On a more personal note...

I’ve recently been reading one of Terry’s books about a guy who cycled across the world, and reading some of his stuff made me aware of how narrow / work focused my previous blogs and e-mails have been. So today I shall tell you all about other things from my almost 3 month stay in India.

I have to admit that the vast majority of my time is taken up with work, and since working with working on Project SEED I have had only one day totally off the project. I have had days where I’ve perhaps only done an hour of work, but daily we discuss what’s happening, and plan.

So a couple of weeks ago I had nothing to add to the project at that time, and took the opportunity to see somewhere new and get away from all things and people regular to me here. I decided to go to Yercaud, near Salem. I decided to go there as it’s a hill station at an elevation of 1600m, the opportunity of cooling down would be perfect. Yercaud’s the highest place within reach for a night trip, or so I thought. The bus ride to Salem turned out to be 6 hours, this was longer than expected as Salem is 120 miles away. However, I was on a government bus, which stops pretty frequently, and Indian roads don’t really allow for fast travel. It only cost 70p though, so I can hardly complain! Most of my time in Tamilnadu has been in coastal places, obviously, but Salem from Chidambaram is due west, so I got to see more of the interior of TN. It’s pretty, not as pretty as the coastal areas though, and has a lot less people and pass through towns. In Salem I only saw the bus station before getting a bite to eat and changing bus to get to Yercaud. On the map it looked pretty close, but I had no idea how long it would take.

The second bus that I got on decided to decant us all after about 10 minutes, leaving us on the side of the road, watching as the bus rode away empty. We stood around for about 20 minutes before another bus turned up and we continued on our journey. I of course had no clue what was going on, but I have enough trust in the Indian bus system to know we wouldn’t have been left stranded. Oh, by the time the third bus came, it was already dark. It took about an hour and a half to go the 30km or so to Yercaud as the road it a steep mountain road, twisting and turning all the way up. The bus was a short one, but still had problems making the turns and getting up hill.

When I arrived in Yercaud, I checked it out on foot, looking for an appropriate sleeping place and seeing the new town I’d arrived to. I was hoping to be able to sleep outside on the highest possible point and wake up to a beautiful morning sunrise, I’d packed appropriately and was thinking on how much small trips usually end up costing me, and so this time I was trying to do it the cheapest way possible. It’s a tiny town. I was asked if I was in need of help by quite a few people, a single female traveller always sticks out, especially in a place where there aren’t any other foreign tourists. I told my friendly helpers that I was trying to find how to get to the highest place to rest my head, their advise to me was that I check into a hotel. Not satisfied with their answer I set off with flash light in hand to se what I could find for myself, thinking that Indians don’t have much of a sense of adventure and worry about safety way too much, when it really isn’t so necessary. I found the perfect place to sleep. I wanted to sleep on the roof of a house I found, only the owner found me first. He was pleasant enough and told me the house I’d found at the east of town was not a house, but a male hostel. Apparently full of “drunken bachelors”, it was forbidden that I stay there as they feared for my safety, and again the advise was to get a room, also the advise was to next time not travel alone and to always have a male with me! I’d considered sleeping in a shop doorway, as many Indians do, but then I wouldn’t be able to see the sun rise from my make-shift bed, so that defeated the object. So I found the cheapest place I could to stay in. The price was Rs. 150, that’s almost ₤2. It was pretty expensive for what it was, but the cheapest option, so I took it. I had no running water but 3 single beds and the rest of the guesthouse to myself. I think I went to bed about 10:30pm that night, after not being able to focus on my book any longer.


I was woken at 7am next day by the staff, bringing me another bucket of freezing cold water. I don’t know how much they think I get through, but they’d already bought me a huge bucket full the night before. Unable to sleep again I got up and packed my stuff to leave with the staff until leaving. I headed to the highest place I could find. I was led there by a fellow I’d met the night before. Up on the roof top overlooking the tree covered mountains I felt inspired to meditate, this being the first time in 18 months or so. After I was done meditating and taking in the scenes and quiet I headed off to wonder the small street of Yercaud, trying to catch a glimpse of what life is like for the people there. As like everywhere I go in India I was greeting by waving, smiley, chatty children and head shakes by the older guys – that’s the Indian head shake (or wobble) of many positive meanings. I stopped by a well to watch people collect their water and was encouraged by a middle aged woman to see if I could lift and walk with a full barrel. No problem, I don’t think I could carry it on my head the way they do though, and didn’t attempt to try this, although a cool down soak would have been nice! Yercaud wasn’t as cool (in temperature) as I had hoped, the sun is still strong, and I was still hot.

