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Field Report from Chennai and Thirukadiyur |
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(Spent 1 day in chennai, 2 days in thirukadaiyur)
Monday - Date 10th January
by Rajesh Veeraraghavan (AID Bay Area volunteer)
Seeing is believing. My objective for writing this note is to give a
picture based on my observations to give you folks a sample of what is
it like to be in the AID house in Chennai & Thirukadaiyur. Beginnings of
the longer term plans are getting shaped up. I saw a clear transition
between the short term focus to a medium term focus. More clear
Structures are being put to place. Clear responsibilities and tasks are
being identified. The enthusiasm of the people is amazing. I can bet
that whoever is visiting will be completely blown over by the number of
people who are showing to volunteer. It felt like the AID US conference
where there were so many new faces you see who all part of the AID
family as Dr.B would say it. Now that family is growing in India – which
is a very welcome thing to happen. There is an opportunity to counter
this destruction with a positive vision for an equitable and a world.
The details:
Partial list of where we are working:
Chennai.
Nagai – vanavan mahadevi, vellapallam, arcot, pushpavanam.
Pudukuppum – pudukuppum , pudupettai, indiranagar, chinoor, kannikoil
Vedaranyam – kodiyakkai.
Killai – MGR Thitu, mulukuthurai, chinnavaikyal, pillumedu1, pillumedu2,
kannaginagar, kalaingar nagar, ponan thittu, vadakumudisal odai, nadu
mudasal odai.
Thirukadaiyur – chinangkudi, cinnamedu, thalampettai, kuttiandiyur,
pudhupettai, perumal pettai, kesavan palayam.
I went to AID house in Chennai, it was a 2 storied house which we are
renting.
I was told that the previous days there were so many people around 150.
There are medicines boxes being stacked by a volunteer who has been in
India for the last few months. She was neatly labeling, organizing the
whole medicines boxes. Then there were people whose task is to receive
any materials that come by and stock them properly. They have a note
book wherein they fill in the details of the person or company or agency
which is donating the materials. Some folks return back with just a
smile some folks get a stamp on a sheet as an acknowledgement from AID
for the clothes received.
AID Ration Card
Every affected family in all the villages that AID works on will have
one card. The card will have information regarding how many members in
the family, what were their loss, human and material, any help received
from govt and other agencies etc. (there are more information being
collected). The card will be left with the family, some of the
information from the card will also be maintained in the register which
the volunteer will keep.
Currently all this is maintained in paper/notebooks, and the plan is to
move these information into a computer which will help in analyzing the
data and figuring out the future course of intervention. This is such a
simple and very useful thing to do to keep track of what the family is
receiving. This covers both ends of documentation and also keeps the
family in the know of what is being collected. More importantly if
another volunteer comes to that village there is a system which helps
figure out what type of stuff they have received and found useful in the
past.
*AID US possibly can help in coming up with a simple system to help
track this.
* Help in analysis of the data and help in understanding the
interventions both at the micro and the macro level.
I wrote up a note on how to generate the unique identifier for each
family. I then made a list of villages that AID is working on by
essentially talking to a few people who are coordinating various blocks.
There were people who were working on coming up with a 3D model for
tsunami to be used in their documentation and reports. He was using some
3D software to have an animation.
Cell phones were ringing constantly, and the conversation was ranging
from directions to the place, getting an update from a volunteer,
handling donor calls for materials and so on…
Some folks were so busy that I was finding it too guilty to even go to
their room to figure out what is happening there. They have a small
computer network where they have hooked up a bunch of computers to a
printer. The printer which they had was ancient, looks like definitely
they would love to have a good printer.
There were people entering the accounts from paper to a computer.
There were a few who were serving as factotums..waiting eagerly for any
work that could be assigned to them.
For an outsider it looked like chaos, but to quote one volunteer there
it was like driving on the streets of India..You just need to know the
rules of the game there and it wouldn’t appear chaotic.
There was a coordinating meeting in the evening where Balaji/Chandra
updated the group with the activities that are happening in aid Chennai.
The agenda was to ensure that people were both philosophically and
practically on the same page as possible in the work that is happening.
Teams were formed (coordination teams, medical team, volunteer task
coordination team, media team, health team, loading/unloading team,
feedback gathering team,etc..i saw a copy of that getting passed
around..need to get a soft copy of that). Will be useful to know the
work that are getting carried out.
