very untomotoy and mushy, but hardly inedible, but Sasi thought so. Kinda funny how taste develops, they have some absolutely rank food here which the locals enjoy! I think maybe it was because it wasn't spicy that she didn't like my pasta. ALL food here is hot, and to me all tastres the same. I asked the girls before if they've ever tasted non-spicy food, they haven't and I don't think they'll like any of it. Actually, they do have a variation of spicy food, and that's sweet food, and boy is it sweet. They add cup fulls of sugar to sweet stuff so it's so sickly you can only have half a bit. And I'm a sweet adict, stuff in UK people find sickly sweet I can so far out eat most people I know, so here, a grain for most people would be enough!

Alright, I'm off now. I've been e-mailing and surfing for hours, time to go. Hope you don't mind the blog format, just thought it might be easier!

Please continue to e-mail me back though. I love hearing from you.

Love as always
Ruth xxx