Tuesday 6 July 2010

Day 1

On Day 1 the Palace on Wheels came to where we were staying at 8am to drive us to Paul's. Despite the fact that we could easily have walked there within 5 minutes, Paul was adamant that we make all journeys on the fully airconditioned hirebus! For breakfast we feasted on (literally feasted on - south indians have no concept of light-eating) a sweet rice dish followed by a savoury rice dish with dahl. Washed down afterwards by milky tea/coffee. During this breakfast we discussed our aspirations for the programme. The first week would be spent engaging with the local people and various regional NGOs on field studies, while the second week we would spend with our target focus groups, depending on our individual areas of interest (mine being women's empowerment).


The morning session comprised of an interactive session with the local women at the Ford Trust educational/cultural centre (a small hut round the back of Paul's house). Thanks to ongoing support and sponsorship by the Kamla Foundation in the UK (who provided sewing machines) in partnership with the Ford Trust, the women had been trained to use the sewing machines in order to manufacture small jute bags and various cotton/silk garments. The women were very enthusiastic about taking this microenterprise project further, in order to encourage some income from selling their manufactured items on the market. It was refreshing to see and hear this from the point of view of someone who has forunately been able to pursue any career in the world, due to a comfortable life and free education. For these women, this was their first taste of skilled work (separate from agriculture) that might one day put them in a position to afford a proper education for their own children, and thus to relieve much of the poverty and hardships that they presently face. It was quite cool also to see that the brand of the sewing machines that the women were using was called 'Usha' - having lived always in the UK it is not often that I see my own name in print!!


One thing that the women, and seemingly all the other focus groups that we met with afterwards, were particularly interested in enquiring about was whether any of us within the volunteer group were married yet! Our ages range from 18-25, most of us being university students or recent graduates. We had quite a few chuckles explaining why none of us were married yet (anathema to their culture), and I daren't even say out loud to them that I had considered never marrying at all!! Maria (25) is staying in Tamil Nadu and working with the Ford Trust for 3 months, and so we joked afterwards about how the village people would probably try to marry her off without her knowledge! Lata and I, being of north indian origin, have received various proposals of marriage/looks of interest in the past week, which we've had to sort of awkwardly decline. Only one of the women present at the meeting, Karparam, is still unmarried. She is beautiful, and we've been fortunate enough to have her accompany us on our daily ventures, and to cater for us alongside Mrs Paul. (Footnote - from today, Wednesday - Lata, Maria and I suspect that there is a little romance blossoming between Karparam and the minibus driver. Definite Victorian courtship going on there.)


After lunch (again at Paul's) the group went on a local school visit to meet some of the young children (aged from around 6 to 13). Literally as soon as we stepped out of the Palace on Wheels a hoard of excitable (excitable isn't even the word, they were like moths to a flame) children came running up to us and greeted us with fervent cries of "Vanakam!" It may have had something to do with the fact that we quite clearly looked like Westerners, or that there were two white people ('Whities' as David politically incorrectly likes to call them) and a Japanese person in the group! What's more hilarious, the children were convinced that Akiyoshi (from Japan) was Jackie Chan!! Their enthrallment was inexplicable. (Incidentally, every school visit since then has played out in the same sort of way, with the kids demaning autographs and pictures from Aki!) Eventually we made our way into an empty classroom where we were presented with the opportunity to speak with the Principal and a few of the students from various year groups. In the question-answer session that followed we discovered that the majority of the children had dreams to work in either engineering or computer sciences (industries in heavy demand), although very sadly most of them would probably be too poor to be able to afford the college or university tuition fees in order to pursue their dream careers. It was heartbreaking considering that the children themselves were so bright, especially in Mathematics. I managed to take some pictures of the kids on my lousy digicam as we were leaving, which wasn't too difficult as it turned out that they were all natural born posers as well as Maths geniuses.

Paul and David then took us to the nearby town of Karaikudi so that we could exchange money/book any train tickets for further travelling/boycott street vendors/literally curse and run away from hungry street vendors. Lata and I have plans to travel on to Kerala after our two weeks with the Ford Trust so we managed to book ourselves onto a 7 hour journey from Madurai (Tamil Nadu) to Varkhala (a beach resort in Kerala). Will be nice to wind back on the beach for a day after a pretty intense two weeks, although that said, I feel so comfortable here now in Pillayarpati that I sort of which I could extend my stay to a few more months. Have definite plans to come back here in future, hopefully after learning a bit more Tamil!

Dinner at Paul's. Bed. Then we hear a scream from Maria and Janak's room. More giant, winged cockroaches I imagine, and then I drifted off to sleep.

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