Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday morning brought us back to work on the compost pit.  With the digging complete, we moved on to building the brick partitioning walls and lining the six pits with plastic.  We got to learn how to lay bricks!  It was a lot of fun and so great to see progress being made.  This compost system will hopefully be used by CRHP as a demonstration site for villagers to come see how things are done so that they can implement similar systems in their own communities. 

After lunch, we had a session with the Young Farmer’s Club and learned about their impact in various villages.  We also learned about CRHP’s system called Participatory Rural Appraisal through which they track village progress and assess the living patterns (this helps them create maps and better understand how the caste system is impacting individual villages.

On Thursday we split into two groups and each traveled with members of the Mobile Health Team to a CRHP village (better known as project villages).  My group was able to walk around with a VHW named Pushpa as she did her daily visits.  We got to see how Pushpa checked a diabetic man’s urine sugar using a simple method as well as see a prenatal check up with a 21 year-old woman who was nine months pregnant.  We also visited the preschool in the village and the primary school, where 43 boys and 43 girls attend school every day.  A few of the girls performed a song and dance, and all of the children were friendly and happy to see us.   We also saw the government’s water truck delivery and watched with awe how people (mostly women and children) loaded their buckets and pails, and then hurried with them carried on their heads to drop off the water at home and return back for more.  Considering the three year drought, this is a really beneficial system and the water truck goes to the village every other day.  The villagers really appreciate this and do a great job conserving the water they receive.

In comparison with the non-CRHP village we visited during our first few days here, this village was much cleaner and the people seemed to be much more productive.  There was less waste accumulation and we noticed less animals wandering freely.

In the afternoon, we sat in on some of the training for the VHWs and observed how they use songs, dances, skits, and visuals as teaching and learning tools.  We were even challenged with coming up with our own dramas and visual tools on the topics of gender equity and mental health.