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