Kuvathur is on East coast road around 100km from Chennai, and is the base for the surrounding villages that AID has adopted for long term work. At the time I was in Chennai this was also the place that AID had a big field team, and so this was where most people wanting to go to the field were sent to.

Jan 18th:
On Jan 18th morning, I went to AID-Chennai?s office and joined a group of 12 people going to Kuvathur, in a truck carrying materials. Our first stop was the godown in Thondayarpet, where we loaded sacks of rice, oil, buckets, and chairs. We reached Kuvathur around 7.30pm, and after some searching, found the AID office. After unloading all the material from the lorry, we set off with Samu and Kirupa, the field co-ordinators, to Kazhidalikuppam, which was around 20 km from Kuvathur. Sitting in the back of the truck, we soon started singing songs. Mark, a musician from Australia currently in India to study music made an impromptu song titled ?Tsunami?. Everyone was enthusiastic and eager to get down to work. As we left the main road, even in the falling darkness, I could see how beautiful the scenery was becoming. Palm trees, and cacti made beautiful silhouettes against the night sky.

Kazhidalikuppam was one of the villages in which shelters were being built, but not much progress was being made because of the lack of local participation. Samu called a meeting with the villagers in which she explained the importance of local participation in shelter building activity, and insisted that a third of the efforts towards this comes from the village itself. Though she was a small woman, her assertiveness and control of the situation impressed me. While this meeting was taking place, nearby, Manohar (an AID fulltime volunteer) and others had gathered the children together and soon there was loud clapping and cheering accompanied by songs. Many of the villagers and us gravitated there and had fun joining the children and Manohar in cheering and singing. This really lightened the atmosphere after the serious meeting.

The villagers wanted to know when they will get boats and nets. Samu and Kirupa had to explain that there is not much fish yet in the sea up to 1km, because the sea floor had been covered with sand. She explained that in a village in Kalpakam, some AID volunteers had gone with the villagers in a boat and up to 1 km, they could not get any fish but only some prawns. So, it will clearly take a while to get back to normal and in the meantime, we need to think of alternate livelihood for them.

After a while, a few of us wanted to see around the village and so went a villager on one of the inner roads. The road was cemented and many of the houses were cement houses with compound walls. Most of the destruction had therefore occurred on the shore front huts. We learnt that there was not loss of lives but mostly property damage along this stretch of villages. 52 huts were lost and around 200 peoples? boats and lively hood were affected. Even in the darkness, we could see some of the damaged huts, and boats that were washed many meters inside. As we stood on the beach talking, it was an eerie feeling to think that the sea that was only a few feet away from us had wrecked so much havoc and terror, and many might have felt a shiver running along their spine. Certainly I did.

That night we sat around in AID office and talked to Samu about how work was proceeding differently among the villages. In some villages, they were able to build as many as 11 shelters in one afternoon, while in others barely a couple could be built. So even though these villages are closely spaced and share mostly similar demographics, there are unique experiences from village to village. There was some discussion as to how to involve more of the villagers in the activities.

1/19/05- 1/20/05

The volunteers were divided into two main teams- the shelter building team and survey team. I was part of the survey team. This team consisted of 10-12 people who could speak and in most cases write Tamil. We issued AID family cards to each of the families. In this were noted details like the number of members in the family, their age, sex, education, whether the adults had a ration card, voter card etc.

Our day started at 7 am with tea/coffee, after which we all had our share of morning exercise pumping water from the hand pump down the street and filling the two big drums. Only then could we have baths. We fervently hoped the motor in the house would be repaired soon so that people didn?t have to do this for long.

We issued family cards in three villages- Pudunadukuppam, Pazheyanadukuppam and Paramangenikuppam over those two days.

The first village we went to was Pazheyanadukuppam where we issued family cards to 125 families. One of things that initially struck me was that when people did not know their ages. For example, a woman would say her age as 28 but would look more like 40. Initially I thought they were shy or embarrassed to tell their ages, but later realized that they probably did not know their correct ages. Also I could see that a hard life out in the sun aged them faster than others. Later we judged for ourselves and put down approximate ages. This was something we came across in all the villages.

After we finished with issuing the cards, we had lunch of lemon rice and brinjal curry in a ?mandappam? (open hall) near the sea. We were famished and the food tasted awesome. After lunch, as we were lazing around waiting for the van to come, a few of us wanted to go to the beach and asked a couple of young boys who were nearby if they would like to accompany us. Both of them were very scared and refused. As we prodded, they said they were afraid another tsunami will occur on January 26th and till then nobody wanted to go out to the sea. We tried explaining that tsunamis don?t just happen according to dates but there is a reason behind it. But both were too scared to venture out with us, and said their parents had forbidden them. We clearly had more work to do to explain the reasons of tsunamis and earthquakes and dispel their fear.

Afterwards, we distributed packets containing oil, toor dal, sugar, mustard and tamarind. Due to limited supply, we had decided that we would give milk powder to those families with children under three years old. But it was very hard for us to say ?no? to those mothers who came up to us with children 4 or 5 years old and ask how we thought those children didn?t need milk. Also, since many of them did not exactly know their child?s age, it might be possible that she might have said 4 years to a child who is actually only 3. Such situations were very heartrending to us, but we had to be firm and say that this was all we were capable of right now.

One thing we noticed was that in Paramangenikuppam, the education level of the adults was much less than in the other villages. In the other villages, some people had atleast studied until 8th or 10th std. but in this village, most of the adults were totally illiterate. But the good thing was that there is a school in this village and the children attend it. In this village, I also had the opportunity to observe Prabha (from AID Chennai) and others do social mapping. In this, the volunteers sit down with the villagers and sketch out on the ground all the details of the village like roads, huts, pukka houses, street lamps, water pumps, schools etc. This is important because then we get an idea of exactly how many houses and families are there, for example, as opposed to approximate numbers when we talk to the villagers. Such maps are also important in planning out long term work in the village. It was very interesting to watch and I was amazed as to how well each villager knows his or her village.

I left Kuvathur on 20th night to return to Chennai. The enthusiasm and energy of the volunteers was contagious, and I felt like staying and working there forever. I met some very nice people, many of whom had been staying there for over 2 weeks and were planning to stay on for another 10 days or so. They had taken leave from their offices and just landed up to help. The days were full and busy, but everyone worked tirelessly during the day, and then stayed up planning late into the night. It was a motivating environment, and certainly an experience worth remembering for me.