After trying to communicate as best I could with a ancient women who barely had teeth due to her life long addiction to beetle nut (pieces of beetle nut wrapped in a leaf and chewed day and night by many in Asia, it makes your teeth stained red, and it’s pretty hard, so seems to make them out of shape, although they swear it actually strengthens them, it also means you have to spit out gob fulls of red saliva. It’s supposed to give you a small high, but when I tried it In Thailand a couple of years ago, it gave me no effect) I stopped to play with a tiny puppy. I was asked in English if I like dogs, and this is how I met Nagomi. Nagomi is a 72 year old born and bred Yercaud lady. I spent the next hour with her in her “house”. It’s actually just a single room, about 5x8 feet, with black stained walls and ceiling form burning a kerosene lamp. Her ceiling and floor are made from opened out cardboard boxes and the plaster on her walls bulges, it looks like her walls may collapse at any moment or if pushed too hard from the other side. She tells me of her loneliness as I sit on her bed with a layered cardboard mattress. She has no family, her husband died many years ago and they never had children. She is able to speak broken English as she previously worked as a housekeeper for a German woman. I am bought a cup of tea and some “pancakes”. I didn’t want them as I was full on breakfast and didn’t want Nagomi to spend any of her Rs. 200(₤2.50) monthly government pension on me. But she told me it would make her so happy if I chatted with her in her house eating and drinking. The food was disgusting. The “pancakes” she had bought me were tasteless, dense and soggy, they also had a mountain of sugar on top. I tried not to retch as I ate the two too many she had bought me. I considered putting them in my pocket when she wasn’t looking, they really made me feel very ill. After chatting for a while I told her I had to leave. She started to cry and thanked me profusely for spending so much time with her and giving her Rs 50 when (in her words) she had spent so little on me, and I had given her so much. It was sad to see her cry, she doesn’t have many friends or any family and is only fed if the woman a few door away feeds her. Otherwise she spends her days outside her room in one of the many narrow pretty streets of Yercaud.

After visiting Nagomi I wonder slowly back to get my things. I then take the bus back at lunch time, but not before making a stop at the toilet to put my fingers down my throat and bring up what I had just eaten which was making me feel so sick. I like to travel during the day so I can see out of the window. Just looking out the window in India beats 95% of British (& 99% of foreign) TV any day! However the ride back is long and uncomfortable. The windows don’t open so well and the Tamil movie they are playing at full (distorted) blast isn’t kept out despite pushing my ear plugs in as far as they will go! After just a few hours of being on the crowded bus a man comes to sit next to me and strikes up a conversation in very broken English. I don’t mind at all talking to people, but when they have nothing of real interest to say, have heinous breath and you’re stuck on a small seat with them for 6 hours it’s not so much fun. I decided next time to not go so far away just for a one night trip – but these are the things you do when you travel! I’d been meaning and wanted to go to Manchester (where I went to uni) to see old friends all the while I was back in England, but thought the 3 hour trip there was far for just a weekend, ok so it costs more than 70p to get there and the ride is considerably more comfortable, but still... I did about 15 hours on 4 buses to stay in a town from 8:30pm until 12:00pm the next day!!

Wow, I just realised how much I wrote about Yercaud, hope you found it interesting!! As I said before Yercaud is the only overnight trip I’ve been able to make. There’s such a desperate need here, and things are happening 4 months late, it doesn’t allow for much time off. We do however have day or half day trips we are able to make, and have done so a few times, but riding in style on Terry’s Royal Enfield Bullet, which being Indian design and manufacture comes with it’s own set of eternal problems. Oh, I’m being unfair, it’s just a very fussy bike – we had a bit of a problem when Terry couldn’t get the bike to go into 1st gear, and no mechanic could find the problem (because they didn’t look hard enough), that was until we found one who fixed the problem, but then created 2 more of his own. It didn’t help that the guy had substandard tools, the screw driver needed to be filed down so it could fit into screws properly to tighten them, but it wasn’t, so after riding the bike for a day screws had come loose from vibration and caused the bike to empty most of the gear box oil on Manu’s (our friendly landlord) outside house parking area. The problem with mechanics here is that they don’t always do a very good job, like when he half fixed the gear problem, it was still kinda difficult to get in gear, his advice was that rather than fix it, Terry would need to change the way he shifts gear! Labour is cheap thou, Rs.300 (₤3.75) for a full day’s work. That in India is a good day’s wage for a working man, especially if he is successful in ripping you off in money terms or taking your good parts and putting on black market copies, or draining your petrol whilst you’re not looking!!