The volunteers ranged from full timers, to part timers, to full timers
for a small period of time, weekend vols, evening vols..). The energy
there was amazing. One of the amazing things I saw (which I haven’t seen
before ) is the intermingling of volunteers from different classes
(upper middle class to lower middle class). Each bringing their own
skills and are able to work cohesively as a team. That in itself is an
achievement worth cherishing.
There were people from Asha India (DP and others ) made a trip to the
office to understand the work that is been done by AID and to ensure
there is no overlap and synergy between the groups. It was good to see
this..i gave the list of villages I had partially compiled that we are
working on.
I met a group who came in from some donor agency who wanted to donate
money to AID. She mentioned that they had done extensive research and
chose AID as the group to work with. That is good news. They left the
room feeling reassured that they are working with us.
There were a more than a handful of people(other than balaji/Chandra)
who had a solid grasp of what was happening and was independently
coordinating the activities there.
I heard that AID India is going to be in doordarshan pretty soon. There
was excitement about it.
The enthusiasm I saw made my jet lag go away. I wished for a moment that
I could stay there and help out and be a part of a vibrant volunteering
community. Sigh!
The meeting ended around 9.30 pm when I decided to head home..there were
still a lot of people so energized and continuing what they were doing.
If people have this motivation and can sustain even a fraction of this
for a longer time I think we can change the world!
Visit to Thirukadaiyur:
The coordination center at thirukadaiyur is very well organized.
When you enter the office you get a booklet where it lists a detailed
writeup of work you can do. Some of the work is debris cleanup, survey
work, construct toilets, if you are a specialist like a doctor there is
obviously medical work etc. The booklet essentially gives you a gist of
all the work that is happening and keeps changing.
People keep trickling in while I was there and very soon this place was
bustling with activity. There were people from various nationalities,
cities and local people as well. Particularly impressive was the local
DYFI volunteers who have been there from the day the tsunami hit. There
were foreigners camping there for weeks , volunteers from Bangalore who
have come in a van for pongal and a camp from bombay who had also come
as a group and had stayed there for 8 days.
Senthil Babu, a volunteer from Bangalore was the coordinator there and
played an awesome role. He had taken off from his work and is
essentially serving a crucial coordinator role. It is very obvious that
you needed a person with a full time role there to really work with all
the people there and place them appropriately. I am wondering what will
happen if he decides to go back and also what is happening in other
blocks. This is definitely something that is imperative. I hear that
there are such full timers in other areas where AID is working.
People were restlessly waiting for their transport. It was pongal days
and so the local volunteers strength was little low and the vehicle also
came a tad late. Some people had their own means of transport. From the
loci of thirukadaiyur I believe work was actively done in 9 villages
around it. I was going to Chinangudi village.
We got on a van and were off to the village. I saw that the local
volunteers and the city volunteers were working with such ease that
atleast for me it was very surprising and refreshing to see. We landed
in the village in 20 minutes.
This village had a decent road leading to the village center. I was
immediately given details to the point where the saline sea water had
come in. This was primarily a fishing village.
I also heard that there were around 80 people who had perished due to
the tsunami. There were around 550 families living here.
I was tasked to do the survey with local volunteer Senthil. My brother
who accompanied me to this village went with the toilet construction
team. There were team to engage the kids and there was a team which
worried about unclogging drainage.
Essentially the survey assesses the impact of the village from their
villagers’ perspective.
It had questions like how big is the family, male/female/children
counts, loss due to tsunami(human, property, animals, boats/nets). There
were 2 stages of the survey…one just asked the above questions and
another one which goes into a lots of detail and asks questions like
what is the registration number of the engine they had and did they lose
any form of paper work etc.. Lot more detail. The plan is to digitize this.
All this starts off with a pictorial representation of the village (done
with the help of a few villagers) which essentially identifies the
streets in the village, what type of house(thatched, tiled, concrete,
colony), school, hospital et al.
The survey also serves as a way for the local volunteer to develop a
rapport with the people in the village and develop an understanding of
the problems in the village.
We had to explain the motive for the survey and tell them that we aren’t
from the government and were trying to help them document the loss and
this may be useful for them to work with the government later on. This
map is definitely an useful asset to have for them and lots of them were
amazed to see their entire village mapped. The impact on the people were
different from each house to house and all of them essentially have lost
all their boats(catamarans), nets, engines. The reason is that they have
effectively stationed them near the beach and all of them were washed
away. So the main issue is of occupation. All of them were without work.
