Life feeling normal

Hello my beautiful friends

Just writing an update to let you know that life is still plodding along at an Indian pace. Things since I last wrote haven’t changed greatly, although I have made a few decisions which may influence how the remainder of my time in India is spent.

Since I last wrote I have been helping out with an NGO called Awakes who are involved in training female members of Nagapattinam’s (the worst hit district in Tamil Nadu) temporary shelters in ways of best hygiene, sanitation and water / waste management. At present the temporary shelters are a bit of a mess as people go for open air defecation (i.e shitting outside, on the ground) and they dump their rubbish either in piles or they scatter it. The concern is that when the monsoon rains come (which are late and still yet to arrive) it is likely that epidemics and the case of disease and illness will rise. The training is to try and give awareness of best practices to these people so that they can spread the news to their family and to other people living in the shelters who were not able to attend training. I was helping them to try and get money to support the new learning and practices so that people can have the necessary cleaning materials and materials to segregate waste and make their shelter toilets useable. Most shelters do have toilets, but about 100 people have to share one, but they are not in use anyway as people have destroyed the doors, there’s no water supply to them, they’re blocked and disgusting. Proper toilet usage wasn’t actually taught when the toilets were constructed (and they weren’t available or even deemed necessary before the tsunami), so it’s kinda understandable that after one or two people have gone, without using any water to wash whatever they have done down, that when the next person opens the door and sees the nasty sight that he/she opts to go on a fresh piece of ground! Also the importance of hygiene was emphasised as they consequence of flies and street dogs touching food isn’t known. Did you know that annually 1.5 million children die each year from the effects of diarrhoea, this can pretty much be stopped if people maintained right hygiene and sanitation and knew about re-hydration solution.

I also helped Awakes decide how best to spend money given to them by save the children after making field visits and talking to villagers. The organisation is going to construct child day centres with facilities for fun, sports and learning, it’ll also be a place where parents can leave children if they want to attend work. I was asked to make an assessment of a school for child labourers they have in another town (not tsunami affected) but so far haven’t had the time. The kids of this school generally have never been to school as their parents are tied to their employer to pay off debts. They work in quarry fields and use their children to support their work so they can pay off their debt faster. This population is seriously messed up with extremely high incidences of child, female, sexual and alcohol abuse. The kids don’t know right from wrong and have ever received any discipline. Educating them is tough and at present the school only has the capacity for 45 kids, but there are still hundreds working along side their parents in the quarry mines. The expected age of this population is just 45, due to hard working conditions and extreme poverty.

For my main organisation (HRFDL) I have organised, in partnership with the local university, to start an aqua culture cultivation livelihood project where villages with backwaters will grow crabs, lobsters and fish in cages to sell at the market. We give training on how to construct the cages from bamboo and also on how to take care of their livestock, how to breed them and market them. I only want to do this project in a few villages, as if they run it in too many the sale price of the produce will be less. Unfortunately the organisation doesn’t have too many ideas and wants to run this on a big scale. It’ll be ok if we can link to overseas markets, but that takes some doing, so we’ll see.

I also am arranging to have a few people from each of our 55 villages attend a 2 day training on health and well being where the people can learn about first aid, pregnancy care, yoga for workers and how to identify early warning signs or more serious illnesses. The villagers are pretty clueless when it comes to this kind of thing and only see doctors when the illness has become too serious, and leave most injuries totally unattended and cared for.

Hopefully these projects will run smoothly, there are more that I want to run, such as rain water harvesting and education programmes, but it seems I may not be here long enough to do them. Unfortunately the capacity of the organisation is such that they can’t handle all the work necessary for brining the villagers up to a level we would consider to be basic in terms of education, occupations health and well being. I am constantly fustrated at the organisation, their lack of vision dedication, work and progress. So for the past couple of months since coming back from the UK I have been contemplating moving to a different organisation. I have also been suffering a bit since travelling in Sri Lanka, doing the travelling thing and meeting cool people, and coming home and seeing friends an family, and have decided that I need a serious revamp to my social life. At present I have very few friends, and although I can deal with it quite well it’s not necessary that I should have to be in this kid of position (not right now anyway). I am still young and before I’m old and boring I should have more of a social life. This isn’t always easy to do when working in development, especially in remote places, but if there is a chance that I can live and work in a place where I have the chance to work as well as have fun, I should take it, right? So I have decided to move to Goa, party capital of India. I searched the internet ad found an organisation called The Peaceful Society. They do village development work in Goa and the 7 southern states. The peaceful society runs on 3 year plans, the last of which finished at the end of last month. So this month they are having a meeting with people from all offices in a place on the west coast called Cochin. So I’m going to go to that to learn more about the organisation, what they do and plan to do for the next 3 years and to meet the staff. Also I will decide from this meeting if there will be a place in the organisation for me, and whether I can add any value. I leave in 3 days. It’s going to take me about 14 hours to travel there, but Cochin’s a nice place anyway so I have decided to take a few extra days there. Travel in India is incredibly cheap. I have to go almost 4 hours on a bus which will cost me less than £1, then I have a 10 hour train which will cost me £2.50!! The trains are the best way to get about here, they’re super comfy and you get a bed and good food. So after a few days in Cochin and a 3 day meeting I’ll travel up the west cost to Goa to check the place out, and also see their office and visit some of their working villages. The 15 hour train from Cochin to Goa will cost me under £4!! I’ll only stay in Goa for a few days, then return home. Unfortunately there are no direct trains coming back to where I presently live, so will take 2 buses, which will mean having to sit for a total of 21 hours!! Not as much fun as the train, and more expensive.

