By Eve Hall
We left Poona at about 5am and drove into the sunrise. The dawn came up like thunder but the straight road lined with Banyan trees had such a hypnotic effect I kept dozing off. Drove for hours through moonlike country. The road is also lined with drab men and women cracking stones --part of the millions doing the same building relief work all over Maharashtra State. The intention may be mobilising, and even the result -- but not the actual labour. Because of the drought and relief work, India has already reached its 1974 target for roads. There were more men than women working on this stretch.
The cattle is hideously bony. Women wear sombre sarees here -- maroon, dark purple, olive green, dark red. Men all wear white turned to dun., but huge and brilliant turbans in red or yellow -- the only splash of colour, even the red on the painted horns of the bullocks had faded.
Sholapur
At the Hindustani Christian Church Mission here we met Stina Larssen, who runs three village feeding schemes for Oxfam. She's one big hearted and sensitive lady. Speaks English with a mixture of Swedish and Indian accent, and speaks Marati as the village people, not the townspeople do. She fears that the rains will fail again --- fears it personally, says she won't know how to face up to th death and disaster that may come. She tells of over fives in the villages who are bewildered at being turned away and refused food -- of three girls who keep coming back in spite of being chased away: because they are girls and get almpost no food in their poverty-stricken home., what there is, is reserved first for the men and the boys.
The death rate seems to have gone up a little in the villages around. The immediate cause is ususally something like pneumonia, measles of chicken pox. But undoubtedly the children get things that and don't live through them because they are so malnourished.
In spite of the feeding programme, the kids have not gained weight, because they now get almost nothing at home. One shudders to think what would have happened to them without the feeding scheme ... what's happening in other villages, where we aren't feeding.
There have been several cases of what seems to be cholera. One child was brought to the mission's mobile dispensary and rushed to hospital where it died. Then the grandmother and several others. No official confirmation that it was cholera, but all the symptoms were there. Rabies too -- recently 17 people were bitten and brought to the clinic and hospital. Several died. People won't kill the dogs, just chse them away from the village. When stina realised that there must be a rabid dog roaming around, she and a colleage tracked it down and shot it.
We went with Stina to one of the local cotton mills. No union is allowed there and children of around 12 are emloyed. A real sweat-shop. In the Sholapur bazaar that evening, we saw a village couple selling their rings at a silver-smith; and a woman with two children trying to sell a brass plate.
Feeding starts early in the villages because the women go off to relief work before 8 a.m. We set off with Stina at dawn, picked up five volunteers and rattled towards the villages. Dropped two volunteers and milk powder at each of the first two villages, where the children were already waiting, cards and plates at the ready.
We stopped at the third village, the largest, where Oxfam feeds about 450 children and some breast feeding mothers, Stinnsays the Sarpanch (the village headman) here has been most cooperative. When he was approached he didn't say "yes, yes" and only then face the problems. He saw them clearly right away. "How to get pots and firewood?" he asked. "We'd like to think about it and let you know." Two days later he came back -- with everything organised.
The Girls are the wors off at the moment said Says Stina. "I think the distinction between girls and boys is worse than the caste system".
Stina wrote in a letter to Poona yesterday: "To turn away the older children when they come for food, that hurts inside." But she's ruthless when it comes to applying the rule. (Under fives, if they are severely malnourished, are permanently brain-damaged. Older children stand a good chance of complete recovery once the bad times are over. That's why Oxfam is feeding 20,000 under fives, hopes to be feeding 30,000 by the end of June.)
I watch Stina as she calls back an older sister who tries to slip away with her baby sister's high protein biscuit - she takes it from the older girls hand, puts it firmly into the little one's...as the situation gets worse, it's harder for the older kids to feed their brothers and sisters. I see a boy look round guiltily and slip in a mouthful -- and I don't know whether to look at him hard so he won't do it again, or to look away so that he does.
The kids look fairly grim here, really poor. One boy of about two looks as bad as anything I've seen in Africa -- half his hair gone, swollen belly and cheeks.
People are obviously poorer in Sholapur. In the village around Pona, there's a lack of food and no new clothes, but no tatters yet. Here some kids are naked, the others in rags. Even the sarees have holes in them or are the result of cannibalisation: 3 sarees stithed together to make one.
The sun is already brassy as we drive away, a little comforted at the thought of 1000 little bellies happily full. We pick up the other volunteers, and Stina turns to me and says: "And now we have another feeding programme, a private one not helped by Oxfam, that we hold under a tree." The others laugh as we pile out of the Landrover for a picnic breakfast. They always do this explains Stina: "It's good for the stomach and for the team spirit." Chapatis and curried omlette followed by squash and biscuits. Cows and cowherds come past; a line of women carrying water pots, singing; Stina says that sometimes a little goatherd comes past playing a flute. Moonscape can be very beautiful.
We come back to find that there has been a problem with the fourth feeding scheme. Evangelism and feeding have become mixed up and sections of the village have become very hostile. There are large stones on the track and threats of stone throwing. No Maratas come to the feeding. If the hostility continues, the feeding scheme will have to be stopped - the programme must be accepted by all the villagers.
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How do kids and puppies with no food inside them still manage to scamper? Still want to?
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