Day 9 – Saturday 18th Nov

Submitted by Julie Dent on November 22, 2006 - 05:18.

We woke up to rain. We also experienced the delights of rural India. I shared my shower with a family of rice. Michelle got an electric shock from the taps in her bathroom. Caroline and Claire had rats in their bags. Welcome to the Jungle Retreat!

We travelled to Stan’s house in the hills for a period of reflection and learning. The magnificent view from his house was invisible due to the cloud and mist. We sat in his glass-sided office to pull together our thoughts and reflections on this stage of the journey. We discussed the projects and answered some questions: what were our impressions of the projects? What were the similarities and differences? What were the outstanding questions?

We then had lunch and encountered leeches on the floor, in our shoes, on our hands and in the bus. Ciara and Laura, dressed for mortal combat, against this deadly enemy.

We then visited two tribal villages. We arrived at the village and the heavens opened. We had three umbrellas between eight of us. The tribal leader took pity and asked us to take shelter. We crouched on small wooden stools under the awning by his house. We were joined by a number of villagers. They told us that the government had provided the houses but they now needed repair and they couldn’t repair them because they didn’t have the materials or skills. Tribal leader told us that they had just received televisions a month ago. We asked: what had changed as a result of the televisions. And he said that they were Rs23 a month worse off because they had to pay the rental on the line. Also, he’d noticed that usually, the whole village gathered in the teashop at the end of the day. Now, the families were staying in their own huts to watch the television.

In an interval in the rain, we walked around the village. We encountered a family hundling together under an awning. They appeared to be somewhat bemused by a group of people standing in the rain getting wet. We asked the children what they liked to watch on the television and they liked the news and the Discovery Animal channel.  The little boy wanted to be a policeman when he grew up. We also met the mother of a three-month old baby who had delivered the baby at home. And the health animator had done the baby checks and was weighing the baby on a weekly basis.

The water by this time was pouring down the hillside and we had to walk up flowing streams to get to the tea shop where we had black tea with the men playing Carrom.]

We then returned saddened with all our bags damp to the Jungle Retreat. We were joined for dinner by our hosts: Stan, Rama, Ramadas, Subash, Tarsh, Shubra and Sushil. The highlight of the evening was signing songs from every country including Matthew’s rendition of the Flintstones, Michelle’s version of the sex pistols and Ciara’s version of “There’s no limit”. We also had beautiful rendition of an Indian classical song from Rama and a choral version of Bohemian Rhapsody, complete with percussion.

The main impacts of the day were the privilege of being in a tribal village, consolidating our learning from our joint reflections, and the difficulties of torrential rain.

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