Another place we visited is called Poombahar, about 25 miles away to the south and on the coast. We’d been trying to find a nice beach spot close to home to chill and get out of the house/office, but was unsuccessful as there’s a massive river which separates land from a little more land, then sea. There is a way if you can find the road to the north of the river, we tried once, but were unsuccessful. We shall try again, as I know I have been there with CARD, but wasn’t paying attention to the route.
Anyway, Poombahar is ok. There’s an old building there with figures inside of “ancient Tamil women..” doing this that and the other. It’s hard to believe that ancient Tamil women would wear as little as the statues depict, especially when I have had girls as young as 7 pull down on my top as I reveal an inch of belly!

Sat on a rock looking out to sea we watch men handle their catamarans and pull in their catch. The men here are fishing on catamarans, made of 5 logs of match-stick wood, tied together with rope, their oars are unshaped. 3 fit on a boat, with two paddling, and one steering by pushing a long stick into the ground. It looks extremely exhausting work, although their catches were impressive. The turds on the beach however weren’t. Terry worked in a fishing village a week after tsunami and told me how every morning all at the same time the men of the village would wonder down to the water’s edge for their morning crap. It was apparent at Poombahar that the tide had not yet come in! I also saw at Poombahar a girl of about 13 come to me to beg. She told me her parents had both died and that she wanted some rupees. You never know who to believe, but I don’t give very often to beggars in India as it encourages them (if compelled I give food instead), besides if her parents had both died because of tsunami the government will be paying a relative to take care of her. She hangs out with Terry and I for an hour, pretending to be someone she probably wants to be as she wears my sunglasses and imitates a chat on my mobile. She like many young Indian girls is stunningly attractive. She goes through my bag, asking if she can have different items in there and tries on my long sleeve top. You know with these kids they won’t take anything off you, so when she wonder off with my camera or removed my ankle bracelet I wasn’t concerned. They only take what you give them. I gave her a pen, which she then hid in her blouse and told me she’d lost it, so would I give her money! She actually tried to sell my pen to passing Indian tourists for double the value I told her I’d got it for! If this girl really is all alone in the world, she’s savvy and tough enough to make it!

So what else about life shall I tell you? I’ll tell you we’ve been thinking of moving. We do a lot of work in the house as we also use it as an office. The main room had 2 windows, but one looks out into a hall way and the other is small and high so we can’t see out of it. There is no light and no breeze. We are kept awake by traffic, Manu’s dogs and chickens. I don’t really know why he keeps dogs. He says they’re for security, but we sleep behind 2 padlocked gates and a locked front door! I want to move to a cottage in a village, they look really cute, we’ll have a look to see what’s available before making a decision thou. It’s nice to be able to take our meals onto the roof here and overlook so much green. The downside is the main road we are next to. Vehicles here are extremely noisy, and even when in the house talking on the phone if a truck goes by it would be the norm that we would have to ask the speaker to repeat. I’m getting on fine with Terry. He talks less then before, but is still good humoured and fun to be with. We work well together, although he has many more ideas then I do. I am thinking after the project here I’d like to take it across to Sri Lanka and do the same thing there. I figured seeing as response has been so slow, unorganised and lacking in scope and ideas, it’ll be even worse in Sri Lanka where many are still living in relief camps.

Ok, I guess it’s time for bed. I have to be up and out the house in 6 hours. We have a day off and are going to Ponicherry. I want to check the tourist shops there as I am thinking about creating an e-bay shop to sell manly fabrics, but anything made here that would sell in England for a nice profit. I also hope to market goods made by self help groups, such as the pictures made by the disabled women just outside Chennai from rice paddy discard. Oh I need to shower, again. It’s 2am, but I am close to sweating. It’s 33C in the shade and 40C in the sun during the day, we still haven’t reached peak summer!

