Indigenous Tribes

The stage at 5:30am.

As night gave way to day.

A drone photography of Leon's guest house, with the village at the top.

Leon and his guest house staff.

Euan manoeuvres through the village.

The countryside.

Another local market.

Women of the Dongoria tribe.

A one day old goat and mom.

Three local village boys, looking quite western.

The orphanage school.

Wednesday, April 4^th.

Luckily, I went to bed early as Nico went out for the night’s festival celebrations again and didn’t come back until four, when he woke me up. I got up and showered and got organized and then decided to go out to check out the festival at 5:30. There were still lots of people around and the play was going loud and strong. The part I videoed had two women slapping another woman around. 

I went back to the guest house in case everyone was ready, but they weren’t. I told Pulak about the violence in the play and he told me it was a domestic drama, like a Bollywood soap opera. Because the ‘play’ was still going on, we couldn’t get our truck out and drive through the crowd. So, we waited. Nico and I took photos of Leon’s employees in their beautiful sarees. I asked Leon to join in, but he declined. He is an enigma, and only as friendly as he has to be. There is something odd about him, over and above the fact that he has run away from his life in Australia to live in this very remote location where he is isolated from the world.

I went back to the play again to see it at dawn and got a couple of good shots. Then back again and we all carried our luggage to the truck and then hung around watching and waiting. The play was still going on, but the crowd had thinned considerably. Finally, it ended and we were able to drive out of the village with all eyes staring at us and our monstrous truck.

Then we commenced a long drive to the town of Bissamcuttack and another weekly market. The road is full of trucks, one part was under construction and it was full of twists and turns which made it hard to pass. At one point we got stuck in a long line of trucks. At first we thought there was an accident, but it turned out to be a rail crossing. When we got to the market, Pulak gave us some information about the Dongria, which is apparently one of the rarest tribes. They live in the hills and come together once a week at the market to buy, trade and socialize. The women are very strong in this tribe and run the families. They wear three gold nose rings. We wandered around for an hour watching the interactions in the market.

Then we continued on in the truck to a town where we stopped to buy snacks before finally getting to our accommodation about 1:30, in Muniguda, at the New Hope Charitable Trust, a local NGO. As soon as we got there we were served a typical local thali vegetarian lunch. Then we checked into our simple, basic rooms. After that I went back to where we ate, because there was a teacher workshop going on and the group were having the same lunch we did. I was able to talk to a couple of them about very basic things. They are here to gain strength in teaching math and language (what else is new?) and how to keep students from dropping out. They have the same problem here as I encountered in Ghana. The state trained teachers don’t want to work in the remote rural villages where they often don’t speak the same language as the locals. Therefore, the community either has volunteers or hires local people and then train them to be teachers. When I was talking to one, a group gathered around. One guy wanted to know my salary. Then they went back to their workshop. I stayed and organized the material for the blog.

Euan told us about the New Hope Charitable Trust, which has been run by one local man for about thirty years. Most of his employees have been there almost as long. It was a local Indian NGO which provided doctors for diagnosis and treatment of diseases that were afflicting the local tribes people. They were instrumental in helping with malaria, leprosy and elephantitis. They gained the trust of the people and undertook different projects to benefit the community including an orphanage and school, and an old age home on the property where we were staying. Unfortunately, the government declared that these diseases were eradicated in India even though that was not the case. They were greatly reduced but New Hope knew there were still new cases, but their funding was cut because officially there was no longer a need. However, the NGO remains active in the community in different ways.

When it got a bit cooler in the late afternoon, we went for a walk. Pulak led us to another little village where we got to see the local people and interact with them. It makes all the difference having a local guide. He told us that because there are so many people in the country and they are encroaching on habitat, there are conflicts between wildlife, elephants specifically and people. This area is one of those areas during harvest time. The elephants are in the hills and can smell fresh vegetables and come down to help themselves.

We continued walking along a dirt track through the countryside to another village where we met other people. Pulak suggested buying some crackers from the local little shop. He picked out a whole bunch of little packets, not for us but for the children. So, I gave him 100 rupees to pay for it and he gave the bag to the kids. They were delighted and immediately went to a house where they opened all the packets and counted them out. Then they distributed them to all the houses. A local man who was up a sago palm tree, climbed down with a bottle of fluid from the tree for us to sample. Pulak contends it is great for the constitution.

On the way back at dusk, we stopped at the New Hope Orphanage and met the teacher, Mr. Jagdish Mishra, who had 11 of his charges introduce themselves to us. They were a diverse group of kids from early teens to early thirties, with downs, blindness, autism and mental and physical handicaps. As always when confronted by this type of experience I felt uncomfortable. I feel like they are being put on display, or that they are trying to get money out of my pocket. But, when we left and the kids came up and hugged us and thanked us and led us to their dormitories to show us where they sleep, I was touched. And to think about the dedication of this teacher, who has given up 25 years of his life to work with these kids, is mind boggling. He lives on site and goes to his village three times a month to see his wife. Then I thought about how lucky these kids were to be taken care of by this man and this NGO, and about the thousands of others in this country who probably get no help what so ever. And about the crap shoot of life, where you are born and how lucky you are if you are born healthy.