Another project meeting

I had the privelage of going out to a tribal village with my NGO to attend a project meeting out in the field recently.  We left Koraput early on Friday morning and travelled around 3 hours by car to get to a tiny village called Kaliejodi. , somewhere near the slightly larger village of Ramagiri I was interested to see the way that my NGO is running the project, working on CBR (community based rehabilitation) for people with disability but my official role during this visit was photographer, to try to capture some decent images of people and project work for future use.  No pressure there then!  I took hundreds of photos and now have the task of sifting through them to look for the more memorable ones.  This task is not aided by the daily power cuts we are getting here now to conserve electricity but at least my laptop survives on the battery for a while.  I'll be writing more posts on the people later.
I was made very welcome by the staff on the project who all managed to find a way of communicating despite the language barrier.  Many of them don't speak Oriya anyway but a local tribal dialect, just to add to my confusion.

The village is very remote, much of the journey was spent weaving out way along a dirt track through the forest, stopping for about 10 minutes at one point while road builders created new track in front of us.  Many of these people are employed under the NREGA scheme - national rural employment gaurantee scheme, an act designed to ensure that rural people are guaranteed 100 days work a year. 

Amongst the attendees were people like Malati.  Malati is a tribal woman who is a highly respected leader, unafraid to speak out her mind and fight for her rights and those of her community.  She went with my boss to a Human Rights Commission conference recently in Rajasthan, selected as a representative of the tribal people for her articulacy and ability to stand up in front of anyone to express her feelings.

The meeting was held outside under a tree for some shade.  Most of the attendees had to walk or cycle many kilometres to get there, a journey made harder by the disabilities that many of them suffer.  Not all the participants were not on the invitation list.

I really liked the way that the meeting was managed.  The project coordinators and community activators worked with the participants to try to get them to express more about their lives - the satisfactions and the dissatisfactions - in other words, what they liked and found good and what they found hard to deal with and need some help to improve.  The harder part was then getting them to start prioritising what needed to be addressed first but good progress was made.

A good meal was served at lunch and again in the evening, all part of making sure everyone was looked after and made to feel welcome - and to try to encourage them to attend more meetings in the future.

I was so stuffed after my huge dinner of rice, dali and vegetable curry that I had to go for a walk to try to shake it down a bit.  I'm a keen camper back in the UK and like to stay in places that are remote and isolated.  This was something else.  The village has no electricity or sanitation (don't ask, I'm not putting that sort of detail into my blog). 

The lack of electricity is not great for the community especially as Orissa has a surplus of electicity generated by the huge dams on the nearby rivers - that displaced many of the tribals.  However, for me it was wonderful.  My village at home has no street lights so I am lucky enough to have a good night sky view.  This was something else.   I could see the bands of the Milky Way, I had a brilliant view of the Leonid Meteorites and to cap it all, there were fireflies darting around the place.  Magic.  It was so lovely that I jumped at the chance to sleep outside under the stars (until the 4am cock crowing). 

I was whisked off on the back of a motorbike at 7 the next morning to go and visit a couple of families nearby. First stop was Malati's house, all looking very spick and span and colourful to have a cup of really good cha.

Then off we went to try to locate another family and at around 8 we came to a school with a bunch of kids waiting outside.  I was told they'd arrived at 6 for lessons and had been waiting ever since for their teacher to arrive.  I wonder what schoolkids in the UK would make of that?

While I was chatting to the kids (well - showing them the photos and trying to sign to them) a man working nearby gestured to me to take his photo.   He was  delighted with the result, leaping up and down with great whoops of laughter

On the way back to the field office we went past lakes filled with pink water lilies - lotus flowers.  It looked magical.