Tuesday 3rd March - Heather's entry

Tuesday – I’m excited this morning as today we are to leave Chennai and head out along the coast which was affected by the Tsunami in 2004 (how strange it is to realise how that disaster affected us as no other event as we watched and saw the death rate rise and the devastation to so many places) to visit the Irula tribal village near Mamallapuram.

But first we are to meet the founder of the Irula Tribal Women’s Welfare society Krishnan in the hotel and what an inspiration he turns out to be! His commitment to making a difference to the tribal people of India began , when as a young man, he was staying with some ‘tribals’ for his studies and following an accident he arranged to take a seriously injured woman to hospital and ended up giving his blood as a transfusion to save her life and in return the family sold their cow to give him their life savings in return for his humanity. He went on to found the organisation to encourage the tribal people to use their knowledge of the forest and its creatures to earn an income – today we will visit the snake catchers who milk the snakes they catch to sell the venom as an antidote to the hospitals.

But first the village – on arrival we are greeted by the women leaders and a gang of children all of whom recognise Alix and shout cheerful greetings! The people here were gathered together into a village after the Tsunami and have created their own community but not without difficulty – there is a local disagreement over the access road to the village and they still walk a fair distance to collect drinking water. But one woman proudly shows me the rose bushes and herbal plants she has managed to grow in the village and each of us is given a large marigold (from her garden) as our welcome gift.

They appear quite settled into the houses and the village they have created and I wonder how quickly the hunter gather tradition is gradually disappearing in the world. The challenge will be I guess to create a sustainable income for the families – many of the men are away from the village working on a construction project. There are still fishing nets and I ask if they catch many fish – less now than before the Tsunami as the freshwater was turned to salt.