First day in the field

Our host in the village, Meagan, and Bedroc employee Priya. Look at all of the food we were given!




I am not going to sugar-coat it...my hotel is not very good! Believe me, I am not a stickler for cleanliness. The problem is that my room has no windows and is damp...so there are little flying bug things. After coming home from the office, I tried to take a walk to explore what is around my hotel. This was a bad idea...my hotel is basically on the side of a highway! I walfed for about ten minutes, but I feared for my life every second of the ten minutes. If you have ever been on an Indian rural highway, you know that there are trucks, cars, bicycles, goats, cows, kids, motor cycles, woman carrying giant loads on their heads....this is not what bothers me. What bothers me is that the cars speed along, weaving in and out of the various obstacles in the road. No one pays attentions to lanes, so cars sometimes play "chicken", and the loser has to stop or swerve to the side. This chaos, plus the fact that there is basically no shoulder on the road, makes it a firghtening experience to walk on! So, I feel slightly trapped in my windowless, damp hotel room. Also, I am using a large dupitta (scarf thing) as a blanket. When I go to Chennai I am going to buy some sheets or a light blanket, and this will help. Also, as I mentioned before, the food is bad.

Today I went out into a village of dalits (untouchables) and backward castes (their name, not mine!). It was so much fun, and people were so friendly, I remembered why I love coming here! Everyone was so hospitable. We were offered a drink or food by everyone we spoke with. They seemed eager to talk about what they have been doing since the tsunami, and their big smiles were so welcoming. We also visited a women's cooperative, which was set up by an Indian NGO to help the women have an alternative income other than agricultural labor. They made baskets (I bought one!), potato chips, cashew juice (very sweet but good), and detergent soap. It is a completely sustainable project, as the NGO is long gone but the work still continues. You really coudln't turn around without running into the work of another NGO. This is great...the money that people donated to the tsunami relief effort contributed to the long term development of this area, not just with rebuilding after the tsunami. The village had a library, numerous pre-schools and after school programs.

While I am so happy about all of the wonderful things here in Tamil Nadu, I can't help but compare it to my experiences last summer in Rajasthan. Rajasthan is definitely less developed. The houses that the Brahmins (a high caste) in Rajasthan lived in were significatly worse than the homes of the dalits in Tamil Nadu. So what does this say about the Dalits in Rajasthan? Maybe Rajasthan would be better off if a tsunami hit it (very unlikely in a land-locked desert state!) -- then money and attention would be focused on this area as well.