I hope that all you out there reading this are fine and happy. Thanks to those of you who’ve written to me and apologies if I haven’t responded yet. I plan also tomorrow to send this and some photos from Pondi, I hope you enjoy them, and if you’re wondering where to go on your travels, or have some time off, I welcome you to India. People have such misconceptions of India. It’s actually a very nice place with overly friendly people. It’s dusty and dirty in places, but all totally manageable. The only downside, when you’re living in a town, as opposed to travelling, is there isn’t many options for entertainment. We were really felling this today. The only thing outside the house to do in the evening is going for meals.

Anyway, I think at 5 pages it’s probably time for me to stop. So my beautiful friends I bid you goodnight or good day. I look forwards to the day when we next meet.

With much love from me and my browner than brown back, shoulders and arms!
Ruth xxx

p.s I have started to make a hanging chair from string and wood. I don’t really know how it’ll turn out as I am copying a design stored only in memory, and as I learnt today I sometimes have difficultly hammering a nail in straight and avoiding my thumb! I am hoping it’ll be something I am able to do from very basic materials, but also if I can teach people how to make them and sell them, it’ll be a good all rounder. The cost of materials cost me 50p. Selling price is ₤5. I hope to have a photo for you next time.

Swoosh!

Things here with me and work have slowed down to an Indian’s pace. It’s now been 3 weeks since leaving CARD and working for Dalit peoples. We are Project SEED, basically free lance workers joining with different organisations giving our expertise (well, this is more Terry than me!) to make them more efficient and fight government and NGOs to provide support for the marginalised tsunami victims. It’s highly frustrating that more than 3 months on after the tsunami basic needs still haven’t been addressed for ore than 200 villages (that’s more than 75,000 people [exact figures in next update]). The Dalit people who lost their sources of income after tsunami, were exploited marginalised workers anyway, earning around Rs. 50-80 (60p - ₤1) daily to support an average of 3 children. Immediately after tsunami those whose homes and possessions washed away went to live in camps. They left these camps on 2nd Feb and went into varying quality temporary shelters. I haven’t been to many Dalit villages yet as it’s not good for their morale to have 2 white faces show up (well, you’d all say I have a brown face, but compared to the locals I’m still undefined white!), and although we are working for them, they can’t see this, besides it biases them, when they think they have foreigners working for them, they just see big opportunities and things here are very slow, and we can’t offer them what they want anyway.

Anyway – the Dalit issue, because they haven’t suffered the same type of losses as the fishermen it is considered by most that their need is not as great. This of course is totally unfounded. At present we are working with an NGO called Human Rights Forum for Dalit Liberation (HRFDL). They are a grass-roots organisation run by Dalits for Dalits. Their hearts are totally in the right place, but their practices always seem to just miss the mark. They are an advocacy group mainly, trying to rally the government into making positive changes for the Dalits. The have 175 smaller NGOs working under them, these too are grass roots organisations. Terry and I have been working with them for 2 weeks and have been once or twice a week. It’s pretty frustrating working with them, but it’s vital that we do because of their established network, rapport with the villages and knowledge of the political situation.

Organisation is such a major problem with grass roots organisations, and HRFDL is no different. They have collected over 12,000 surveys, which are hand written, the information from these haven’t been put onto any kind of computer system. They waste so much time going back to conduct surveys for information they probably have, or should have collected at the same time as collecting other info. They don’t even have an index of questions and only sometimes you’ll be ale to find summaries for the masses of data sets already collected. So this is one problem, stacks of useless data. Another is attention to detail and unawareness of the importance of good data. For example at present …oh, and this brings up another point… sorry, for example we are putting a proposal into the local government to finance a food / cash for work programme for 25 villages in critical need. These villages have only received 25kg of rice since leaving the camps on Feb 2nd. It is estimated that a family (average 5 people) needs 70kg of rice per month ( I know this sounds a lot, but as I’ve sid before, about 95% of their diet is rice, it’s not ideal, but when doing heavily labour work in 40C heat, you need something to keep you going. It’s actually a worry of mine how unvaried and nutrient deficient their diet is, but this will be addressed later). Food / cash for work is a programme where the villagers are paid Rs 54 per day and given food for themselves and their family. The work undertaken is usually manual and will help the community. The projects we are running involve road repair and draining and of salinated ponds and digging of new ones. Terry and I wrote the letter to the government, explaining the critical need of these people, and HRFDL were supposed to supply the supplementary data required to substantiate our request. We went through it today (mon 18th)and there were so many mistakes made. The format used for the table of information was also not the most intelligent. But big mistakes were made, such as adding an extra 0 onto populations, but not consistently, so a village with 70 families for example, might then have in the box next to it a population size of 3500, rather than 350. Totals were even added and massive mistakes like this weren’t picked up. If you go to the government with a report with mistakes in the data, there was even one value missing in the village total population, and although not filled filed in, a total had been calculated anyway. If you go with flaws like that in your data your integrity will be questioned and the likelihood of you getting the project money even more unlikely. Corruption here is such a problem that the more transparent we can be, the more likely we’ll get money. (Just as a note for interest, a friend working on another Dalit food / cash for work programme has told me they have secured Rs 720,000 (₤9000) from the local government, but before the money reaches them, about half would have made it’s way into the pockets of government officials!).

