Long working week

Spent most of the week in the office/our home planning sessions and preparing upcoming events. World Toilet day is on 19/11 and we hope to do a big rally to promote toilet usage, weather dependant. Yesterday marked one month until I come home, it has been a fantastic experience so far but I am missing my loved ones lots now. Today was our second session teaching in Valipattu school where we are also due to start building a kitchen garden next week. Last week concentrated on healthy lifestyle and this week on vector bourne disease. We get off the bus in Checkmedu and walk 2 km to the school which is always nice.

Monsoon is back in force, we have been lucky to have a dry few weeks, but it has been varying degrees of raining for the last 2 days. This makes drying clothes very difficult and walking around in a constant state of moistness is hard but the world can't stop as it is raining. However, the state schools did close yesterday for a "Rain" day.

Went for dinner in Vaniyambadi which is only 30 minutes away as went to Tirrupattur last night which is 1hr 15 minutes away but good for buying banana corn flakes, sponges and shower gel. I had mushroom masala, chapatti and coffee which was fantastic! I am going to miss the food here but think I can adapt back to using cutlery. Relaxed weekend with a long awaited lie-in!










Road to Vallipattu.
















Teaching in a girls class, all the uniforms in the government schools are the same and only change depending on age and gender.
















4pm, time to go home.











Road to Checkmedu.
















Lots of piping being put in around the Alangayam and Nimmiyamputtur area. There are no pavements so "easy" for people to dig trenches with same equipment as we used for the vermicomposting. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vainu Bappu Observatory

Image
In Bangalore for the weekend, sat in the lobby and mooching off their wi-fi! Last weekend was relaxed as we have had a few weekends of 7-10 hours bus journeys and we went to Bangalore in the next state province today. Our neighbour’s uncle works in the Vainu Bappu observatory in Kavalur (Indian institute of Astrophysics) so we got the bus from Alangayam up the mountain. It is a lot cooler up there so was a really nice walk. The gardens were really well kept with several species of flowers. There were several telescopes in domes getting bigger as we walking further into the grounds. We all squished into the lift and went to the top floor to see the massive telescope. Sadly it was undergoing maintenance so the giant mirror was covered by a blue sheet but we got to see it rotate during testing. There was also a red mesh platform on the top floor around the bottom of the dome and you could see for miles in every direction. The forests and the mountains from there were incredibly beautif
Read more

Ain't no stopping us now

Image
Today was our meet and greet sessions in home town Alangayam which involved visiting the Primary Healthcare Centre, Block Development Office, all girls school and separate all boys school. Our needs assessment at the PHC has shown that vector-bourne is disease is an important topic to raise awareness for (mosquito protection) but the main health concerns here are sanitation and nutrition with linked rise in type 2 diabetes cases. Sanitation is a recurrent issue as many people and schools do not have toilets so people will just go, away from main roads, and then return to their routines. However, even places that do have toilets need awareness raising regarding basic good hygiene practises such as washing hands and brushing teeth. Type 2 diabetes is becoming more prevalent across India, there are lots of  high sugar content sweets/snacks/drinks that can be purchased cheaply that are becoming part of peoples regular diet. As a result, people are developing a higher tolerance for sugar w
Read more

REACT

Image
This week was a quiet one in the office as we attended 2 goalball events and PAGSUNG/Youth Alive’s mid-term review. The other project in Ghana, which I have mentioned before, is REACT who had 2 groups, 1 in Tamale and the other in Sandema near Youth Alive. This was their last week in Ghana and featured two goalball events that their project was building up to: a regional competition and a national competition. PAGSUNG attended the nearby regional competition at Tamale Polytechnic University while Youth Alive supported the Sandema team. The regional matches were between the different goalball teams from the communities that they have been working with, the winner of the regional progressed to the national competition on Thursday. During their time here, REACT’s focus was ch allenging the disability stigma. “In Ghana, over 300,000 live with a severe visual impairment. They're often undervalued by those around them - and as a result, excluded by society. All because of a lack
Read more