A few days away

I've just returned from 4 days spent out in the field in the village of Khajuripadar, near Ramagiri, west of Koraput and close to the border with he state of Chattisgarh.  This is a tribal area and many of the villages have no electricity or sanitation.  Khajuripadar is one of these villages.  I went there to spend time with some of the project coordinators and their teams to try to get a better picture of their projects and how they are monitored and evaluated.  I've come away with some tricky project management problems to think about and try to find some ideas for improvement.  Working in a remote area without electricity or even a filling station to refuel motorbikes is a problem that I can't resolve and must cause real difficulties working out there but hopefully I'll be able to find some ideas for some of the more manageable problems. 

SPREAD runs 3 projects in the area: community based rehabilitation (CBR) for people with disability (PWD), campaigning for land, food and work and finally, tribal self-rule.  I went with the CBR team to visit a school where they planned to carry out a sensitisation program with the students.  This was intended to raise the awareness of the children of what it means to be disabled, to get them thinking about what they, as able-bodied people, could do to help the PWDs and what can be achieved by PWDs with the support of their communities.  I was asked to introduce myself, I think the children wondered why a strange, western woman had landed in their classroom and were very curious about me.  I told them a little about how most children with disabilities are educated in mainstream schools in the UK.  I also used some personal anecdotes, using my son who works as a communications assistant with students with hearing impairment using sign language, my aunt who achieved much from her life and career despite her cerebral palsy and my husband, who continued post-grad education following a serious head injury and now works as a lecturer (thanks for giving me the inspiration guys!).  I was a little taken aback at the end of the session when 3 children ran up to me, crouched down and touched my feet, something I was not expecting to experience and I'm not sure that I reacted in the way that they might have expected.  I just hope I didn't cause them any offence by not knowing how to respond.

Ananda and his team talked with the students, getting them thinking and talking about the different sorts of disablities that they might encounter then got them participating in a game intended to help them recognise some of the problems.  The pictures tell the story. 

 

What's it like to be hard of hearing?

Or how do you manage with limited use of your hands and arms?

Having a leg tied up can make moving around a bit tricky

A bit of guidance helps

You can learn to do things by yourself but it helps to have people around keeping an eye out for you

It helps to be young and fit to move around like this

I returned home to Koraput tired, filthy and with much to think about and lots to write about that will need to go into more blogs later.  My first task on my return was to have a shower and wash my hair.  Hours sat on the back of a motorbike in the dry, dusty environment had left it's mark on m!

This is what the water looked like after I had washed my hair.