Another point of our frustration relates to communication. We went to see HRFDL last week, and they told us “it’s all well and good you guys wanting to do micro-enterprise with the villages, but these guys have a critical need now. They have no food, no clothing, or supplies. Kids are dropping out of school and illness becoming common. There’s a more urgent need that needs to be addressed. We should do food / cash for work.” We absolutely agreed with them, our micro-enterprises won’t be getting started until June /July, if the people are starving now, let’s look at the short term in how to feed them. SO we start our letter to the local government, hearing from the guy who’s got Rs. 20K for programmes, the government’s interested in supporting programmes, but you have do do the ground work and come up with ideas.. Today when we go HRFDL (their offices are about an hour away (32km)), after having e-mailed a copy of proposal letter to them at the weekend, they tell us that our letter is ok but that they have actually already requested the programme for the 25 villages in March and again in April. So our nice introductory, what we thought first letter was a total waste of time, (as I believe their previous 2 requests have been) as it really should be a follow up, - hey, guys, this is serious, give us the money now, kinda letter. Communication here is such a problem, and there is only one guy in the organisation who speaks good, almost fluent English. Problem is, is t’s one thing to understand the words being said, it’s another to understand their value and the real meaning. Things are misinterpreted so easily and things we say with importance aren’t taken in that way.

Also, Indians are very positive optimistic people, actually, for now let me just say Tamilnadians as I don’t know enough to make that statement. We need to get hold of maps which mark on them location of all the Dalit villages, other villages and towns. For a week now, it’s always, ‘yes, we’ll be able to get it tomorrow…tomorrow…tomorrow”. We need to know the truth for things, as they only serve to slow us down in the long run. Oh, as if enough survey’s haven’t already being conducted, the survey of all surveys is hopefully going out at the weekend. And it seems we came in just the right tie too. I saw a copy of the survey they wanted. It had quite a lot of information on it, but seeing as every family in every village was going to be asked it was important we got details of all questions we wanted answered. So I re-wrote it! It was very disorganised with questions relating to the same topic being in a completely random order, also the lay out was all messed up. We have a team of 50 volunteers going to conduct the survey, there will be over 15,000 recipients. HRFDL think it’s ok to keep this information in paper form, in un marked files in a random order. We however want to create a data base so we can make sense and use the data. We will design the database, actually, someone in our team who lives in Bangalore will design it, and we’ll then get other volunteers to do the data entry. We still haven’t been able to convince the top guy at HRFDL the value of doing this. He’s happy with his stacks of unmarked paper. I thin the director of the organisation actually doesn’t do them a lot of favours. He’s totally stuck in a box and can’t get out. He just likes to shout demands at the government, which doesn’t seem to do much at all.

There’s a slight ibalance with us working with HRFDL, we want to have an equal partnership, but I think that for whatever cultural reason they can’t really put their side of the argument or discussion across to us. Because they see us as foreigners coming in, and working at a much faster pace, more comprehensively and with a lot wider organise vision, they feel subordinate. That’s not how we want it to be at all. We need their expertise, we just need to know the right way to get it out of them. Oh anyway, that’s our problem. We’ll keep struggling through, it’s just so frustrating to be working in a place that has it’s systems set up all wrong, as the result is people starving and eventually dieing. The government here is so messed up, and there are many bogus NGOs, no one trusts anyone, and no one wants to work together. And as always the poorest of the poor are the ones living a life of absolute struggle.



