We visited the Aid India-GRASS effort in Santakaviti and Ponduru mandals of Srikakulam District AP in last week of June 2000. Prasad from AID-MD and his brother were also there for the first 2 days.
The 5 womens savings groups we had started are going well with the total savings reaching nearly Rs 45,000. The group in Borada Peta village which has a saving of about Rs 7000 hasnt yet given its first loans, and this time there was serious discussion on rotating their money as loans. Regarding the amount of loan we made it clear that the group members have to decide. They informally decided that the entire Rs 7000 be given to a teacher who currently has taken a loan at a higher interest rate from outside. This would be a bold and interesting step as so far we have seen loans of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 in the other groups we have been working with. Since the teacher has a regular salary of Rs 2000 per month people feel she will be able to repay in 7 months, at Rs 1000 per month.
The Manthini group which was the first group that started it all, there were some personal differences between 2-3 women and so the group is not meeting. We have talked to them that personal differences should not be on the way of this united effort and Suryanarayan and varlaxmi from Grass are confident that they willbe able to sort this out. Also the group members are migrating from the village as this is one of the poorer villages with no land holdings and that is also causing a problem as the bank manager is being uncooperative and not allowing frequent changes etc.
The 3 groups in Appalagraham are working well with both savings and repayments of laons in full swing. Unfortunately we wre not able to meet the groups due to heavy rains and on the appointed day the travel between villages was impossible. I spent my time watching the beautiful background of swaying coconut trees, hurrying cows and hens rushing to find shelter, small streams flowing rapidly on the muddy roads, a longish snake hurrying by a well quenching its summer thirst and the children, surprisingly few, collecting water in their hands and splashing it on me while I splashed back wondering whether this way i would be able to prevent myself being drenched. Aravinda and Suryanarayana were fighting a fever of 103 and this was a place where there was no doctor and so though it meant a day indoors we got to have a first hand experience on the health needs of the village.
But before moving to well-being as we were hunting one day for people who may be able to perform street-plays we came across a hamlet with no name, and whose postal address is simply Muslim Colony, Ponduru Mandal who were very hospitable and interested in forming a women's group. A formal meeting was arranged next day and 15 members signed up and they named themselves Bibi Fatima Savings Group and we got their group photo for opening the bank account. We suggested that now that they had a name for the group, they also should name their hamlet. The problems of this hamlet include no electricity despite the electric lines passing just a few metres ahead and difficult access to drinking water. They have been petitioning their panchayat for 10 years and still no solutions in sight. This was one of the reasons they felt they should organize their women's group.
Returning to the fever struck wokers, on the first day we had to go to a village a few kilometers away to buy basic things like paracetimol. On the second day a medical rep. (though pbly not without any formal degree or training) from another village came to see us and sure enough prescribed injections for 3 people who by now had high fever, Varalaxmi garu's temerature also was now rising. Aravinda of course declared she wouldnt have any injections and the medical rep. said he used disposable needles though the tube of the injection itself was being reused and he said he sterilized it -- what he did was to ask for hot water in a glass and he dipped the tube in it for 2-3 minutes. We didnt want to get into any arguements because a part of being a rural development worker is to observe without interfering and not judging but finding out the way life is led in villages. So Suryanarayana had the injection and Varalxmi garu also decided to have one, and he without even changing the needle as promised earlier filled his injection again and was about to give her when she pointed out that he didnt change the needle and he then did it and this satified her. Antibiotics which should be taken for 5-7 days were given for 1-2 days only, another standard practice in medical care that is given to the poor. The rep then went to neighbouring houses to examine a sick child and so on, and I asked one of the village people what they did in medical emergencies etc. He reminded me what he had told me earlier -- in villages people are not that bothered to get the best treatment and they dont get it either. this was the differences between cities and villages in anything, he said. Village people often times blame themselves for their problems. We discussed a bit on health initiatives we could do, even as the rain contiued to pour and I remembered having read in a booklet by the "people's health assembly" that malaria could be caused if there is standing water in rice fields etc for more than 7 days. I quickly quizzed on the prevalence of malaria in the area and got ambiguous answers.
