Kerala

Hello
Just a quick note to tell we are well and travelling in Kerala. We had a great wrapup meeting with the SUCHI team on Monday. Deb..I think I am bringing home all of the info we need to write the progress reports. We travelled by train 12 hours to Allepy Kerala. Stayed a wonderful Guest house along the back waters of Pumba River. We had a awesome trip on a houseboat thro the backwaters of Allepy area. We saw the sunset over the Arabian Sea.We are presently in Cochin for the day and will travel back to Vellore tonight. We fly home late tomorrow..and home on Saturday Thanks for your prayers and good wishes as we continue our travels . see you soon Ron and Toos

More villages...Sunday

Hi

We travelled today thro a different mandal- Jadamari west of Chittoor. We saw a bit different side of village development. We saw strive between High caste and low caste. Glory talked to the villagers about the difficulty getting water when it was not available in their village. Woman had many sad stories of being yelled at, rock thrown and in places it was not wise for young girls to travel to get water. SUCHI team was with us all day and they area dedicated knowledgeable.

WEhad lunch at their training centre near Ramgampet. One of the SUCHI staff member's Father passed away earlier Sunday morning and we attended a Hindu wake with the SUCHI team. We just arrived back from a wonderful dinner at a local restaurant here in Vellore.

We will spend tomorrow in the SUCHI office getting the info we need to fulfill our report committment to CIDA. Iam unable to download videos so we'll continue this blog when we return home. All in all we saw a lot of wells and villages and we both feel this trip has been a success. led

We have left SGUS and arrived in Vellore with SUCHI.

It has been a few days with no blog. So here goes. All is well !!! We finished up at SGUS on Thursday. What a wonderful week or is that awesome. They had a gathering of children dancing and villagers to wish us farewell..to Mr Ron and Mrs Toos. Actually I thought they had arranged all of this to celebrate my birthday. Happy 80th Nick !!(Feb 5). We saw all of the wells at SGUS ..22 drilled wells 2 in progress and 2 Village Meeting completed. They have assured me that the last 6 wells will be completed by the end of March. Joanna, Biswajit promised all of the data to you by the time we return. We flew down to Chennai on Friday and Paul and Glory Vijayakumar picked us up. They explained the SUCHI program to us on Friday. They have completed 30 CIDA-HAVE wells and 1 HAVE only well. Today, Saturday we visited 7 villages where we had saw Tubewells and visited with many villages near Chittoor..where their program centre is located. Traffic is still crazy but seems to be more civilized than West Bengal. Glory and Paul have a somewhat different philosopy. They use water as a stepping stone to total village development is areas of health, hygiene, education and economic improvements. They teach villagers in all of these areas and then encourage the villagers to take ownership by contributing to these new resources they have received. They have a team of field staff that work with the villagers over a 5-7 year period to inprove their quality of life. One of the major highlights was our final stop today where we visted a village where we have supported a new well and EcoSan Toilets for each home. The first toilets this village has ever had. All villages of this lower class do not have toilet facilities. It was exciting to see the enthusiasm of these villagers. The next two villages where Toilets will be installed are already in process ( several mmetings have already taken place). We receive Coconut milk direct from the coconut from each of the villages we visited and we determined that 7 cups of Coconut milk in one day is more than enough. We are both well and enjoying our stay with Paul and Glory. Toos was most exited about a hot shower this morning..the first since leaving Canada. Jenn W ..we have over 3 hours of videos on this computer so editting and making a HAVE video will take some work.
We pray all is well with each of you and we'll write again
the video is installing the Pipe in a tubewell in West Bengal
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Day 5 and day 6 New wells and Village meetings for more new wells

We left Mon AM for the south part of West Bengal near Digha. On the way we saw 2 new wells drilled in 2009 and then met with a village to setup a new well near Digha. The meeting was in a village with 80 families nar the Orissa border. That evening we walked the beaches and in the morning with Chai saw the sun rise over the Bay of Bengal. We came back home that day and we were able to see the conclusion of the well being drilled which we assisted with on our first. Assist is not the right word rather observed!!! It was great to see the whole technique of a well being drill by water jet. The interesting part yesterday is that they removed all of the drill tubes (steel) and continue to fill the hole with water and when all 32 lengths of 20 fooot pipe was removed thay inserted 600 feet of 1.5 inch PVC tubing with 20 feet of filter on the bottom in the well hole. The pipe was all pre assembled and with 20 people it went in the well hole in 3-4 minutes!! They would add the 100 feet of 4 inch and the pump today (wed). They will let it set for a day then pump it out. We have pics of a well finished 1 week ago and today we will see another one being drilled. I believe we have videos of almost all parts of the process (we won't see a pad being poured but I can imagine. We are here for Feb 3 and Feb 4 and off to Chennai and SUCHI on Friday.
We arrived home tonight Wed from another busy day. We saw two new wells and one being drilled. This is with a partner of SGUS in another Blaock (40 km away). We had an amazing lunch ..too much. We were entertained by a High School here HAVE supported a well in 2009..Jamitya Adarsha High School Jamitya. (Matangini Block). We will more detail later.
Ron and Toos