So other stuff with me. We’ve bought a fridge!! Luxury or what! It’s second hand and the guy who sold it to us said we can sell it back to him (for about 1/5of the cost I’m sure!). We paid Rs 2800 (₤35) it seems pretty good. It’s so nice being able to have cold drinks and keep veggies for longer than a day. At first I didn’t want to get it, as I thought it was an expense I and my budget could do without, Terry even said he’d pay for it all himself (his main motivation was for beer and milk for coffee!) but I don’t feel I can let him do that (even though I know they guy is pretty rich, don’t know how rich, but he must have been making a very comfortable salary before leaving as he is just more than one year into what could be a 4 year travel and work (unpaid) trip). Mum had told me on the phone she thinks I’m subjected myself onto the poverty line. We are so far from it. The poverty line here is defined as earning less than Rs 7000 (₤87.50) per year. The value of our apartment is Rs 2000 per month, not that we pay it, and we have a gas cooker, fridge, poor quality floor mattress (with uneven stuffing) and motorbike. We live quite comfortably when compared to India as a whole! We don’t have toilet paper thou – and I won’t say what we use instead as I think the majority of you would be pretty grossed out, but for those of you that know or could guess - it’s really not that bad, you get used to it!

Oh, and we both could have died the other week!! Actually, anyone who travels on Indian roads increases their daily chances of death at least 10 fold! But this time, it wasn’t anything to do with the death defying other road users. Let me point out first to those of you that don’t know Indian workmanship is of such poor quality. In every sector people are trying to cut corners, so products aren’t well produced. Our mode of transport here is a refurbished 500cc Enfield, 15 year old police bike Terry picked up in Hyderabad for Rs 7000 (₤8.50) when it was scrap. He then spent Rs 33,000 (₤412.50) doing it up, and took 5 weeks learning how to do it (it would have taken much shorter, but as mentioned before nothing happens terribly quick in India). He had to get one with a big motor to go climb up mountains in the Himalayas once he’s done with the project. Anyway, travel speeds here are slow, about 50km per hour on an open road, you have to because of road conditions, obstacles, heat and vehicle capacity. Most motorbikes here are 100cc and Honda Heros are most common. Anyway, as we were riding to Pondicherry the back end of the bike starts to swing violently out of control. Thank God Terry’s an experienced rider or else for sure we would have gone down (oh, I should also point out, but don’t really want to as I know it’s stupid, but it’s so nice, and probably not available anyway, wearing a helmet isn’t the done thing. Terry does have one but doesn’t want to wear it if I don’t have one in case anything happens). The tube of our back tyre detached itself as the metal bit where the air goes into ripped, leaving a hole about the size of a flat bit of a screw for the air to come out of. And unlike a puncture, the air came out quick, destabilising us. We were lucky nothing was coming the other way or trying to overtake us, as when this happens there ain’t a lot of room! But all was fine, we didn’t crash, we just had a flat in the middle of rural lands. There’s no AA or RAC here, we would have had to push the heavy bike about 4km to the next town, in the mid day 40C sun! But hurray, Terry had a spare tube. It took about an hour for us to be on our way again, by which time we’d build up a fair size an audience, one of which came in pretty handy.

We finally made it to Pondicherry, an ex-French colony about 70km north, but it takes 2 hours to get there! The reason we’d gone was to meet with guys from Auroville, a big spiritual / eco / natural living commune regarding a map they had, and we wanted. It was Tamilnadu new year, so no one was working. So we went shopping instead. We went to a bakery and got good coffee and pastries. We also bought 3 loaves of whole wheat bread to take home. We splashed out in the supermarket too (most towns don’t have a supermarket, just small shops selling a few things) buying olive oil, white wine vinegar, olives, more Tropicana, butter, Terry suggested we make Pondi a weekly trip. I’d definitely be up for that!! I totally forget I’m in India when I sit up on the roof at night, looking out at silhouetted palm trees eating whole wheat read and butter and a dressed salad sipping my Tropicana orange with bottled water ice cubes! That is until a truck or bus goes by with his manic horn, reality soon sets back in!

Oh I should go to bed and stop wittering on. I’m in the house writing on the laptop, it’s 2am and we intend to leave at 8:15am tomorrow to go back to do more work with HRFDL. I can write at home and transfer this via USB to a pc with internet, pretty convenient.
I’m sorry for those you you who check my blog only to find it not updated. I can always e-mail you as I do to a handful of people anyway. If anyone’s interested to see Terry or know more about him, he actually has a trip website it’s http://www.bergermanadventures.com I haven’t yet had the chance to see it yet thou, but it should be interesting as he’s quite a story teller and rode his bicycle from Sydney to Bangkok!

