India Yankee and India Charlie Group Posts

India Yankee 1 - Chilakahalli

Hello from India Yankee 1! We’ve been in our village, Chilakahalli for 8 days now and we are having a fantastic time. We have been welcomed into the village with open arms, offered endless supplies of watermelon from all over the village and even dressed in Sari’s by the Indian women (the girls that is!) for a local wedding. We have adapted and integrated well and now we can’t walk down the street without being offered cups of Chai tea and Ragi balls.

We organised a very successful sports day with the school children, introducing them to some classic British games. There was a brilliant turnout of both children and adult spectators. This combined with our regular community based organisation meetings mean we are definitely gaining a deeper understanding of the Indian culture.

We are still getting used to some typical Indian sights; whole families riding on a single motorbike, villagers walking their cows instead of dogs and curries for breakfast! However, as the temperature rises, so does our enthusiasm! Until next time....Namaskara!

 The school hall where the team sleep.

Household survey's. 

(Hello Video from

IY1)

India Yankee 2 - Hosavidahundi

Namaskara from the India Yankee 2 team in Hosavidahundi! We’ve been having a wonderful time here, getting ready for our health camps and sanitation construction coming up in the next few weeks. It feels like we’ve been here far longer than 2 weeks and we’ve been welcomed with open arms by our fantastic community. The kids here want to be involved in everything we do and they love to play games with us all.

As we arrived, we were greeted with roses and singing and we all immediately fell in love with our new home. The women here have been trying to teach us how to carry the water on our heads and shoulders, which so far has just left us very wet! As for the food, we definitely can’t complain! Uncle and Auntie cook our lunch, dinner and kindly invite us into their home. As delicious as our meals of chapatti’s and samba with rice are, it’s fair to say we’re all over indulged and fear that instead of ‘Delhi Belly’ we’re all at risk of ‘Chapatti Belly’! This has left the girls worried about fitting into our new Sari’s!

Everybody in the team is very excited about getting to work on our sanitation project and health camps. Open defecation is the norm here so we will be holding awareness events and educational camps, which aim to improve the health and well being of a large number of local people, so we’re extremely grateful to have been given this amazing opportunity to make a huge difference. We’ve had some training in Handpost with our sworn enemies, India Yankee 1, which has prepared us for our timeline history, transit map and our social mapping of Hosavidahundi. There are 3 Self Help Groups here, who have given us lots of information and insight into how the village works so that after IY2 have left, things can carry on improving.

On our first day we built a long drop, which was far too wide...our thighs have been taking a battering with all the squatting but this is one way to burn the masses of curry we’re eating! In between our project and construction we’re hoping to go to Indian wedding and take part in the Holi festival!

Personal Messages:

Hello to everybody back home- miss and love you all, Jen x

Hello to my family, friends and girlfriend back home. Missing everybody and hope you are all well. Ta ta! Lots of love Lee

 Meeting with the villagers to complete social map.

 Hosavidahundi

(Hello Video from IY2)

India Yankee 7

Namaskara from India Yankee 7. We’re all settled into our new home in the community hall of GM Halli and have already devoured all our supplies of Nutella and chocolate. Our home is looking beautiful, with mats on the floor to chill on and our mosquito nets hanging from the ceiling. We’ve started our project work with the SHG’s, and, after the initial hiccup of being stood up by the current SHG in the village when we tried to throw them a party (we sat in the dark drinking chai by ourselves, whoop!), we’ve managed to gather some useful information. They have agreed to help us out with future projects and we already have interest in a new self group we plan on setting up. We’ve finished most of our training at CIDOR and are currently cracking on with the PRA’s. Yesterday we took part in a transit walk so that we could understand the layout of the village. Right now Lucy and Rob are visiting us (yay!) and everyone’s getting involved in a good old game of cricket. The weather is baking hot and balmy and the curries are going down a treat (Gm hally have not let us down on the food front). To stop ourselves from turning into human poppadoms we’ve started a morning running club, hoping to burn some carbs and spot some elephants. Tomorrow the village is putting on a drama performance, which we’re hoping to catch some of (although possibly not the whole thing, as its eight hours long and surrounding the theme of death).  

