A glimpse of life in the village of Khajuripadar

I met some lovely people in Khajuripadar.  Most of them don't even speak Oriya but their own tribal dialect although most will understand Oriya.  My pitiful attempts at speaking Oriya elicited much laughter and teasing but we managed to communicate somehow and I was made to feel very welcome.  The project coordinators can all speak pretty good English and many of their team members manage a few English words but one afternoon I was left to fend for myself for the afternoon while the teams went out to do some field work.  I sat down in the shade with my Oriya book to try to do some homework but was soon made to get some exercise with a cricket bat.  We discovered that I seem to be able to hit a ball (usually onto a thatched roof or into a neighbours yard) but am without the capacity to catch a ball.  Never mind, at least I managed to hit the ball.

This is the house where I slept each night.  The room was sparse but clean.  The floors are all bare, hard packed soil but very solid and kept well brushed.  I did have a bed but the lack of mattress made me appreciate my own bed all the more when I got back to Koraput.  I felt very guilty when I found that this room is usually used by some of the team members who had vacated it to give me a private room.  I did share it with a bat that kept flapping around one night.

 

 

These pictures make the place look idyllic.  It is very beautiful and peaceful, a remarkably relaxing place to stay.  However, we must not forget what it must be like living in such a remote place when you are sick, have no money to travel or pay for medicines, your children can't get to school, the only water supply is a single pump shared by all, there is one toilet in the village and then there's the monsoon which will turn those hard, compacted soil surfaces into mud.

This lady, who had the loveliest, sweetest smile I've seen for a long time spent hours sweeping the village clean every day.  She put me to shame, I will try never to moan about doing the housework again.