They are waiting in anticipation of the government providing nets/boats.
Some of the fishermen I spoke to was apprehensive of going back to the
sea..but most of them are raring to go back. One person said, “Kai Kal
ellam velikudhu kadaluku pogama”..essentially the body is aching not
going to sea. They apparently go 3 times to the sea and get one day off
once in 15 days when there is a panchayat session happening. Another
thing to keep in mind is that some of the fishermen had a good living
from the sea. They lived well(relatively speaking). This tsunami was a
rude shock to them and were saying that this tsunami was not passed on
as a threat from their ancestors.
One claimed that this lack of awareness was the primary reason for so
many deaths in the village. Apparently they are used to cyclones hitting
the coast and the water level rising and since the boats/nets were
moored on the shore they usually run to the shore to secure them. In
this occasion too there were people who ran to the shore from their
houses to preserve the boats/nets and all of them who did that perished.
We were also building make shift toilets and managed to build 2 of them,
and the thing was the village youth were not participating in it. I went
and talked to one of them to see whether there was interest in helping
out with the effort. Immediately I was asked to talk to the panchayat. I
did talk to one of the panchs and he was telling me that there would be
no experience in this type of work and the villagers would be hesitant
to come forward. He essentially gave us the go ahead to get any
interesting villager to do so if he is willing to do it. We finally
managed to find one person who atleast verbally said that he will come
tomorrow and help out. I also heard later that it is not a simple issue,
the perception among some of the villagers is that the people who are
coming to “help” are getting paid for it and so why should we bother to
help. There are genuine lack of experience/interest in that type of
work. They might not see the benefit of building a toilet there etc. I
am sure over time and with dedicated volunteers being there for the
longer term trust could be established. I did have one villager tell me
how they didn’t expect this outpouring of support from the government
and also as he called the non-govt involvement as the “private sector”.
I did took some time to play with the village youth and kids. My success
was mixed, I played this game with marbles and got thrashed by kids
squarely like 20 games to 1 game where I managed to win. I then ventured
to play cricket with some of the village youth and they had a bet to get
me out. I played for 15 minutes and they couldn’t get me out! Even with
the ball swinging in with the beach doing the trick. It was fun, for a
few minutes all the differences between us were forgotten.
I chatted with the local volunteers to figure out their motivation in
coming there to volunteer. It was inspiring to see some of them haven’t
yet gone back after they had come on the day of the tsunami. They were
the ones who lifted bodies and worked tirelessly in clearing the debris
and are now moved on to do surveys. They were still going strong. I
don’t know how long this is going to last. They are so poor. Their
family is dependent on they getting back to work.
I also talked with some of the volunteers who had come from Bangalore
and the interesting thing to note here is that they plan to come for
atleast the next 3 months.(every weekend). This is a good sign. Some of
them said as long as it takes. This is the middle class of India willing
to go to a rural village for 3 months on weekends, that is a change.
Some of us met with the sub-collector (who we had called earlier and
fixed an appointment). The collector was waiting for us and we were 15
minutes late! He was eager to hear our issues. Someone pointed out there
were no milk supply in one of the villages. I brought out the case where
a person had committed suicide in the village after the tsunami hit.
This is again a delicate issue to deal with and he was already aware of
the issue. He seemed to be very responsive and there needs to be
somebody who will need to work with him on a Longer term basis which he
seemed to be willing to. I did encourage the collector to come for our
daily meetings(atleast once in a while). He said he prefers we calling
him whenever we want an issue resolved.
It was also not clear how much money the government is going to spend on
replacing boats/catamarans/nets. I was hearing that the govt. will
probably replace 10-20% of the nets per family and for the remaining
amount it is looking to arrange loans or expect the NGO sector to put
forward. This is going to be tricky as the villagers are hoping that
they get back their livelihoods. Currently nobody in the village is
going fishing.
There is clear need for volunteers to go spend time in these villages.
There is plenty of work to do and there is an existing infrastructure
and team to support you in this. I am optimistic that there will be
among us who have the will and the time to go and spend the time in
these villages…
Thanks!
Rajesh Veeraraghavan
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