India Romeo Group Blogs

Doctor Tim and I arrived back at field base yesterday, after a great few days on loop, visiting the groups working with MYRADA, a local NGO, to see how everyone is getting on. Set in the beautiful mountains of Tamil Nadu, all the villages went out of their way to make us feel very welcome, making welcome banners, presenting us with flowers and feeding us delicious food. In return we bought them news from home, chocolate and eggs. Each team we visited has prepared a blog for family and friends back home.  Some of the groups gave us video footage to pass on, whilst others were too shy but promise to do so in the next phase.

The groups working with MYKAPS and CTRD will be giving us their blogs later in the week.

Enjoy!  

Debs

India Romeo 3 – Hosur

After leaving field base we travelled through the mountains to a beautiful tribal village called Hosur, nestled in the Tamil forests. There are 60 families most of whom are farmers or wage labourers. There are lots of children, whom have taught us endless songs, dances and games and are thoroughly enjoying laughing at our attempts at speaking Tamil. The villagers of Hosur have adopted us and given us all new Indian names and informed us that the first rain in four months is as a result of us turning up! We have been given a guided tour of all the surrounding villages and were given more flowers than we could carry.

Along with integrating with the local traditions we have tried our best to show our Indian volunteers some British culture. We made pancakes for Pancake Tuesday but had to tell the Indian volunteers that they were sweet chapatti just to get them to taste them! We had a party for Alicia’s 23rd birthday and managed to concoct a banoffee pie out of our rations. Although we are yet to start our projects we have been busy with a community clear up, picking up some of the litter and we have leveled out some of the ground in front of the school to make it more accessible. The locals have been extremely happy with the initiative that we have shown. We have started work with the local women’s group, which they call a self-help group, who despite being illiterate themselves, have managed to use a micro loan system to ensure their children get a good education. Today we are having a huge welcome party and the village leader has given people the day off work and school. We have lots of music, games and dancing planned. Over and out.

Village school where the team sleep.

Meeting with the village leaders and explaining the team’s upcoming plans.

Dancing with the village children at the community welcome party.

India Romeo 4 – Boothalapuram

Hello from India Romeo 4!

So, we’re almost 12 days into our ICS program and what a busy time it’s been! Once we had arrived at the base camp we quickly started making friends and settling into our new surroundings, as well as beginning to learn to love porridge and curry! After having a few days of training we were split into groups and finally got to find who we will be spending the next 9 weeks with and where we will be spending our time.   For us it is a fairly small village in the state of Tamil Nadu called Boothalapuram. Next, collecting our supplies and loading up the buses for the five hour journey ahead. Having taken a day to settle into our school hall we began preparations for a welcome ceremony with all the villagers, organising songs and decorations, including paper hats nicely decorated by Kehinde and Sarah L for all the children, who have been enthralled by Nicola’s kindred spirit and rounds of the hokey cokey. Once the gathering was in full swing, our team leader Sarah M delighted us and the locals by dressing in her Sari and some of our in-country volunteers entertained us all with some Indian songs to dance to. As is tradition, we ended the gathering with a round of chai tea, some of which Steph accidently poured on the village leader! Luckily he had a great sense of humour about it and we weren’t run out of town. No sooner had we arrived, we were whisked off to training at CIDOR, the local training centre for MYRADA, to learn about what we would be doing at our posts, we received some essential information relating to self help groups and were lucky enough to meet very successful local group that have been active for 25 years! We have even had a chance to rustle up some pancakes and share them with our in-country volunteers, they went down a treat, apart from Adam’s who mistook salt for sugar, not quite the delicious experience he was expecting! On our return we put our knowledge to good use and got on with meeting our village’s women’s self help group and trying to get more of a feel for how Boothalapuram functions and what we can do to try and enrich their lives. Now we’re all looking forward to some more training and practical work so we can really start to ‘be the change we want to see in the world.’                

The Indian volunteers delivering a cultural presentation to the UK team members.

The school where the team are staying.

India Romeo 5 – DP Doddy

Namaskara from DP Doddy!

We got off to a bit of a bumpy start (quite literally) as the only road into the village was blocked by many large piles of rocks. The only solution to this problem was to tool up and move the rocks ourselves. Thankfully, our very brightly coloured retro bus and heroic driver managed to get us to the village in one piece.

Our first job was to construct a long-drop toilet, which is actually rather luxurious with bamboo flooring and toilet roll holder! Once we’d set up camp, we spent a long time playing with the local children, singing “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and “The Hokey Kokey” and generally being the village entertainment. We visited a beautiful temple near the village, spotting a lot of elephant poo on the way!

We’ve completed our first session of training with MYRADA and are looking forward to getting started on helping set up new Self Help Groups in the village. We’re all getting on really well as a group, the UK volunteers trying their best to learn some Kannada and the Indian volunteers even learning a bit of French from Camille.

We’re all really excited about cracking on with the project, so watch this space for further news. J   

Learning Kannada, the local language.

IR5 

Getting to know the local children.

India Romeo 10 - Guliyada

Vanakkam from Guliyada! It has been less than a week and already IR10 10 have gone native! On Monday we reached the end of the mountain road to the sight of 36 little blue houses set against the stunning hilly views of Tamil Nadu. First job completed: our long drop is now in regular use. Our energies are now focused on integrating with the villagers and finishing the construction of the septic tank, both going swimmingly. Talking of which, a lake visit is on the cards for tomorrow, hopefully without any elephant encounters.

We’re all feeling very well settled in, having bonded as a team through moments both challenging and amusing. We’ve also been well accepted by the villagers. Despite general hilarity at our clothes and height, the village women succeeded in fitting all of the girls into saris. It seemed impossible that the laughter could increase, but increase it did as they then attempted to teach us to dance. This was somewhat less successful, but we returned to digging for the septic tank rejuvenated.

After a long days work we relaxed with some farmers beating their drums and playing pipes. Raleigh brought a guitar today; we’re hoping to hold a music festival tomorrow coinciding with the end of school. Cricket is a regular past-time, and a sports day is in the pipe line for next week. Lots of plans, but lots of enthusiasm in the group, loving India and all sending lots of love Bea, Jayne, Rob (timelord), Eakantha moorthy, Kimberley, Luke (who would like to wish his Gran a very happy birthday!), David, Rajamani (king of India), Olly, Sidheswaran, Boma, Hannah, Manojkumar.

 The mason and our completed septic tank.

Guliyada.

India Romeo 11 – Attapaddy

Hello from India Romeo 11!

We have arrived at Attapaddy and have visited our second village Odamandai, everyone here is very welcoming and we have settled in.

We are playing lots of cricket, and the children want our attention all the time. We had an impromptu welcome party on 14^th, lots of dancing and laughing. We have spent some time at Myrada completing training about Self Help Groups and Farmers Groups, which in the coming weeks we will implement in our communities. We are looking forward to carrying out our PRA survey next week after more training at Myrada.

India has been amazing so far! All the sights are spectacular from Mysore Palace to the mountain views from our village, and Elephant visits most nights. We are enjoying the village food, it is VERY spicy. Tonight we are cooking our first ‘English meal’ of the trip, Pasta and sauce; the UK volunteers are very excited about this.

All are well and thinking of home,

India Romeo 11 x x

   India Romeo 10 and 11 meeting with a local self help group.