Posting 2 – Week 3+
This past week has been great. It finally rained. Yay! Which brought the bugs out in force. Boo L Very happy to be back on the farm despite all the bites I keep getting. I still need a mosquito net. I went to war against the big flying ants. I won. Didn’t sleep well though. Bugs still in the room. The red ants won later in the week. Evil little mother fuckers. They really hurt.
We saw a domestic dispute in the village. Kind of weird. Everyone knows everything about you here. Doesn’t seem that anyone has a private life. We’re not sure exactly what was happening, but it had to do with property within a family. There was screaming, banging of the front door, bricks and rocks were thrown at the front of the hut/house. It was quite the scene. Most of those within earshot were outside watching. We were at breakfast when it started. It ended with a woman inside screaming, a woman outside catching a rickshaw, and a man chasing the woman in the rickshaw down the street. We had to go back to work after that.
Had multiple field trips. Went to the Drinking Water Treatment Plant, the Waste Water Treatment Plant, a Dept. Store to buy closes for a wedding, and we had Projects Abroad Staff from the Madurai office come to the Farm to celebrate the completion of two buildings on the farm. We also worked on the farm.
The drinking water plant was interesting, I am glad I don’t live here and drink bottled water while I am here. They basically kill everything good in the water with chemicals to get rid of everything bad but don’t add anything back to the water except chlorine. The chlorine is added to help prevent disease from surviving if there is a leaky pipe between the plant and someone’s home. We were able to see the lab where they test the water multiple times a day to make adjustments to the chemicals added as needed. It wasn’t exactly sterile. All their logs are on paper. Nothing done on the computer. In general not much is computerized here. Most businesses keep paper logs. At least all that I have seen.
The waste water plant was much more impressive. It was similar to the plants in Holland say the volunteers from there, though Holland’s is a bit more extensive and chemicals are not used. They are here through school working on a waste water project, hence the trip to the plant. It was pretty gross and smelled. They also put chlorine in the water before it is released back into the rivers L. The plant was clean and fully automated. We were able to see the software program used, which was fantastic since it was in an air conditioned room.
The Dept. Store was terrifying. I was with Anna and we had a little guidance about what we were looking for but were wishing for company from someone who at least knew Tamil and the specifics about what is appropriate for a wedding. We finally found the area we were looking for and started looking and trying stuff on. We were swarmed with help. A few people spoke English. I quickly found that I am built like an Amazon. I was too tall for the dressing rooms, which meant I had to try everything on over my clothes outside the dressing room and I could barely get anything over my shoulders. I ended up finding an outfit in an XL and had to have it tailored.
Thursday was spent cleaning up the farm. Making the entry look inviting. People from the village and staff from Madurai came to celebrate and bless the completion of our cow shed, night watch sleeping quarters, store room and volunteer shed. There was a Hindu blessing, food offering and boiling of milk. Don’t understand all of the specifics, but it was cool to be a part of it.
Friday we had off since it was Good Friday and it’s a Christian village. We headed to Madurai for the weekend. I got my outfit tailored; no it is not a sari, for the wedding. We found the tailors market which it very cool. You can get pretty much get anything you want made for you. All the fabric is there. They have patterns or you can draw what you want and they will make it for you. Super cheap. We also found an internet café. I got most of my last posting done, but the system crashed while I was uploading pics. Hoping it will work this time around. I think having six of us in the café all trying to do the same thing was too much.
So the last time I was at the internet café I managed to get a few pics uploaded before the system crashed on me, but not the journal entry. And this is in the Madurai, one of the larger cities. A few of us are working on getting our own wireless internet. It will be horribly slow at the farm, but will work decently in the larger cities around India.
Not much happened for the rest of the weekend aside from my new pair of sandals being stolen outside of a temple. L We did find a great restaurant at a hotel near where we were staying. J Had dinner there Sat night then went back Sunday morning for breakfast. How great it was to have scrambled eggs, toast, fresh fruit and coffee, plus some traditional Indian foods. I was so stuffed by the time we left. It was awesome. This was good since I didn’t eat lunch that day. To top the breakfast off though was the movie on the tv in the background. Twilight!!!! I couldn’t believe it.
We came back to the farm this morning to most of it under water we had rather unexpected heavy rains. Heavier than what they usually get during monsoon season. This made for a morning of digging holes to percolate the water. I ended up covered in dirty water. Digging holes in standing water is not an easy task. Especially with the lack of decent tools. The afternoon was my first conversation with a neighbor farmer about what we do. He came to the farm looking for more information about organic farming vs natural farming. He wanted to know which would bring him the most profit. Doesn’t care about the environment at all.
Tomorrow we head to Madurai to check out a natural farm and do some work as needed then we are staying overnight for the wedding on Wed morning. We are all very excited about this. One of the volunteer coordinators, Mr. Victor, is getting married. He is great fun. He plans every other volunteer weekend and is the coordinator for the teaching volunteers.
The Natural Farm we went to today wasn't quite the definition of a natural farm. They still plowed the fields and used organic fertilizer and weeded. The goal in the long run is for it to be a natural farm, not just organic but the owner/lead farmer is having a hard time convincing his worker that natural farming is the way to go, so he is making compromises for the time being. We brought some video with us that explained natural farming and the benefits. the owner watched it and is getting a copy for his workers to watch later. He is hoping that it will convince them. Though the side comments made by some of the workers who watches the video included thoughts along the lines of "those are western practices. We will believe it when it comes to us in Tamil". Well we tried. The farm is located next to a lime quarry (sp) which was filled partially with water due to the heavy rains we got this last weekend. It looked like a great place to swim. Very pretty. Pics of this will come later.
That’s all that I have for now. Hopefully I will be able to get this posted and some more pics up.
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