Hope all of you are safe, well and healthy.
This newsletter is an attempt to reach out to you in solidarity at a time when all of us, whoever we are and wherever we are in the world, are affected in varying degrees by the same microorganism!
Our hearts go out as we pay homage to the thousands of workers and their families rendered jobless, homeless and foodless in this pandemic, and to the thousands who have lost the battle with the virus.
This pandemic has brought to light the best and worst in all of us simultaneously. It has reminded us of our oneness with all life, reinforced our interconnectedness and shared humanity, brought out all our empathy and kindness. But on the other hand it has amplified our fears and selfishness, deepened the existing fissures, highlighted the borders and strengthened the divisiveness among us. The vulnerable among us have been made more so.
“When the virus does not care about our divisions of borders, ethnicity, colour, or race and religion, why do we?” – Tejas Gambhir
Pongal celebrations at the new school
Lock down measures
Rural self sufficient communities – the future?
This lockdown has made us realise that rural communities like Sittilingi are in many ways more resilient than modern urbanised society. The tribal value of consuming less and making do with whatever meager resources are available has stood us in good stead now.
According to a 2019 survey by THI, 75 percent of families in Sittilingi Valley own land and 81 percent are engaged in agricultural activities. Most importantly, people still grow their own food. Only 8.7 percent of families have at least one member migrating outside to earn money.
All over the world, experts are now talking about the possibility of an economic recession due to the lockdowns. In times like this people in urban areas are unsure of employment and financial security in the years to come. Having your own land and growing your own food provides one with basic security in these uncertain times.
Dr. Regi and Dr. Lalitha, shifting out to a rural area and initiating community activities has made quality health care available at our doorsteps. This is especially useful now when all the government primary health centres are tied up with corona duties.
Community measures
We have been supporting the Panchayat (local government) in whatever small ways we could in their proactive measures in maintaining physical distancing and spreading awareness. Read more >> here
We hope the community maintains this level of unified and mature action when the valley actually receives its first Covid cases!
Construction and allied artisans
The construction artisans trained by Thulir were working on building eco- friendly buildings for other NGOs and friends outside. With the lockdown and consequent stopping of all building activities they are back home without work and income.
The Thulir alumni, Perumal, Kumar, Munusamy and their group have been busy doing all the electrical work in the valley, repairing TVs, cell phones etc., so very essential in the lockdown times.
Food and vegetables
The initiation of Sittilingi Organic Farmers Association assures the community of a variety of millets, some dals and spices in the valley. Manju and the SOFA team have a nursery where they grow different varieties of keerai(spinach).
From the time the Thulir school started, around 75 people eat lunch every day at Thulir. And we go once a week and buy vegetables from outside. Over the years we have been talking to many neighbouring farmers and parents to grow vegetables for the Thulir meals. Many were reluctant as vegetables are perishable and more difficult to market than millets. But a few started and their numbers slowly grew.
We are proud of the fact that for the first time last year we bought more vegetables locally than from outside. And this has helped all of us in the village during this lockdown when the supply and distribution chains are cut and threats to our food security loom on the horizon. Locally grown food seems to be the sustainable solution.
It is heartening to see more and more farmers growing food crops and vegetables instead of cash crops. True, the variety is limited. In this season in Sittilingi, we get only brinjals, lady’s fingers, greens, cluster beans and tomatoes. But all of us have become endlessly creative in coming up with new recipes to cook these vegetables!
Educational measures
All over the world teachers and children are engaging virtually with each other and a vast variety of excellent educational materials and classes are available on the net. But all this is out of reach for our children and teachers because none of our villages have good internet connectivity.
Only the hospital campus has broadband connection in the valley but even that is often down. We always had to go out to bigger towns to access the net. But even that is not possible now. It is a familiar sight to see young men go around the valley with their phones and laptops searching for good signal spots under a tamarind tree or a particular rock where a 2 G signal at very low speed may be accessed. Women and children don’t have even this access . Most of our lady teachers don’t even own a cell phone.
While we believe that children learn more in the fields and homes while watching adults work than in the classrooms, the sad fact about today’s villages is that children are mostly exposed to adults watching TV serials or drinking alcohol and fights between family members most of the day.
Our teachers have brainstormed about activities which would force parents and children outside and encourage children to learn from their parents and grandparents observing plants, trees and insects around their farm and asking parents about them, drawing and writing about them, finding out from their grandparents how each millet is grown, writing about forest trees, finding out and recording weekly household expenditure etc. They have been preparing worksheets and learning materials in the old fashioned way and physically making sure they reach the children in the villages while maintaining physical distancing.
But working online, if not done properly can be torture for rural students too. Vennila, (name changed) a Thulir alumnus now studying in a private nursing college outside, has to mark her attendance on Google Classroom everyday. Though there are brilliant audio visual 3d materials available on the internet her professors have not been trained to access them or use them. They just upload difficult essays from the textbooks. None of Vennila’ s professors or the college management are even aware that there are villages in India where people have no access to smart phones or internet. Ram has been trying to help her and her classmates and says he has to struggle with the poor connectivity, the bad quality materials uploaded and the fact that both the professors and the student are only interested in fulfilling the mechanics and requirements of the operations but not in actual understanding or learning.
This is reality in rural India. There are many, many students like Vennila here!
Visitors & Volunteers
Students and teachers from Isai Ambalam School visited us in January. They talked about the importance of herbal medicine and demonstrated the process of making some simple herbal tooth powders and preventive medicines. The Thulir team taught the visitors some local crafts and songs.
Sam & Shiksha, primary school teachers from the U.S.A, visited us in February. They helped us with the classes for teachers and students.
Younger students and teachers of Marudam School visited us for one day in March. Both groups shared songs, dances, plays and tasty food with each other!
Dr. Arundhati finished her stint at THI and left to pursue higher studies. During her years here, she made a habit of putting all her loose change in a piggy bank and donated it to Thulir when she left.
All of us and especially the children were very touched by her gesture.
Folk Dance workshop
These are pictures of the five day traditional Tamil folk dance workshop conducted by Sri. Manimaran prior to the lock down.
Another dance workshop by Jyotsana and her team from Samkaram, Chennai, the end term parents’ meeting and the Annual day celebrations were cancelled due to the lockdown.
Funding
Even at the best of times, our tribal parents are not able to financially support a school like this. Now many of them have no jobs or an income. Thulir school needs contributions and support from its well wishers even to pay the teachers’ salaries for some years to come. Given the predictions of an economic recession,we were worried that Thulir may not receive the funding it needs. This is a real concern.
Friends at Asha Bangalore and Ein Zehntel Stiftung responded with sensitivity and understanding and acted very promptly to alleviate our fears. We thank them for their committed and constant support!
We still need more funds to restart farming and construction activities. We urgently need to build a dining hall, a store room , rooms for people to stay so that the land can be looked after. This is also essential at this time as construction work can provide livelihoods and income for people affected by the lockdown.
Please click >> here to download our brochure that can be shared online.
The virus has brought us all to a stop, to refocus, realign, rethink a lot of things. To re evaluate what is really important.
Let us hope the compassion, wisdom and unity millions of us around the world have felt will ultimately prevail and we will all come out of this together to create a new world, a better world for our children!
Stay safe and well.
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