Namaste friends and family!
I hope this email finds you all doing well and enjoying the beautiful colors of the Fall. I just returned from field visit number 2, where I was stationed in the town of Mananthavady in the Western Ghats of Kerala. Kerala is definitely the most beautiful place that I’ve seen yet: it surely lives up to its nickname, ‘God’s country.’ We stayed at a convent that housed children whose parents were alcoholics or abusive. The nuns and teachers there took care of the children, and the young ones attended school at the convent. To reach, we drove for about half an hour on roads winding through and along the hills, the steep hills covered with tea plants planted by the British around 1850. A few of the days we saw women on the hills with canvas bags that spanned their whole backsides plucking the mature leaves and putting them in the bag, ever so carefully zig-zagging their ways between the luscious green leaves trying to find a proper place to step. The hills were separated only by streams and rice paddies, and where there were neither of these, there were coconut trees and banana plants and bamboo trees (which I learned are actually grass…the tallest grass in the world).
This module is about Globalization and the Ethics of Development. The organization that we worked with in Kerala, the Wayanad Social Services Society, “aims at socio-economic empowerment of the target group consisting of tribals, women and small and marginal farmers through participatory development interventions, focusing on sustainable and integral development.” Some of WSSS’s initiatives include: a Community Based People’s Organization, Human Resource Development, Promotion of micro-credit and finance, Natural Resource Managament, Organic Farming, Tribal Development, Watershed Development, and Medicinal Plants Conservation. For our week with them, they wanted us to decide what we would like to do and where we would like to visit, which made the week much more interesting for us.
The first day we arrived, Sunday October 11, (after a 3 hour train ride from Bangalore to Mysore and a 4 hour drive through a forest, where we saw many monkeys and few elephants), we met with Father Kuriakose, who was in charge of the school at the convent, and he showed us our lodging. As we reached our cabin up the hill from the school, Father quickly lashed out and struck the ground. Only when I walked past the step did I realize that he had just killed a snake, which I found out later in the week was a poisonous breed, though this snake was still young. Yikes! And, though there were no streams or bodies of water immediately present, Father warned us to keep an eye out for leeches, which were abundant because of the amount of rainfall they received during the two monsoon seasons.
On Monday, we met with all the leaders of the respective movements at WSSS and planned our schedule for the week. In the afternoon, we took a tour of the Technical Institute right next to the office, which included ‘training in garment making, embroidery works and bouquet making’, handicrafts offered and taught as a livelihood for young women. We had some free time in the afternoon, so we went to a saree shop and I bought a saree and two lunghis. The lunghis are actually men’s wear…but in the states, no one will know the difference! They’re basically like a wrap skirt. (Sorry to those of you who are from here or who have visited here for the cultural taboo!) WSSS seems to be a really awesome progressive organization. They start movements among the people and monitor the movements for a short period of time, then they exit the scene and leave the movement up to the people who are involved. It’s an effective way to mobilize people, to give them some education, and then to let them make of it what they will. The people at WSSS were amazing, each so passionate and knowledgeable about her or his own particular movement.
On Tuesday we visited the watershed project. WSSS is taking measures to conserve water. When structures are built, they are built in such a way that the runoff will go into a large PVC pipe which leads to a 10000 litre water tank. The tank is filled during the two monsoon seasons so that when there is drought, the people still have clean water to drink and bathe with and wash with. Funny story about Tuesday: we were visiting a few different places that were overseen by this one man, and he seemed like he was doing some wonderful things for the people in terms of promoting sustainable agriculture, water conservation, wage equality, and education for local children. He invited us into his home (as any good Indian would). He was showing us his little prayer room and all the sudden he pulls out this old tiger skin and we’re all like, “WHAT???! Where did you get that?” So our interpreter asked him the question, and he replied that he didn’t want to tell us. The interpreter pried a little bit more, and all we heard was, “yada yada yada BLACK MARKET yada yada…” The black market!