Day 4 in Mayna Block

Another awesome day. We started our journey after another interesting but yummy breakfast. The food has been excellent and we are not losing any weight. Today we visited two well sites and several village visits (about 60 km from SGUS) ...we must have received at least 12 bouquets of flowers. We think we will give them to the patients receiving eye operations today. They stay overnight and leave the next morning.
Our first visit was to Changrachak Village. This well supports 60 families of 5 to 8 members each. This village is totally self sufficient which is amazing to see. Next we had a super lunch at the home of our contact in Mayna Block... Anil Mondal. The whole family watched us eat after serving us... we feel like royalty here but it is probably because we use utensils which is very uncommon in this country.
Our second well was in the village of Donachak. We drove down the narrow red roads as far as we could go and then walked along a cobble stone path for about 10 - 15 minutes through rice fields to reach the well. It has been in operation since September '09 and serves 55 families.
Our next stop was a village meeting to explain to the villagers what their responsibility would be when they receive a HAVE well. Biswajit explained all the details and they agreed to fulfill their part of the project and later he told us that it would take about a month to have the well installed. Their committee will consist of 4 women and 5 men. This village, Sudampur, has no electricity and a population of 1200 people. They also have a small children's centre with over 100 children attending... wow! That was a busy day and we thought we were heading home when as we were nearing SGUS the van suddenly stopped and Biswajit said: "Let's go and visit my old school." We spent the next hour talking to grade 10 students (who were lodging there to prepare for up coming exams) about Canada, why we were in India and to share some songs with each other. They requested Jingle Bells. At the end, many of the students wanted our autographs.... we were surprised, amazed and humbled.
We finally got home at 8:30p.m. just as the eye clinic was starting the operations for 16 patients. Each operation takes approximately 10 to 15 minutes so they should be done by 11:30 tonight and we will have a house (hospital) full of guests resting over night.
We hope to post some photos and videos soon ... we've got lots of both.
Keep the prayers coming for the crazy traffic! We hear it is cold in Haliburton!! We hope all is well with everyone.
God bless,
Toos and Ron

SGUS Day 3

Our trip continues. Today we visited 4 wells Tajpur-Kakra;Barurbheri; Bibhishanpur; Kakra High School.(Have only project) Deb ...2 of the four villages today have more women than men on their committee. Each Village has a bank account setup with a woman and a man as co-signers. In each village the number of people using the wells is increasing as other wells in the area become defunct.(not HAVE wells but Government wells which are drilled deep enough).

I want to mention that the gardens using the excess overflow water are being developed and many look really good. This area has had no rain since August 2009. Even then the rain was far less than normal for this area. One lady told us that over 200 families or ~1000 people are using the well. She can even hear people pumping at 10PM. As always it has been a very positive response to our visits. In the past 2 days we have visited 11 wells. All in all the project is going much more smoothly than the roads. Biswajit has a Suzuki Maruti Omni mini mini van which can handle as many as 9 people on these the 4 foot wide roads into the villages. They have an excellent driver, Sanja. On the first day we saw a well being drilled with the Water Jet pumping system. In takes 5-6 days to drill down to ~700 feet. We hope to see the well installed on Tuesday. They have finish the first group of 15 wells and have all the villages setup for the next 15 wells . They have 3 teams to drill the wells and all are working at this time. We saw #16 (completed in late January) and #17 is being drilled. They hope to finish this group of 15 by the end of March. (total 30 wells).

We have taken lots of videos and pictures which I will upload when I get to a high speed system. Toos is loving most parts of the trip...I will elaborate(bathroom and traffic not so much). The food, the hospitality of Biswajit, Kalpana and all of the SGUS team is awesome.

Toos and I visited the local market ( nearly got run over by a bull) !!. We will observing a EYE clinic tomorrow night as SGUS with 25 Cataract operations planned.

The weather here is cool..10-12 at night and 20 -25 in the daytime. They have not seen it as cold in a long time. Warmer than home from what I hear.

We will keep in touch

WE are arrived safety in Calcutta at 3AM this morning!!!!

We had an excellent day meeting BESU people and saw a well being drilled. We will send more details later.