Site Visit to the Timbaktu Collective Nidhi Srinivas July 5th, 1999

i left friday evening for a weekend visit to timbuktu. i talked to subba that morning and he suggested i get off the train at dharmavaram, where he would pick me up. this i did. it sounds easy enough but the bangalore train got there at 450 am, which meant i slept pretty fitfully. anyway i got off at the station, and wrote/slept for about an hour, in the waiting room. At 610 jb (he insists on being called that), one of the drivers for the collective, arrived and we drove onward. i keep forgetting how stunning it is to live in a place surrounded by parched hills. i once read a poem by alun lewis about the deccan hills, and i always recall it when i see these hills. they brood over a thirsty barren landscape, sentinels of a volcanic past, (their summits are studded with rocks from ancient eruptions). it is a hard uncompromising landscape. i stayed in a set of rooms, a short distance away from the garage and babuloo's place. each day i awoke and slept to the children's singing, their greetings to the dawn and the dusk. my room was in a house arranged around a courtyard, which was covered with drying neem. the roof like in the other houses here, is made of thatch, and in places sparrows have built nests. their twitters increase around dusk. the collective has expanded: they now have a kitchen/dining room. their meeting room is airy and capacious. they now host a global ecology program here in december, where american undergrads travel to different parts of the world on an educational program. babuloo is building a second-storey to his place, to give more room for his kids when they visit. my visit was open-ended and unplanned. but we did spend most of our time at the schools. i visited three of them, one at t itself, the nature school in chennakothapalli, and a third, a little further away. this last was run by mr satyanarayana, an enthusiastic and pleasant teacher. we looked at the craftwork on the walls, and watched the children finish their afternoon gardening. they piled the red earth into bunds by showering it with water, working in groups. each child specialised on one task: showering water, making bunds, tracing out canals for the water to flow through. subba and satyanarayana discussed ideas for children's activity. the proposed plots to grow vegetables were too ambitious, they decided. it was best to find another activity, and they came up with tracing a map of india, or creating spaces for groups to make drawings on the earth, or making a map of the village. as we readied to leave i looked around me. on a tvs we had wandered across fields, its thin tyres skirting deep frozen ruts, or balancing on the tapering bunds separating farms. now these fields all blended into a dusty horizon, with occasional patches of green. in the distance, to the left, were another range of hills. to the right, the way we came, there were clumps of greenery, places where borewells allowed growth of some cashcrops, like sunflowers. meanwhile the children had started to play. our arrival increased their excitement, and they played catch. with them was an older, mute child. his parents had asked the school to take him in, since he was unable to attend the government school. he played with enthusiasm, making a hoarse cry when someone missed the ball. when we left the children stood in a neat line, looking quite solemn, presumably told to accord respect. a bit embarrassing. on our way back we met some previous children in a t school that had to be closed. it was a sad story. the village was relatively new, created by bringing together two backward communities. but their mutual suspicion made it difficult to keep the school going. caste tensions finally led one group to spread rumors made about the female teacher's personal behavior. these children were now attending the government school. it was remarkable to see their happiness and enthusiasm at meeting subba and me; these were children being very natural. that evening many people working on the collective's projects sat together for a meeting, to discuss the "timbaktu mission and current perspective". two things i realized, sitting in as an observer, was that the collective had moved some distance from its original work, and that they would have to make some changes to accommodate their current work. t started as an alternative collective, interested in organic farming. today they run projects in three distinct areas: water-sheds, schools, and thrift. the first of these has also started work with dalits, since the success of the project requires dealing with existing caste problems. the thrift project seems less linked to the rest of the collective. the issue that concerns them is how to sustain these projects without losing a sense of mission. they don’t wish to fall into a "project-mode", by which they mean, becoming oriented to what a donor looks for, and seeking funds for immediate projects demanded by donors. contrast this to a situation, where your ideology and history (as an ngo) make you take up activities, and you lookfor funding for these existing activities. both the work taken up by t, as well as the complex demands of coordinating employees in these different areas, makes some system of management control inevitable. the question really is, can such a system evolve with a unique style, one mary termed as 'decentralised and non hierarchical', or will it entail a greater change within the culture. (the meeting was greatly enlivened by the sound of birds roosting in the roof, and the dogs fighting among themselves). later i watched a night class at the school. a former (and older) student taught the children about the mandals within anantapur district. he had already lectured them and was now listing all the mandals on the blackboard, the lantern giving him light. it was an experiment, to have student teach other students. the next evening subba and i walked up a hill. i am glad he came along. the steep ascent, gravel, rocks, slippery grass, and ever-present thorns (one impaled my foot) made it tough-going. worse i kept losing focus of where we where headed, though the journey was itself pleasant. somewhere we stopped for a bit, and looked down the slope to the valley. you could see the different houses, some visible with their thatched roofs, others with only their white walls. we then decided against climbing to the top of the hill, and instead veered left to a ridge that looked down the adjoining valley. after another ten minutes of scrub grass we were in a level field of tall grass, all withered yellow, sharp and crackling to the touch. at the end of this field was a gradual drop to the valley. we sat down on some rocks and watched the sun set. it was orange-red, a livid orb already sinking below the horizon. and that may be the best image to close this with. subba pointed to a distant set of hills, and explained that the collective had bought some land there. they were working with local villagers, helping them set up hill-watches. like at timbaktu, forest fires are a great problem in the summer. simhachalam leads people who climb these hills (like the one i was on) with thick leaves that they use to put out the fire. drinking water is essential. the fires increase the heat. they were trying to get such conservation measures in place in these new hills. so that is the image: a distant set of hills, below white squares of land yet to show grain, a forlorn village surrounded by green, and the wispy strands of red left by the sun. perhaps there are different ways of heading to the future: some aim at it (like we did, setting out for the summit) and sometimes we adapt to circumstances (like we did, veering to the ridge). and what future? many times asha's funding was mentioned with great appreciation, as a generous and non-troublesome donor (not demanding in checks, audits etc). seeing the children at the collective, i understand how important this funding is. i cannot properly describe the unusual charm of these children, their strange blend of deference and independence, of curiosity and courtesy, liveliness and good-nature. that evening after we got down, i caught some of the evening's hour of story-telling, as children recited stories. the evening was 'compered' by a child with an exam pad in his hand, in which he had listed all the performers for the night. he introduced and thanked them, after each performance. n