Love you all. If what I write doesn’t make sense or misses out anything you think should be shared please let me know.

Until next time…
Ruth xxx

I forgot about these from Bryson...
1) Depending on the age, your pillow may be home to 40,000 microscopic mites. A clean pillowcase doesn’t make much of a difference, low temperature washing just makes clean mites! If your pillow is 6 years old it is estimated that 1/10 of it’s weight will be made up of sloughed skin, living mites, dead mites and mite dung!

2) Your personal creation - going back about 8 generations to the time of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln 250 people would have had to meet and copulate at the exact right time for you to have been born. Go back to the time of Shakespeare and you have no fewer than 16,384 ancestors. At 20 generations ago the number of people procreating on your behalf has risen to 1,048,576. Five generations before that and no fewer than 33,554,432 men and women do you owe your existence to. By thirty generations ago, your total number of forebears is over one billion (1,073,741,824 to be precise). Going even further back to the time of the Romans the number of people on whose co-operative efforts your eventual existence depends has risen to approximately one million trillion !!! We may not like to admit it, but actually we are all most like children of incest!

3) You have as much as 20 million km of DNA bundled up inside you, enough to stretch to the moon and back several times!

4) How fast a man’s beard grows is partly a function of how much he thinks about sex, because thinking about sex produces a testosterone surge.

Always read between the lines!

I don’t really know where to begin about what has happened over the past week, days roll all too easily into the next and sense of time goes completely out the window!

Things are good thou, actually things are very good. I went to town I’d not been to before today to conduct a meeting with HRFDL (Human Rights Forum for Dalit Liberation). These guys are a big organisation who work under another organisation called NCDHR (National Commission for Dalit Human Rights http://www.dalits.org). I’ve wanted to meet or to talk to these guys since starting on the project with Terry as I saw on the internet some statistics which to me indicated that they already have been out in the field collecting information about the tsunami affected Dalit population. They’re basically an advocacy group who raise awareness and try and get the position of Dalit’s elevated.

In a place called Nagapattinam, the most affected region of Tamilnadu, an NGO coordination centre has been established. About 500 NGOs are registered with it. Terry and I visited there to see if any other organisations are working with the Dalit communities, and we found the answer to be no. It was pretty surprising that there were all these top NGO people, who knew about the situation of Dalits (that the fishermen have prevented aid from reaching them, and that government has illegal exclusion policies etc) but still there had been nothing done. We were asked to work as part of the coordination centre, coordinating all Dalit NGO’s efforts. It’s more work for us, but of course we agreed. It’s so important to be working together for a problem of this magnitude. After spending a few days there this week, we got to learn of member’s agenda’s . We’ve decided to keep our distance slightly and only tell them things about us which are necessary. Because the waters were over fished pre tsunami, and the fishermen have now been given massive trawlers and replacement boats, it is the intention of some to give fishermen the chance for an alternative livelihood. This is going to damage our project as the fishermen take away the market we had hoped to tap into. We need to keep an eye out on these pro-fishing guys.


So today Terry stayed at home today writing a report we got to get finished. We didn’t get back from the NGOCC until pretty late last night, and driving on the roads takes quite a lot of mental effort. Driving at night isn’t so fun for the driver, and last night was even worse as we got heavily rained on. In India there is a road hierarchy, where anything on 2 wheels is ranked pretty low. Driving at night, you’re blinded as all vehicles, buses, lorries cars etc drive with their main beams on. Also in many places the road is only paved enough for one large vehicle, so when you’re approached by one hurtling towards you the other way, you have to get off the road quick or face being hit. Problem is, that the distance from the tarmac to the compressed mud/sand on the other side can be pretty steep, and there’s been no nice rounding of edges in the way of a curb, the road simply jaggedly stops, and then you’re off on to undulating banks. I have decided to scrap my idea of getting a motorbike here, as it is my intention to make it home alive!

