Our Life in Hossaty IR6

Now this is a story all about how our life got twisted upside down. If you would like to take a minute, grab a Parle G we’ll give you an update of our life in Hossaty.

We are now in the construction phase and spend most of our days digging foundations, mixing cement and bricklaying. We are putting the finishing touches to 2 of our 3 rain water harvesting units and we’ll soon attach guttering and a filter system so that the tanks can start to collect rain water for the villagers. Instruction murals will then be painted onto them so that the villagers are able to maintain the units themselves making them sustainable. We have also completed foundation digging and started building the 12 eco sanitation toilets that we aim to build.

Between work we’ve had lots to celebrate. One of our team members, Mohan, had a birthday and we celebrated Diwali in the village. We also travelled to Kannagre and celebrated a festival with IR4 and 5. It was very busy with lots of stalls selling Indian food and souvenirs. We observed lots of cultural traditions such as people getting their head shaved, and others trying to hit wind chimes at the top of huge statue by throwing bananas at it, as it moved through the crowd. Those that hit the chimes were said to receive a blessing.

We also shared our British traditions by telling ghost stories by candlelight on Halloween, having a bonfire and telling the story of Guy Fawkes on the 5^th November.

We are currently planning towards a health camp on the 9^th December having completed one around a month ago. This camp was held in Korssaty the next village along from us and was attended by 288 people from the surrounding villages. These people had access to free health care, checkups and medication which they don’t usually have access to. We also run health awareness training for the people who attended on the importance of hand washing, prevention of diarrhoea and good hygiene practices such as purification of water. No doubt the people attending engaged with the training and we hope it will make a change.

We recently travelled to FB for the mid phase review. We enjoyed performing a skit we had prepared about our time in Hossaty so far and taking part in a fashion show as well as relaxing and sharing stories with the other groups. We looked around a silk mill and did some shopping, eating lots of pizzas in the busy city of Mysore.

Our groups also had a relaxing day at the Bannari dam where we had a day off construction, to relax, paddling in the pool there and eat some tasty fried fish.

 We are now looking forward to attack the second half. 

 Thank to everyone for our letter as and blog posts, we really like getting them and we look forward to seeing you all at Christmas.

From

Everyone in IR6