If I decide that I like that organisation they are running a Goa staff training from 11th November for 10 days, so I’ll make sure I’m there for that. I’m in 2 minds about leaving this place and may return back too Tamil Nadu after the training to tie things up here. The staff here are very nice, and I do kinda like being one of the two foreigners in a massive area, it’s definitely given me a much different experience than I ever could have got if I were travelling, or if I had gone straight to Goa to work. For example the other night our neighbour, who lives in a thatch hut with crumbling walls ad 3 generatioins sleeping in one room, came over and henna’d mine and Terry’s hands in a very cool Indian design. I then got dressed up in a sari, and had my Indian female look completed with the compulsory gold chain, bangles, earrings and bindi. The photos will come soon. It was so much fun, Terry and I have been getting into our £2 bottles of rum, so we were learning to do Indian style dance and Tamil songs. The kind of evening our neighbours gave us was one of those priceless nights and experience to be remembered forever.

It’ll be sad to leave the house and Terry. Although we have had our ups and downs, since we have started our withdrawal from HRFDL and both been away from the house and each other for some time things have definitely improved. I’ve never lived and worked with the same one person, ever, let alone in a place where you don’t really have so many other people to communicate with, and not for 7 plus months.

Life here is cushy and comfortable though. I did my accounts today and calculated that I have spent a total of £1138 in the 8 plus months since I arrived. It may not sound like so much, but actually I have been buying whatever I want, and when I work that out to weekly averages it sounds so much (in Indian money, about £33 per week) compared to what I have to show for it.

I presently spend my days watching TV documentaries and movies, reading (really really cheap and good books available from Chennai) and pottering about. Here we have no things like washing machines or dishwashers, so just doing house things take up much more time.

Oh, we went to Chennai for a few days last week and I met one of Terry’s friends who he met doing relief work in January. The guy’s name is Vijay, and he’s really quite something else. He finished high school at 13, and his first degree at 16. He’s since gone on to loads more study and is a Dalit activist and member of the communist party. His father is a Brahmin (highest caste) and his mother is a Dalit (lowest caste). They had a love marriage in the 70s. For one thing love marries are not at all common, especially in the 1970s (instead most have parental arranged marriages), and generally people do not marry outside of their own caste. So his father’s parents denied they had a so and rejected his wife. Vijay told me even when he went to his fathers family house when he was young they would wash the floor after every step he took, his mother was not even allowed to enter the house. So it’s not at all surprising that Vijay has grown up very socially conscious and highly motivated to make changes with systems so ingrained in what is essentially Indian. 4 years ago when he was 19 he wrote an article for a magazine that highlighted the fact that a local politician was seriously corrupt and carrying out acts which seriously violated human rights. He was beaten so badly by the associates of the politician that he was hospitalised for 2 months and lost the sight of his right eye. Still he fights, but writes articles under an alias.

The day that tsunami happened Vijay heard about a village about 7 hours south of Chennai, that due to it’s political affinity with the communist party did not receive any help. So he and 8 friends travelled down with a truck load of supplies to see what they could do to help. There were dead bodies everywhere. Over the next 15 days Vijay and his friends (who reduced in numbers as the days and decomposition of bodies went on) buried about 400 bodies. They had no help from the government or NGOs. Even the local people would not help as touching dead bodies is seen in India to be the ultimate act of disgustingness and degradation. He said on the 15th day he saw a dog eating something, only to later discover it was a baby in a serious state of decomposition. What that guy went through and what he saw none of us can ever imagine. I just wanted to mention him as one of the unsung heroes of tsunami and an inspiration.

So, on a lighter note in case any of you were wondering how I’m doing or coping, epically if you’ve been reading my blogs or e-mails, and am concerned for my sanity and stress levels, I’m fine. Even though work could be much better, personally I am doing just fine. I am happy and still enjoying myself. I may be without love (here anyway) and few friends, and not a great deal to do, but it has made me realise that I am not the type of person who needs so much to do, or so many people around me. Of course I love it when I do, but I can also deal with it when I don’t. I’m certainly not ready to come home yet anyway, and if things work out in Goa then I plan to be away at least for another year, and hopefully longer if I can stretch my money. I may be able to make some money in Goa by exporting stuff, so if any of you know people who run shops, then please I urge you to contact me as although I have not been yet I have seen things from the Goa market and there’s so much cheap decent stuff. Also if I do move to Goa you are all welcome and encouraged to visit. Although Goa may prove to be one of the most expensive places in India I can guarantee it’ll still be well cheap, and the party and beach scene amongst the best in the world.

On that note I bid you adieu and hope that you are all well and fine. Please write to me when you have a minute, even if it’s just a paragraph to tell me how boring you fell your life may be!

Leaving you with love, sunshine, peace and happiness
Ruth xxx


P.s I’m going to be making a short film before I leave this place about India, my local place, my town, colleagues and work, so if you’re interested let me know and I’ll send you a CD.