But then I started wondering -- to increase the ground water table we need to have standing water, the more days the better, for preventing weeds from competing with rice plantations farmers have standing water that they cant risk to replace every week due to uncertainity of rains, and to prevent malaria we need the water to flow away......everything is interconnected and one card rests on the other but its all good food for thought -- for we have to observe before we do anything that may be more harm to the village than good.
Tholapi a bigger village which boasts of having several teachers is where a donation of 1.5 acres of land have been made by a conscientious village person for use by Aid-Grass to have a demonstration plot in natural/organic farming, bio-intensive farming etc. We visited this area and discussed a bit on the water and training needs to get this initiative started. Suryanarayana claims that in an area of 4 feet by 16 feet we can grow enough vegetables etc to satisfy a families needs for the entire year and this is something we want to also work on. Informal discussions with farmers on "fertilizers -- boon or bane" brought back memories of the days in some when the fields naturally had strength and fertilizers were not needed, and how now they are very dependent on this. Can we get back some of that vitality in the soil? Should we try to do this.... and so we chatted away.
Meanwhile one of the womens groups informed us of how they tried to increase the cleanliness surrounding a well, the efforts were skuttled by the village elders, but when this discussion was going on I wasnt concentraing much and so have not much more to report!....like the AID News editor sometimes one takes a break.... :-) A womans group signed up for learning charka the deal being each one will buy their own charka while we would facilitate the training.
Lots of ideas were discussed during the trip but that will be a part of another posting when they matrialize. Aravinda suggested marketing products in villages using the womens groups and village shops and the list of things we could sell include used clothes collected by AID volunteers at a discounted price which kind of gives greater dignity to the exchange of used clothes, as they can now buy them if they want to.
Since the mandal office was not willing to give us village maps without a small bribe that we were not willing to pay we decided to do our own map of Boaradpeta and we got hold of school children just before the classes started and together drew a map -- PRA, or participatory rural apprisal is the buzz word used for this kind of information gathering -- what we did was to introduce ourselves to the children and since we werent from the village can they help us with the land marks and so we drew the canal of water and let them do the rest by asking where are the wells -- marking them -- then making sure if there were only 3 or more, where are the borings, where is the temple etc -- and slowly the children would come to the board and mark them themselves. My not being very fluent in writing telugu also helped as I would only write words which were simple and have them write the bigger more difficult words, without giving them the idea that I wouldnt be able to write these without their help in the first place!! After the map was thus drawn on the board we asked the children to copy it in our note-book for our record.
We had to cut short the visit by one day because when the weather cleared the fevers hadnt subsided and we decided to hurry back rather than risk walking in the rain the next day. A sick person in the village has to walk and thats what Aravinda had to do for about 45 mins and then wait an hour at the bus stop and so on.... But that didnt deter her from taking the photos of some women in the fields as we approached appalagraharam. Some of the women were from the savings group and one of the Laxmi wanted to take us to her field. There she and a couple of other women -- laxmi-2 and Durga -- wer planting sugar cane -- she informed me that she took a loan of Rs 1000 the prvious week from the Appalagraham savings group for doing this plantation and that was a great ending for, from the village we didnt visit on the appointed day due to rains, we got to see one of its members who was making full use of the program.
Back in the prez's house (minus prez of course) in Vizag we went to see the doctor as Aravinda's fever was touching 104 and the doctor was disappointed when the injection was negated by her. Though he only prescribed one crocin thrice a day, we tried two crocin tablets instead of one and that brought the fever down in a few hours....... this is what surprised me ---- people seem to be shocked when we take 2 crocins (1000 mg total paracetimol) at one time ...they dont do this.... in fact they think we are overdosing...why? because they use the injection to get the fever down and then use only on tablet at a time to control it......this is why the doctors here prescribe only one paracetimoal tablet at a time......
So far the Srikakulam effort has been done locally by volunteers...now with the good response from the village people and growing need for more time commitments a few people are thinking of working fulltime in this effort. This means in the future we will probably have more things to report and simultaneously we need ideas and involvement of every interested person, no matter where they are, for we need to not only do this locally, but also integrate this with broader work everywhere and have a good support base and awareness reach for it.
Ravi.
aid@vsnl.com