Being back at the farm has been great. I came back last Monday afternoon after picking my things up from the orphanage. I had a great welcome. I had kids running up to the car when I arrived and a few very surprised volunteers. Raisa knew I was coming and didn't tell the others. They knew I was hoping to come back but didn't know I actually was. The host family was also very welcoming and it was nice to be back on familiar ground. There was also a new volunteer added to the group, Roberta from Vancouver Island. We are now 4 girls and no male volunteers. I was back to my normal routine by Tuesday morning.
Thursday we had an outing to see a Development Campus. The organization is called CCD or Covenant Centre for Development. We had an hour lecture covering what the organization was about and then a tour of most of their facilities. Basically they are like us at the Farm but on a massive scale. They work to help small village farmers develop relationships with larger traders in the cities, educated farmers on better practices, rent equipment at reasonable prices, and train women to manage the finances and work to bring in their own income to the home. That is putting it simply. They also have a recreated medicinal farm. They have taken seeds from plants and trees in the Ghats, mapped out their placement and relation to each other and have created their own farm to harvest from for Ayurvedic medicines all organic. They also have a herbal nursery created and run by Village women containing useful herbs that the families in the village can use in their home for basic medicine. This helps them save on money for a doctor's visit that isn't really needed. A local English school has been build for the Village kids. Giving them a competitive chance with city children.
Above is their web address if anyone is interested in more detail of what they are about.
Friday we headed to Kumily in the state of Kerala. We had a hard time convincing ourselves to come back. Lyndsey, Tove and I went and met up with Manon and Emily another volunteer working with Manon at her orphanage. Kerala in general is like another world compared to Tamil Nadu. Kumily was lush and green. It was raining and a bit chilly which was welcomed. It reminded us of some of the scenes in Avatar. Can't really believe I am making that comparison, but it was truly beautiful and peaceful there. And cheap. We spent 2 nights there. The three of us stayed in one room which was very nice and we each paid $10. It was great. The weather was cool enough that we were able to and wanted to take hot showers. Tove and I went twice to get Ayurvedic Massages. The first one we got was pretty bad. The second was awesome, though still very different from what I get back home. We were aiming for a quiet and peaceful weekend and found it. We found some amazing spice shops and good food. We got rained on a lot which suited us just fine. Saturday afternoon we went to Periyar Wildlife Reserve to take a boat ride tour. That part was actually boring as it is basically a slow ride around a lake hoping to see wildlife down by the water. We saw a couple of Deer, which is apparently a big deal here. We also saw a few boar and a King Fischer bird. On our way out of the reserve we saw a number of monkeys. That was fun. They were very interested in collecting food that someone had dropped.
When we got back to the farm on Monday it was time to catch up with Raisa. She spent Thursday afternoon and most of Friday in Batlagundu dealing with getting the Farm registered. She has been working on this since December. Getting anything done in this country is a great chore. Later Monday afternoon I accompanied Tove to the local hospital. She had an infected bite or a heat sore as all the locals believed. Either way, it was infected and it hurt to walk. The doctor who was useless didn’t say either way what he thought it was, just that it was infected due to the heat. He gave her antibiotics and sent us on our way. When we got back I got to chase 3 turkeys around the farm. We needed to give them some medicine. They don’t like us anymore. My day ended with a migraine that lasted till Wednesday afternoon. Woo!
Tuesday - Migraine - Henry arrived – new volunteer from Quebec City, Canada. He is a moron. It didn’t take long to learn this. I am also not the only one that feels this way so it is not me just being mean.
Wednesday – Still have a migraine but try to participate in an outreach program to a local school. I made it through all the planning and last half way through the actual event. We were focusing on the hazards of plastics. The kids were very receptive. The real fun was in the morning before we went to the school. Tove and Henry almost ran into a cobra. First alive snake siting since I got here. Glad it wasn’t me who actually saw the snake. Apparently it was rather large around and over a meter and a half long. It went away on its own. It was also Lyndsey’s last day on the farm. She headed to a teaching project in Madurai for a week. We are back to 4 volunteers.
Thurday – We arrived to the farm to witness a fight between the two female turkeys. They wouldn’t leave each other alone. It was very comical. We couldn’t get them apart. Mr. Panea eventually picked them up to separate them and he threw one of them back into its cage to keep them apart. We also learned that day that both of our ducks are male. Usually you can tell a male and female apart by their back tale feather curling up or not. The second duck’s tale feather decided to curl up a bit late. I have no idea how else to check for male/female on ducks, but this was rather funny to discover. We were wondering why there had been no eggs and the ducks were getting rather aggressive with the other birds. We are buying 3 more ducks and making sure that they are female. Mr. Panea also finds and kills another snake hoping that it was the one Tove and Henry saw. It wasn’t. It was too small. We aren’t happy about the number of snakes suddenly showing up on the farm.
