life, by me: Goodbye Kokkal

Goodbye Kokkal

Tuesday, September 03, 2013 | Posted by Hazel

We basically hit the ground running this phase completing all the following in the last 3 weeks: a health camp, a vet camp, the Mense House construction, building a wall around the Kindergarten, constructing some washing stones and lots of health awareness. It has been really busy, and feels as though it went really quickly as well.

So, the Mense House - we finished it! It was hard work and took longer than we expected but the whole team worked really hard to get it completed on time ready for the women in the village to use.

Building the walls

The local ladies watching us work (a regular occurrence)

Outside complete!

Plastering the outside

Ta da!

In the last couple of weeks the weather really picked up, with torrential rain and wind an almost distant memory. We all spent a lot more time with the villagers and I now feel as though I know some of them really well.

We were given a small budget to use within the village and reach another need. We decided to use this money to buy the materials to build a wall around the kindergarten to stop children from running in to the cars. This was again another big project but we managed to get it done and the volunteers painted educational murals along the side of it, it looked really good and the staff at the kindergarten were all really pleased with it!

Our accidental blue wall which we grew to love

Leaving our mark in the village on the new wall

Some educational painting on the wall

The song we taught the children to encourage them to brush their teeth everyday with toothpaste

Painting health awareness about washing your hands on the children's toilet

We spent the rest of the money on constructing some washing stones for the people in the village to wash their clothes on, digging a kitchen garden by the kindergarten, painting murals on the children's toilet and training some of the ladies in the village to knit scarves so they could earn some additional income for the upkeep of the new Mense House.

We were in the village in Independence Day, awkwardly celebrating the day India became Independent from the British, although it wasn't awkward at all and they held an event to celebrate just because we were in the village, complete with dancing and flag themed outfits.

Independence Day celebrations

In our last week all the local people invited us round for dinner to say thanks for the work we had done within their village during our stay. One meal in particular stands out - I ate so much I felt physically ill afterwards, just around the time they dressed me in their traditional clothing and got me to practice their traditional Kota dance in the street.

The amazing feast we had in our last week - consisting of rice, egg, fish, potatoes, carrots, fruit and other stuff

All tucking in

Trying on the Kota dress

Learning some new moves

Rocking the outfit

On our last night in the village, the local people all threw us an amazing surprise party. They had been planning a function for a few weeks for us but then the day before sadly someone died in the village, and due to their culture, they are not allowed to have any celebrations for 3 days. The ladies in the village were so sad about not being able to have the leaving party for us they spoke to the village leader who agreed they could do something small scale in the evening. This 'small scale' event included dressing us all in traditional Kota dress, rigging up some speakers and lights and doing some dancing for us, followed by speeches and then making us dance for them. It was great fun and an amazing end to our time in the village.

Charlie 5 looking the cleanest we did all project in our Kota clothing

We only left the village 3 days ago, but already it all seems a bit surreal. The volunteers arrived back in the UK on Sunday evening and we have a few more days here before we fly home at the weekend.