There are also people living in nearby villages who have been affected - people who bought fish from the fishermen to sell in the market, people who dried fish, people who worked as fish workers, etc.  In several areas where land has become saline because of water inflow, the most affected are the landless laborers who worked on these lands.  Many of these people live in nearby villages. When they are affected, their families and the people who depend on them are affected.

We think of a family as one unit – if one member of the family is affected, we understand that the others have also suffered.  We also understand that the entire fishing hamlet has been affected even if the water did not enter into every house.  We realize that the people living in the village are one community – the tragedy affects them all and relief must be provided to all the members.  But most people do not see the inter-connections between villages.  A village is not a self-sufficient economic unit. A village depends on its needs on a larger cluster of villages (typically a block).  The market for a village’s produce is in another village, the raw materials come from yet another village.  People travel to other villages to work, often people from nearby villages depend on fishing villages for their survival.  It is one integrated and inter-connected economy.  When one of the villages is hit, all the other villages nearby are also hit – often more hit.

Often the nearby villages are even poorer. The fishing villages are at the top of the food chain – the richest villages in the area.  When fishing was hit, these poorer villages were also hit.   But their ability to recover is much less – many have got into debt spirals.  Also most groups which came forward to help have neglected these people as they are not seen as being affected.  These are people who also need our help.  This is why we are working in a cluster of villages – not merely the villages directly affected by the Tsunami, but also in the surrounding villages which have been affected in many different indirect ways.

Cycles, Trolleys and Baskets: We have been doing a livelihood survey in Tsunami areas. We have identified about 1000 families mostly in the fishing villages that require cycles for carrying the fish and nets and are tying to arrange the cycles for them. We have identified a number of women who have been carrying fish in baskets and have lost their baskets.  We are trying to arrange one wheeled trolleys for them instead so that they can take the fish to the market. (One wheeled – because they can then travel through very thin roads or field boundaries (varapu)).  We have also started a number of alternate employment programs – but we will describe more about this in the next section.