life, by me

Sunday, August 11, 2013 | Posted by Hazel

So we're back at field base again for a couple of days before we head out to our village again for the third and final phase of the project.

 

My summary of phase 2 (the last 3 weeks) would be wet, windy, busy and tiring...but also very productive.  Our construction has started, and so far it has been hard work, but pretty rewarding when we look at what we have done.  The masons only arrived this week, so we have done the majority of the work ourselves, with a bit of help from the villagers, when it's not raining of course - the locals are definitely fair weather labourers!

Getting ready to pick up the poo from outside the Mense House before we start demolishing it

Saving all the existing materials to use again on the new Mense House

Smashing down the walls and moving all the rubble for future use

 

Levelling the land ready for the new build

Digging the foundations

The masons arrived and we have now started to lay stones and cement the foundations of the new house!

All in all, the 12 girls and 2 boys on our team have done a great job, battling against the elements to get to this stage.  We now have 2 masons who have come to stay in the village for the duration of the build and are leading us each day to get the house built.  Luckily the rain has also started to ease off a bit which is making it easier, although the heat is now a new challenge!

 

During the last couple of weeks we have also been to visit the Tribal Research Centre in Ooty, a nearby town.  It was really good to learn some more about the Kota tribe and we were also given some books about the tribe and saw photos of some of our friends in the village which was a little surreal. It was a weird feeling to be reading about the Kota tribe from people who had studied them and to know that we are currently living and making friends with them.  It was also strange to think that I now see them as people, where as reading about them in the museum they seem like distant people who are studied.  Either way it made me feel privileged to have this current opportunity to be working with them!

 

Last week we held an eye camp for the local villages.  Despite the horrendous weather on the day we had a really good turn out of 100 people, 7 of whom had cataract operations, so we are all pleased with the success of the day.

Cataract patients waiting for their operations

We also held a sports day for the local children where over 50 children came and played a variety of games which they all seemed to enjoy!

This phase we have also organised home stays.  All the volunteers have spent a night in a local's home and learnt some more about their culture.  This week I spent the night at the Postmans home with his family.  We had dinner with them, learnt about some of their festivals and then in the morning they taught me how to make mint chutney, which we had with idly (rice powder flat things) for breakfast! It was really good and another example of how welcoming and friendly the people in Kokkal are.

The Postman and his family outside his home

Amrutha (one of the volunteers) and I enjoying our meal at our home stay

We hit our 'storming' stage this phase within the group - living 24/7 started to take it's toll on some of the volunteers, but nothing that we haven't now overcome. You have to be multi-skilled to manage all these strong willed volunteers!

We've all managed to stay relatively healthy although there has been a few cases of D and a few less of V, plus a concussion and a fractured finger.  All in all, everyone is still alive and well.  My sympathetic side and patience has definitely been improving/tested.

 

Things I have learnt...although not everyone in India uses a Mense House, having a celebration when a girl first comes on her period is quite a common thing.  When trying to work out why children within the village are malnourished and so small I found out that new born babies are given rich tea biscuits and milk as their only food for the first year of their life - I'm no nutritionist, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't count as a healthy diet.  I'm learning lots about the culture here and am really interested in the different role women have.  My last 'did you know' for you...it is illegal to find out the sex of your baby in India when you are pregnant, because it is common practice for girl first borns to be aborted due to having to pay a dowry when they get married and families being unable to afford it.

Tomorrow we head back to the village for our final 3 weeks! I really hope that we get the Mense House finished before we leave, I am sure we will now we have the masons help and hopefully some village help if the weather stays dry for long enough! We have health and vet camps to run and a few other projects within the village. still to complete, as well as our regular clubs and meetings.  It's going to be busy and I am sure it is also going to go fast with so much to do!

Some more pictures from the last couple of weeks...

Monkeys at a Temple we visited - they stole one of the volunteers' drink and crisps!

Our day trip out to a Temple and the Palace in Mysore

Teaching the kids to wash their hands with soap!

