Visit to Timbaktu
Collective,
Chennekotha Palli, Anantapur Dist, A.P.
November 10, 2002
By Srikanth Voorakaranam
(Asha-Bangalore)
The main purpose of my visit was to do some preliminary planning for the Asha meeting in December that is going to be held at the collective. Alongside that, I did get an opportunity to see some of the work being done at the collective. This report is based on those impressions.
Getting there:
There are buses (at very good frequency) from
Bangalore going towards Anantapur and Hyderabad. From Bangalore it takes about
4.5 hrs to get to Chennekothapalli (aka C.K.Palli), which is 50 kms from
Anantapur. (The Bus Drivers make at stop at C.K.Palli upon request).
The collective has an office in C.K.Palli and it
also runs a day school in the neighbourhood. I first met Narayana, one of the
members of the collective. Narayana
graduated from IIT Bombay in the early 1990s and since then has been part of
the collective. He teaches at the day school during the morning and in the
afternoons he teaches at the nearby government school also on a voluntary basis
(the intention is to contribute positively to improving the conditions in the
state-run schools as well). He also practices homeopathy for taking care of some
of the common health issues faced by the children. A few orphans also stay
along with Narayana in his house. The rapport that Narayana enjoys with the
children in the school was really great to see. The children treat him more
like an elder brother (and less as a teacher)- not surprising considering the
kindness and patience that he radiates.
The number of children admitted into the day school
has been consciously kept small, to ensure a good teacher-student ratio. The
poorest children in the village are given preference (with the school making a
name for itself in the last few years, the relatively well-off in the village
also now want to get their children admitted into this school, but it is
discouraged).
Narayana showed me around the resource center that
was set up recently through Asha’s support. They initially had a lot of
difficulty in finding cheap, reasonable premises and land, but luckily the
place in question became available and they purchased it. It consists of 2
large rooms. One of them houses the library, the science lab and a crafts
workshop.
The library has a large collection of books (most of
them have been picked up from children’s book trust etc, and from a children’s
balananda sangha in Hyderabad when it went out of business). The books cover an
entire spectrum of topics: biographies
of leaders, story books, books on science and some textbooks. Children from the
village (not just those studying at the Timbaktu day school) drop in when it is
most convenient for them and read the books. Since the school is in Telugu
medium (as with most other schools in rural India, the medium is the local
language), it is imperative to have good books in the local language to engage
the children and the library is in a good position in that regard.
The craft center allows the students to try their
hand at a variety of things like carpentry, electrical work. The laboratory
also was reasonably well stocked with different chemicals, but was short on
accessories (Narayana mentioned that in contrast to the govt school which gets
a lot of science material like the burettes from the govt, and kept under lock
and key for the most part, the Timbaktu school ensures active use of the
resources by its children).
Narayana took me on a TVS to the Residential school
at Timbaktu, which is about 4 kms from the day school at C.K. Palli (about half
of this was over the highway, and then there is a kuccha road which winds up
into the hills). As others have remarked in their previous reports, the level
of greenery and the afforestation efforts lauched by the collective on the
nearby hillsides become apparent as one gets closer to Timbaktu.
The Residential school caters to children from the
surrounding villages who are orphans, or have only one parent, or come from
difficult family circumstances. It has classes till VII. The collective didn’t
have the resources to expand beyond class VII (another difficulty arises with
issues related to keeping boys and girls together in a residential setup as they
group older). Initially the collective used to send back children to their
homes after class VII, but last year, one of the girl children got married off
by her parents after that. This prompted the collective to make a decision to
continue having just the girl children continue their education in the
residential school even beyond class VII.
The school is unlike many schools that dot the
Indian countryside. Children’s imagination is given a free hand, and they paint
the walls, put up charts, decorate bottlegourds and hang them from the ceiling.
The children have built up a huge collection of seeds also (they go on a
morning walk everyday, and bring back different varieties of seeds). They sell
them to the collective and make some money. They are also given a piece of
land, where they grow vegetables and sell it to the collective’s kitchen (The
amount they get paid is again deposited in a bank account in each child’s name
and given to the child when she leaves school). Anantapur being a severely
drought prone district, a sense for water conservation in ingrained in
everything that the collective does. The bath water is routed to a pond from
where it is used by the children for watering their vegetable garden. The
collective also bought 2 cows recently, and the children also take a lot of
interest in tending to them. Here again
the love with which the children greeted Narayana was touching, and even when
talking to a stranger like me there were no apparent inhibitions.
Construction on a couple of new rooms for toilets is
currently going on. Solar panels have been installed on a few of the huts which
provide enough electricity for one or 2 small lights at night time (apparently
the reliability of these is pretty good; this is the collective’s only source
of electricity).
Dinesh, who is involved with the Seeds of Hope work
that got funding from Work An Hour, took me next to the land where the work is
going on. They have de-silted a pond and prepared gullies (under the
government’s food for work program) so that when the rains come, the water from
the nearby hills just don’t flow down and get wasted. There is a well that does
have some water and this would help in its recharging as well. Two rooms are
under construction next to the field which will house the 2 farmers who are
primarily involved in the cultivation. Fencing of the area is also being taking
up to prevent encroachments and crop damage by wild boar and cattle. Dinesh
also was interested in trying out paddy cultivation techniques which requires
much less irrigation than normal. Two large solar panels provide the power to
run a flotation pump to get water from the well from irrigation (I started the
motor and it seemed to be doing a good job of pumping up the water). The land
for the Seeds of Hope work was also chosen as to be representative of the
general conditions in drought prone areas (not too fertile, having low
irrigation facilities) and also which has not been contaminated by chemical
fertilizers for the last 6-8 years.
Rainfall had been more scarce than normal this year
in Anantapur, and this has created impediments in executing the work at a
faster pace. The seed multiplication and disbursement will take a couple of
years to evolve into their
Every Sunday at 6 PM, the children assemble in the light of a lantern and conduct their own cultural program. One child takes the responsibility of putting the program together every week. She goes around the place in the afternoon noting down the names of volunteers (from both adults and children) and the item they would like to perform. The participation at the program was excellent. A lot of children (of various age groups) came forward without inhibitions to sing songs (all the children provide chorus to the one doing the singing), tell poems etc and one of the girls provided instrumental support through the Tabla.
The collective has come a long way since the days it
was started. In those days, they got the land at throwaway prices because it
was in a hilly area with little water facilities etc. Over the years, they have
painstakingly built up a really nice community habitation (most of the
collective members, several of whom teach in the school, live there). The
collective is also engaged in various community awareness activities such as
promoting awareness about Panchayat Raj and other initiatives, documenting
instances of violence against women (domestic or otherwise) etc.
After dinner (the Ragi rotis were delicious!), I
retired to one of simple guest rooms.
Bablu (who, along with his wife Mary, is the main motivation behind the
collective) was right when he mentioned that the silence at night can be very
loud! The day starts early at Timbaktu, and I woke up at 5AM the next morning
and headed back to Bangalore under a panoramic view of the sky dotted with countless
stars.
The collective members are sincere in their
involvement with the work. The schools it runs foster learning in a loving
environment, helping in providing a well-rounded ‘education’ to the
underprivileged. Its contribution and value as a model for a child-centered
‘alternate’ education philosophy is significant. The importance of long-term
involvement by Asha with its projects and of sustained keen personal
involvement by Asha volunteers, Shankar in this case, is also underscored by
the significant accomplishments of this group over the years.