Friday is our half day. It’s a rather mellow morning. We do the watering on the highway then come back to cut down a field of sesbania with a sickle. Tove and I got through about a quarter of the plot in 20 min and we were slowing down fast. Kumar then comes over and we’re done with the whole field in 15 min. It was rather depressing but I wasn’t going to argue with the help. We found out later that he was instructed to babysit us. There was/is still a worry about snakes. Yay.
Friday afternoon we head to Kodai Kanal. I started out liking this town. It’s beautiful, foggy, I took lots of pics. So many colorful flowers. Tove and I managed to get a serious sugar high off of Baskin Robbin’s ice cream, coffee, tea cake, and them some samples at another bakery. The samples beat out everything before. They were so good even though we were full. We hit the giggles and were practically running up the hill to our accommodation. It was a freezing night. Not just cool. Freezing. We met up with Lyndsey there and I shared a room with her and Tove. The other option was a dorm room with 30 other volunteers. That wasn’t going to happen. The room was so cold that Tove, who had opted to sleep on the floor jumped into the double bed with Me and Lyndsey. This did nothing to warm me up. I didn’t sleep. We were lucky enough to have hot water the next morning which is more than the volunteers got in the dorm. It was a bucket shower though and the bathroom was rather cold. It was still better than nothing. The morning we spent wondering around the town looking at shops and vendors. The street vendors sell donated sweaters from the 1980’s from $100 rupees or $2 plus dollars. Its very funny to see locals running around wearing sweaters from the 1980’s over their sari’s and dhoti’s. a number of the volunteers also bought sweaters. Some of them were really bad. The afternoon was spent on a bus going sightseeing. It was pretty much a wasted trip. We saw a pine forest. Not really impressive for a girl from CA. and most of the viewpoints were obstructed by fog. We did learn however that Henry had managed to hook up with another volunteer. Quick moving for a boy who has been in the country for less than a week. The rest of the weekend was rather uneventful. Learned that the French speakers (there are a lot of them right now) have no interest but to speak to each other in French and party, and that Saturday night was just as cold as Friday.
Was very happy to return to the Farm Sunday night for dinner. We had 2 more volunteers show up. Melinda from Vancouver and Horvard from Norway. We’re up to 6 volunteers now. I really like Horvard; very nice and good natured.
Monday - more bureaucracy bull shit - we now have bore wells in the back yard of our accommodation and on the farm. It’s been decided that the farm is a commercial business. A neighbor in the village hates the owner of the farm and therefore hates us and is trying to make everything we do very difficult. I have been getting glimpses of this ever since I got here. So life on the farm was rather distracting the first half of the week. We have learned by now, meaning by Monday, that Henry has no interest in farming or conservation. He pretty much cries and whines at everything we do. He has started to use my work gloves which I have never used because his hands hurt. Boo L He hates every task he is given. Apparently he just wants to party and that’s why he came to India. Really, who comes to India to party?
Today, Thursday we walked down the main street of the village to find some sort of structure being built at the end near the Church. Then when we got to the farm music and drumming started. We asked Raisa what was going on and she told us it was either mourning or celebrating. We asked why and what was going on. She mentioned that a villager had just been released on bail for attempted murder. Awesome….. So some people could be celebrating and others could be mourning.
We later found out that the structure was covering about a 1/3 of the length of the street and that all the music was for mourning. People were flooding into the village. Apparently it was for a funeral. The mother of the guy who was let out on bail died the night before of natural causes. It’s amazing how quickly these sorts of things can be set up and the numbers who show up on such short notice. It was an all-day event starting first thing this morning and going till late in the evening. People mostly just sitting. Music was going most of the day. This evening we got another volunteer. His name is Handrae. He is from France. He seems very sweet.
This week I have started another organization project. Raisa is possibly the most scattered person I know. Too much going on in her head. Too many projects to handle on her own and she doesn’t have an assistant like all the other managers/supervisors. So I am working on charts for her lessons to the volunteers. I have sat through multiple lectures about the same things as she gives them to all new volunteers. Not one has been the same. Everyone is given different pieces of information. So I am making large poster sized charts as well as matching charts on the computer so she can hand out the information to interested volunteers. I am a nerd. I love doing this and I get to do research.
So that is pretty much it so far. Tonight was Tove’s last night. She leaves for Madurai tomorrow afternoon. Lyndsey and I are spending the weekend with her then she is off for Bangalore and Lyndsey heads back to Arkansas. I meet up with Tove on the 15th of July in Kochi for two weeks of travel with her then off to travel with my Dad in August. Super excited.
Monday brings 2 more volunteers and with Tove gone, I get to lead. I am not excited. I have already started channeling my stage management self, back in college. This is not good, though will probably be funny to the observer. Tove is really sad that she is going to miss me losing my temper. The pace of at least half of the current volunteers is drastically slower than it has been over the past two months. I have little tolerance for people who come to volunteer in a foreign country and just want to goof off and not work or whine about it. As I am now. Coming to work on a farm and freaking out about the smell of cow dung and urine and blisters on your hands from plowing doesn’t work for me. I am pretty sure a volunteer may be wearing some of our organic fertilizer next week. I will take great pleasure in this. J