A 'Tippy Tap' we built for the kindergarten so the children can wash their hands after they have been to the toilet and before they eat their lunch

We started a toothbrush club to encourage the local children to brush their teeth

One of the villagers giving me a rendition of a traditional Kota song on a traditional instrument he had made

Local tea farmers hard at work

 

 

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Saturday, July 20, 2013 | Posted by Hazel

Let me catch up with the last couple of weeks.  Firstly, the volunteers arrived.  My group, India Charlie 5, was formed.  They are all great people, and enthusiastic about our project!  We have 8 x UK volunteers and 4 x Indian - consisting of 10 girls and 2 boys; the lucky things.  We spent 4 days at field base training them on all the things we had learnt over the previous couple of weeks.  The team leaders got split in to 2 teams, as there are too many volunteers to run all the projects at once.   I'm in the first team, so it was a bit sad to say goodbye to the second team until the day before we fly in September when we will meet again...

 

Anyway, India Charlie 5...here we are, all packed and ready to head to our village, a mere 5 hour road trip across some windy roads and up some steep tracks to reach Kokkal.

 

 

Upon reaching our village midday the following day, we were met with a sea of people dressed in white.  As we approached them they started banging their drums and leading us up in to the village.  They then sat us down on plastic chairs and performed a welcome ceremony for us.  It was really quite amazing and hard to explain what it was like.

 

 

One of our first tasks in the village was to build ourselves a long drop.  This took a little longer than we had anticipated but luckily everyone managed to cross the legs for the duration, so no accidents were had - other than me accidentally kneeling in some actual human diarrhea (a villagers, not one of the volunteers).  Oh yeah, that was a good moment.  This is long drop #1 - we are now on our #3...the more improved and larger model.

In Kokkal, the women start to wear their traditional dress when they reach the age of 20.  They also start to do their hair in a traditional style at the same time.  In  the first week we spent a lot of time visiting the locals and getting to know them, drinking chai with them and performing for them at their will.  My dancing skills (or lack of pride) have come in handy for such situations.  One of the ladies demonstrated the hair style for me too...

Our village is in a beautiful location.  In between the rain and wind we have managed to take some time to explore the area.  A few of the locals took us on a trek one morning up to a viewpoint.  Along the way we saw wild monkeys and met a herd of buffalo who almost trampled us.

The first phase of the project so far has been mainly based around getting to know the village and the villagers, finding out about the history of Kokkal and conducting some Participatory Rural Appraisals (PRA) to find out what the greatest needs in the village are and what we can do whilst we are here to help.  We have found out lots of information and already started teaching English for 10 - 14 year olds in the local school and planned some sports clubs and a toothbrush club to start when we return back to the village in a couple of days.  The building part of the project will also begin soon.  This week we had an architect visit to come and draw up plans for the new building and we should get a copy of the completed plan this week so we can start ordering materials and getting ready for the demolition of the existing building.

Generally all has been well in Charlie 5, but we have had a few medical incidents, one of which involved me spending a night in a local hospital with a volunteer.  Drinking water is not my biggest skill, but here I am trying my best to be a good example as we have had at least 4 volunteers ill and puking from dehydration - we can't all be blessed with such hardy bodies as mine.

One of the other exciting events from our village has been a wedding.  Last weekend a girl in our village got married to a man from one of the other Kota tribes in our village and our team was invited.  It was a really hot day and was interesting to see the rituals and traditions they follow in their wedding ceremonies.  The first 'tradition' we noticed was that the house that the bride was from hooked up a massive speaker 24 hours before the wedding ceremony and blasted out Indian music at top volume across the village the whole day/night before the event.

The Bride and Groom

Some of the local kids dancing to the music at the wedding, on the roof

We are now back at field base for a couple of days before we head back to the village on Monday.  Yesterday we had the day off in Mysore and the next couple of days there is some training for the volunteers.

During the second phase, as well as starting the construction of the Mense House, we will also be setting up some more activities for the children in the village, holding a general health camp, an eye camp and a vet camp and hopefully organising some home stays for the volunteers.  It's all very busy, but a 'good' busy.  The weather is generally raining and windy, interspersed with the odd hot day sent to dehydrate the volunteers.