Home sweet home! 

India Yankee 8

Almost 2 weeks into the programme and our arrival seems like a distant memory. We were met by Raleigh team leaders and taken to field base in Jayapura. It was a long journey but a quick stop on route for a masala dosa breakfast, the first of many to come, revived us a little. We were warmly welcomed at field base and introduced to the ICS programme, our dorms and a delicious curry for lunch. In between training sessions we ventured into Jayapura but the constant cheering and calling at us takes a bit of getting used to. It is all a bit overwhelming but a pleasure to be here and witness a different way of life. A few days in and group selections were made, it was a bit nerve racking knowing this decision would decide how our next 10 weeks would pan out but it was exciting non-the-less. Upon finding out our groups we were set to task right away with de briefing on our respective villages and the almighty task of counting, organising and packing our bus to the brim with all our kit. As a treat we went on a trip to Mysore Palace which was beautifully lit in the warm night air. The next morning we set off to our village of Halsur and were greeted by the village leaders and the marching band of school children. We are grateful of the warm reception and being greeted when we walk round the village with happy smiling faces. We look forward to starting our project and the hard work ahead of us.

India Yankee 9

Upon arrival we were greeted by numerous school children with fists full of beautiful flowers as a welcome present. The school was decorated with chalk, welcome talks were held and we all felt very emotional. From the word go, IY9 members got stuck in with the tasks at hand and the villagers were very accommodating. We are living in their community hall/school grounds which is interesting as we also have to use the schools mini toilets... which of course, we have already blocked up as they are not built for adults. Equally, there have been a few bashed heads. We have already held several successful meetings with both villagers and self help groups, (SHG’s). The point of these is to discuss current affairs with the women and to extract important information with regards to the history of the village and how it functions. We have more meetings scheduled and are all feeling positive about what is to come. We devoted an evening this week to selecting our committees and now these have been put in place and are all very excited to start our projects.

Despite lack of sleep, mosquito bites and the hot weather conditions we are cracking on because we are IY9’ers and THERE AINT NO GROUP FINER!

India Charlie 12

1 week into camp life and things are really coming together. So far we have set up camp, built a shower and long drop toilet. The local villagers have been very welcoming and even greeted our team with blessings of long flowers. The team is really starting to bond through group tasks and training with CTRD. We have made 2 trips to the CTRD office and we have received training in participatory rural appraisals and self help groups. Already we are getting out and putting this training into use, completing village surveys and conducting village meetings. During one such meeting the villagers made a resource map out of colourful Indian chalk. We are all in place with our committees and ready to put our training into action as we head into phase 2. Who knew hard work could be so much fun!

 All the best to our loved ones at home from Indian Charlie 12.

India Charlie 6

Day 17 of IC6’s stay in Koovamula! Clambering out of our mosquito nets maze every morning, we are greeted with the view from our valley. With tea covered mountains, stretching high into the sky. Along with the continuing game of ‘spot the elephants’ when they are in search of banana trees. Oh, and our yummy porridge.

Koovamula, our home, is a village in Tamil Nadu, inhabited chiefly by the karambon tribe with 67 households. Most of the adults cultivate tea, coffee or pepper, whilst only a few of the children attend school. Elephant visits, dirty water, and poverty are major problems in village and partly stem from the geographical and cultural isolation of the tribal community. Health problems that trouble the village include scabies, malnutrition and other infectious diseases such as diarrhoea. Collaboration and organisation within the village has been weak, with a women’s self help group failing and a farmers group only having been started in 2011.

So far we have conducted research and gained an in-depth understanding of the villagers needs. We have surveyed the houses, learnt about each individual member and his or her problems in order to better find a way we can tackle them. We have involved the whole community in a participatory rural appraisal in which we learned about the village and its history from the villager themselves, in order to see their perspective. Additionally we are setting up community based organisations in order to promote health, education and communication. Plus, as of yesterday we have successfully planned and conducted an awareness raising campaign involving dozen of village children, parents and teachers and head-teachers from the local school. There were lots of smiling faces!

We are all looking forward to the next phase, so we can start exhausting ourselves with toilet construction and health camps but until next time, this is IC6 over and out!