Anyway, I travelled by bus today to Maylidudarathi to meet with seniors from NCDHR and HRFDL to pitch our idea of giving micro-enterprise opportunities to Tamilnadu’s coastal Dalit population. These Dalit’s we are concerned about are in a pretty bad way as they worked either as labourers for the fisher folk or agriculture labourers. Well, at present the fishermen still aren’t fishing, although many now do have replacement boats, but for the agriculturalists things will take a lot longer to resume to normal. The land has been contaminated by salt water, killing all crops and rendering the land uncultivatable. The government, as always here is being slow, useless and totally inefficient. They are supporting plans to use a chemical called gypsum to reclaim the land. However, gypsum is expensive and can take up to 3 years for full reclamation and harvestable crops to be grown. We have been talking to agriculture NGOs who have an organic method which is 1/10 of the cost and will take 6 months for reclamation. Anyway, we’ll see what happens with that, but either way these Dalit’s are out of a job, and will be for the unforeseeable future. It really doesn’t help matters that the fishermen have been preventing aid and food parcels from reaching them. That’s just tight!
We got shouted at by an angry drunk Dalit last week. It’s pure frustration on both sides, they have nothing to do and very little money. At least in favour of the Dalit’s fewer lost their homes, so they still have a bit, but it’s running out fast or already has. But the men are a bit of a problem they are increasingly turning to incredibly cheap, strong locally produced liquor. It’s interesting to get the opinions of a drunk man thou, they’re painfully honest.

Oh, another thing to quickly mention. Don’t buy prawns from India. Prawn farming is illegal here, unless you can afford to bribe the authorities that is. Masses of land have been, and are being transformed into prawn farms. They take up a lot of land, and the chemicals used seep out killing the surrounding land. It’s good money for the owner, but is very low labour intensive. Dalit’s, as they can’t afford transport have to work local. It’s a bit hard when all nearby land is being bulldozed up to create giant prawn farms. If you’re one of the 5 employees, you’re alright, but the land and surroundings are killed, and in an area that could employ 40 agriculturalists, just 5 will get their Rs.50 (62p) daily wage.

I’ve probably explained before, but Terry and I, now to be known as Project SSED, India. SEED standing for Sustainable Enterprise and Educational Development ( we thought we’d have more credibility with a name a business card!), will be working with Dalit communities all along the affected Tamilnadu coast line, giving food for work programmes, and facilitating any feasible micro-enterprise ideas the Dalits have. But first there are fundamental issues which need to be addressed. It’s most likely that it’ll be a couple of months before the Micro-enterprises can launch, and by that time if things continue the way they are it is likely we will have no one to work as the populations succumb to starvation and heat exhaustion. HRFDL are working with 175 NGOs who have already identified all hamlets and have details on each one. We will be working with and through them to implement our projects. It was pretty cool that I got to meet the seniors on my own and plug our pitch to them. They were pretty impressed with our plan and were totally supportive. We have a meeting set up for Monday to go through all their data and then on Tuesday we’ll be meeting with about 200 villagers! Representatives from some villages self-help groups (SHGs) to get full info on what their immediate / critical needs are. We have the potential to be working in 200 villages in 14 districts. I don’t know how many people that is, but it’s quite a few tens of thousands.

I hate asking for money, but a money transference to me will be so much quicker than going through the proper channels of requesting funds. We hope to start work next work giving relief provisions, 3 months after tsunami!!! If you’re in a position to help out, please e-mail me for details. Thanks. I have ₤500 from my parent’s church and ₤275 already from friends, which is fantastic, but of course, more is always needed.

So aside from work things, not much has really happened as there’s no time. We’re working 7 days a week and for pretty much all day hours. Terry and I are still getting on well despite spending ALL our time together! We’ve only had a few hours off in the past 2 weeks, and that was due to power failure. I thought I wouldn’t be seeing rain until the start of the rainy season in October. Well for about 4 days it belted down, flooding places and filling in ditches to create new ponds. The temperature has dropped significantly, to below 30C (just) but I have been warned as soon as the skies are blue again, we should expect temperatures to hit 40C! I am still often reminded of my inappropriate clothing, in that I wear vest tops, but I will not cover up. Miss all this tanning opportunity?, I think not! It’s way too hot anyway. I don’t know how they women here fail to melt. Under a sari is a hidden wind proof underskirt and Muslim women wear saris’ then wrap something similar to a king-size bed sheet round them. There’s so much material!

Alright. Time to stop rambling, Sorry I’ve written so much without having much content. I just wanted to say that things are pretty good, for myself and Project SEED and hopefully in the not too distant future the Dalits!

Hope things are good with you all too. Apologies again for the lack of personal e-mails, but I’m only coming to an internet place weekly and don’t have so much time to spend here. But don’t stop e-mailing me thou. I’ll try and do a big catch up as soon as I can!

Missing you all
Love Ruth xxx