On Tuesday afternoon, we visited a tribal school about an hour’s drive away (realize that an hour’s drive probably means something like 20 km, a distance that would take maybe 10 to 15 minutes to cover in the US). Their method of teaching was so different than anything I’ve seen: a young child is paired with an older boy and an older girl, and together they decide what they will do in a day. It could be telling folk stories or it could be doing mathematics or it could be doing pottery or fishing. All of the children helped in food preparation and cleanup and general upkeep of the campus. (I use the term campus very loosely here.) Few of the children go on to Pre-University or University, but the school teaches them about their cultural history (dance, singing, storytelling, traditional ways of life). During our visit, they sang and danced for us and demonstrated their form of martial arts, which was very poetic and impressive. Some of the students live in huts on the campus, others come from their tribes in the forest. These people had such a strong sense of community and belonging, each had their respective part in maintaining the community.
The plan for Wednesday was to visit a few different organic farms. So, I’m envisioning something like a North Dakota farm with a few acres of flat land and some cows and some sheep and some goats, with a sheep-dog to keep them all in line. But our trip to the organic farms turned out to be more of a hike across rice paddies and through the jungle. We drove for quite a while through muddy roads and finally came to a clearing in the forest, where we we exited the Sumo and were instructed to just follow our guide. Through the forest we go, and after a bit, we come to an open area covered by rice paddy. So we walked along the ridges between the paddies, probably about 8 inches wide,crossed a stream by way of a bridge made of 4 large bamboo planks, and walked up stairs cut out out of the clay to this tribal man’s organic farm. He served us coconut toddy and talked about his transition from conventional farming to organic farming. It’s interesting that the cost of organic farming is about the same as conventional farming in India because, especially in the super-rural areas, all the work is and has always been done manually. In America, conventional farming is much more feasible because of the sheer number of acres planted and the convenience of using machines for planting, cultivating, harvesting, etc. And the price is about the same to buy organic food and ‘normal’ food in India.
Thursday included a visit with Biju, a man working with herbal medicinal plants. Basically, the organization is growing plants to give to families so they have their own basic medicines, instead of having to depend on expensive imported Western medicines. Because of patenting and intellectual property rights, many people are forced to buy Western medicines instead of being able to prepare simple ayurvedic concoctions. The same is happening for medicinal plants that is for agricultural plants: seed and medicine patents prevent farmers from keeping seed banks or replanting seeds year to year because it is illegal. So what was once a way of life for these people has become a part of corporate industry.
In the afternoon, we met with a group of women who have a nursery of medicinal plants. The grassroots women’s group built up a savings fund with the money that they earned from selling the medicinal plants to families (for about 50 rupees or $1 a plant). The fund in turn functions as a loan bank: any member can apply for a loan through the mutual savings fund with a low rate of interest. Without micro-credit enterprises such as this, women usually can’t get loans (whether the loan be to buy food during a dry year or to build a tea stall to earn an income) because land ownership is concentrated in the hands of men and women have no collateral. This micro-credit enterprise gives the women a way to become economically self-sufficient, and the group functions also as a self-help group where women can exchange ideas and stories and for once be away from their husbands.
Thursday evening we brought sweets for the children at the convent. We sang “If You’re Happy and You Know It” and a few other children’s songs with actions that they could learn, stopping just short of the Hokey Pokey. The children and staff loved the ‘performance’ and sweets so much that they decided to do a cultural performance for us the next evening. The most mpressive performance was by a 12 year old boy named Anesh–when he danced, his gestures, movements, and facial expressions were so expressive and told stories about Wayanad and also of John the Baptist.
One of the things that I am struggling with right now is accepting that my thoughtless actions in America have global impact. The types of materials that I wear, the companies that I support, the foods that I eat, the agricultural subsidies that help support my family–all affect people here in direct and adverse ways. I’m sure many of you have heard of the Coca-Cola incident in Kerala: the factory used all the available water to process soda. So, in exchange for a commodity that certainly is not a necessity and a commodity that has rather negative effects on one’s body, the drinking water was depleted. The people had Coca-Cola for 10 rupees, but there was no water to drink. And this is just one example.
Congratulations if you made it this far. 🙂 We will be at Visthar this week and on Friday evening we leave for our mid-semester break, during which I will be traveling to the southern end of Kerala to bask in the beautiful rays at the beach and relax for a few days, providing I get a good handle on my seminar paper this week. Then we come back for 5 days and then leave again for 2 1/2 weeks to the North for our 3rd module.
Take care– Love and peace, Linds~