Here are a few pictures from the last 3 weeks...

This is where we are staying, the girls upstairs and the kitchen and boys room is downstairs.  We shower in the blue tarpaulin area and wash our clothes and hair in the stream behind the building.

 

Chillis drying in the sun

Remya enjoying the wedding meal

It's tradition to draw black spots on small children's faces.  The local people believe that is bad luck for people to say their children are beautiful, so they draw spots on them so they are not.

The stream where we wash our hair

 

Local women doing their washing in the stream

Learning how to make chappattis with the local women

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Saturday, June 22, 2013 | Posted by Hazel

So, I'm in India!  I've been here nearly 2 weeks now and it already feels like I have been here for ages.  The majority of my time so far has been spent learning all about how the project will work, some team building and more recently, visiting and learning about the village I will be living and working in for the remainder of the project. 

Firstly however, the weather is not necessarily as I had anticipated.  It is the beginning of the monsoon season over here which seemed to have escaped me when I was getting ready for my trip.  Basically it rains at some point during each day.  It's still warm but just wet - and the rain can get pretty heavy.  Luckily I packed my raincoat so I'm prepped for the weather.  The village that we are going to be working in, Kokkal, is in the Nilgiri mountains, and it's also pretty cold.  So I think the tan I was hoping for maybe a distant dream...

I have been paired with Remya, my Indian team leader partner.  We will both be taking 12 volunteers (a mix of UK and Indian 18-24 year olds) to live in Kokkal, a primitive tribal village in the South of India.  I am really excited about the village.  We went to visit it this week to find out more about it and do some risk assessments at the location.

Remya and myself visiting Kokkal, our village

The people in the village are part of the Kota tribe.  There are 7 villages in the area where the Kota tribe people live.  They live by strict rituals and traditions that their ancestors have followed for many years.  The Kota people believe they were created from the sweat of Shiva, one of the Hindu Gods.  They believe Shiva's sweat created 7 men and 7 women, who then set up the 7 villages which they now live in. 

One of the big rituals they follow is that all women must leave the family home during the time of menstruation.  They believe that menstruation is evil and dirty so separate the women during their monthly period.  They have a special 'Mense' house on the edge of the village where they live for 2 - 3 days at the beginning of their period each month. 

The Mense House

The Mense house they currently use is not really fit for purpose.  There isn't enough room to house all the women comfortably, and there are no toilet facilities.  They do everything they need to do in the one room in the building and openly defecate (go to the toilet outside) in the area surrounding the house.  The main bulk of our project when we are living in the village will be to demolish the existing Mense house and construct a new one for the women to use.  The women have no problem with the traditions and rituals which they follow, and it's not our role to change the way they live, but just to help them to live more comfortably.

Next week the volunteers arrive.  Up until now it has just been the 12 UK leaders and 12 Indian leaders that have been living at the field base near Mysore.  6 of the groups (including mine) will start this week and the other 6 groups will start the following week as there isn't enough room for us all at field base once all the volunteers arrive (12 volunteers per team).

Today is a day off, the first full day we have had off since we have been here - it has been pretty busy, but I am now feeling much more prepared for the project, although we still have some more training this weekend before the volunteers arrive.

Here are some photos of the last couple of weeks...

You don't go far down a road without having to give way to a herd of goats, cows or sheep

A colourful house in a local village

Myself at Mysore Palace (an Indian family also has this picture somewhere to show their family a token white person they met)

Spices, lentils and chillis at Mysore market

My poor attempt at chai pouring in Mysore

Ooty

And some photos from Kokkal, the village we will be working in...

Having chai at one of the villagers houses when we arrived

Local women weighing in their tea so they can get payment for it

Cavin and his mum showing us our accommodation

When one of the villagers said he would bring us a heater for our room, I hadn't anticipated he would build a fire in our bedroom...I loved it

Kokkal, the view from our accommodation

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