| Dear Friends |
June 2009
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| We are completely re-building a small hamlet for around 50 families. The work is going very quickly and we hope to have the first phase of the work - that is the houses - finished by the time this reaches you.
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| No matter how often I am immersed in the poverty in our work which affects all categories of the village people, I am sometimes brought up brutally by the shocking destitution I still meet. I keep telling myself that I still know very little about the effects of real poverty. |
| We tend to forget just how poor people can get. Once we have provided decent housing, water, medical care, etc, it is hard to remember the horrible original living conditions that were there before. So I would like to share with you what it was like in Kakanji Nagar when we first discovered it.
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| Our RTU motto is See-Decide-Act. The first two are fairly easy, it is the ‘Act’ part that tends to be left aside. For us this motto means that we look at whatever needs there may be in the area where any of us is working: housing, water, medical, children, schools, micro-credit, etc. So when we build a house we should also see if there are other needs for that family; or indeed any of the other families around. This is the integrated system that has always been in all RTU’s outreach.
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| So, Kakanji Nagar before we did anything. I invite you to look around your own home while reading this, just for the contrasts.
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| The most striking features are the appalling drains. This hamlet is on the edge of a large village and all the waste water with all the rubbish flows from there and through Kakanji Nagar. Since toilets are non-existent for most houses, the drains are used. The very sight of half a dozen such long drains is nauseating, but there is nothing these people can do about it – they are from the lowest of the low castes.
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| The huts in which all the families try to survive are really beyond description. All of them are made entirely from coconut fronds stuck straight onto the earth. I said to myself that I could not stay for 24 hours in these conditions. The huts were mostly about 6’x6’ – no more, sometimes less. How a family of five or six crammed into them I have no idea. I went into one hut to visit a man who had badly broken his thigh. His wife and four little girls were there. She was cooking on an open wood fire and I could not stay inside for more than 5 minutes, the bitter smoke was too much. There was no water source for these 50 huts. There were no toilets – the children used the open drains – and the adults? There were no bathrooms – so where the adults bathed I cannot say. No kitchens. No electricity. No water nearby. Absolutely no facilities. But lots of lively and very friendly children, all in need of clothes and medical care and everything else that children should have.
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| So, what are we doing now for these people? The first big need was for water, not only for their endless needs for water, but also because we cannot build without it. I divined four suitable places, a drilling rig bored down to plenty of water, and handpumps have been installed in strategic places.
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| Immediately we started building really delightful little houses: two rooms, a kitchen, a sitting-out verandah, toilet-cum-bathroom. They look attractive family homes. As one lady said: “I had resigned myself to living all my life in a miserable hut and could never dream of having such a strong, safe house.” For those who are interested, a house currently costs Rs.55,000 (around Ł730*, $1160, or €830).
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| We are already training one suitable lady as the health worker. We are also planning to build a centre for evening classes for the children with a play area, and for a meeting hall for the elders.
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| And so it goes on and on. It will be such an enormous contrast to what is there now: from a horrible slum to a delightful hamlet with all the necessary facilities, and eventually hard-top lanes with good drains, if the local government can be convinced of the need!
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| About the man with the broken thigh. How they all squeezed into their wretched hut at night is beyond me. In one corner on the mud floor was an open firewood cooking place. Extremely dangerous in a hut made entirely of dry coconut fronds. There was the wife and four tiny girls, one in the arms of the mother. After much persuasion the husband, confined to his plank bed, agreed to go to a good hospital. This treatment will take some months and the wife, with the baby, must stay with him. So we have admitted three of the children temporarily to one of our Children’s Villages. Since there is now a total loss of any income, we have also included them on our home sponsorship programme. Eventually the husband will be cured and able hopefully to start earning, then the family will be united in the new house we will build for them.
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| This is how See–Decide–Act operates. Now a report from our Rural Housing Department... |
| I am Saravanan, Manager of the Rural Housing department. I am working at RTU since 1991. After completing my school studies, I did a Technical course. Then in RTU I was working in various departments. For the past 5 years I am fully involved in the rural housing programme.
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| Identification of beneficiaries: We do a rural appraisal in most of the villages and identify the poorest of the poor. Then we screen them through our survey team. Most of the beneficiaries are poor with a tiny plot of land in some cases provided by the government for housing purposes. RTU has also bought land for individuals (and even for a few villages) in order to build them a house. In an emergency, we immediately build the houses without any delay and give enough clothes, necessary household materials and other assistance for all of them.
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Sometimes we might see lot of huts in a rural area like Kakanji Nagar. Those families suffer a lot, even for their daily survival. In those places, first we survey them and provide immediately all the necessary items for their survival, then we look into their needs; housing, water, medical support, educational support for children, etc. We build the whole village up. This is called ‘group housing’. At present we are busy with a group housing project at Kakanji Nagar in Devathanapatti (a large village not far from Kallupatti). We also build small houses for old people who are not cared for by their biological children and relatives.
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Construction details: Our regular masons measure the size and mark for foundation. Normally the house owner digs the foundation and fills it with the support of our mason. If a household does not have adequate skilled persons we also provide labour. We complete a house within 15-20 days from the day of measurement, including whitewash and painting. After completion of a house, we encourage the people to save minimum Rs.50 to Rs.100 per month in secured schemes with the post office or bank for their yearly house renovation expenses. Most of the beneficiaries save to take an electricity facility or expand the house within few years, and we encourage them to do so.
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Sometimes teachers at Government Schools or at Kallar Schools (for remote and ’backward’ tribal peoples) in a rural area will approach RTU to construct classrooms, toilets and water facility for rural poor children. We do the survey and construct classrooms, toilets and hand-pump facility as per the need of the place. Our achievements to date include: 7491 houses built for the poor; 2073 bore-wells and hand-pumps; and 14 open wells.
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I wish to thank all our supporters for this good programme going on well with all your generosity, Saravanan.
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There is much more to read and look at in the full version of this Newsletter, which can be downloaded from elsewhere on this website!
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| Cordially yours, |
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| Brother James
Kimpton |
