SAM Play- and Study Centres

At some of my visits to SAM's play and study centers for children I got to see some wonderful cultural programs that the children themselves had arranged for me. The centers are an after-school arrangement for children that are being rehabilitated after child slavery but also for any children in the neighborhood that need support. Only poor children come to the centers as richer parents pay tuition and other arrangements for their children. In the centers, children get help with their homework and preparations for exams, they get to play and enjoy themselves in a safe environment and the aim is to build up their self esteem. On top of this there are weekly meetings called children's parliament where the children amazingly not only learn to work democratically, debate and prepare for the future, but more importantly they take hand of their own study center and work on improvements in their own villages. This structure of working with the children is extremely empowering for them and as children's parliaments have been spreading all across India these past few years I am eagerly whaiting to see what changes we can expect from the world's biggest democracy.


In this clip, two children are doing a little 'song-act' about a young couple that are discussing if they should get married and the woman is making remarks about a ring, jewelery and shoes that the man should then provide her with.
Kannski svolítið eins og 'Kanntu brauð að baka?' lagið :)

In Kanchipuram

On the 26th and 27th of October 2007 I visited Kanchipuram for the second time. As before, Raj's guiding and planning was excelent. Raj is the project manager of all of SAM's work in Kanchipuram town. He is building his family a house in a nice quarter of the town. He has a wife who works in a kinder garden and two daughters. Raj's mission in life is to eradicate child labor and abolish all the violence of children like child marraige and female infanticides. When Raj got married he did what most people in Tamil Nadu find unthinkable, he didn't ask for any dowry from his parents in law! Dowry problems like lifelong debts of brides parents, violence and death of young wifes are huge problems in India. With growing economy and stronger longings of the middle class, the problem is getting worse.



At the end of this second visit, Raj took me to visit these two Irular men. They are relatives and one of them has a wife and two children. They all live together in this tent close to Raj's new house. The family's work is to pick rags and all kinds of junk and sort them for recycling. They get paid per kilo when they hand it in. You can see how they have spread the garbage around for drying and sorting.

Most villages and towns don't have any garbage schemes. So behind ones house or a no mans land close to ones home is where people dump their garbage. Many poor people make their living from collecting the recyclable things. In the cities of India there are many quarters where inhabitants all live in tents like this. In Mumbay (former Bombay) as much as half of inhabitants live in slums. In the south, in Bangalore and Chennai (former Madras) the situation is better.

It seemed to me ... all the effort made to make positive social, economical and environmental changes in India ... are done by NGO's. And where do the NGO's get their money to work? From the western countries mostly so keep it up!

Svífum seglum þöndum

Nú hverf ég aðeins frá stopulum frásögnum um Indlandsferð til að skrásetja gleði mína yfir að vera loksins komin á siglinganámskeið eftir drauma í tuttugu ár. Allt hefur sinn tíma. Hér eru nokkrar myndir frá degi nr. 2. Það er Siglingafélag Reykjavíkur - Brokey, sem heldur námskeiðið.
Þetta verður annars bara frábært sumar sýnist mér, ég á reyndar eftir að klára töluvert af verkefnum fyrir HÍ og verð ekki búin með þau fyrr en um miðjan júní, en er komin á fullt í sumarvinnu hjá Vinnuskóla Reykjavíkur við að skipuleggja Grænfánastarf þar. Naflastrengurinn nær auðveldlega frá Landvernd og niður á umhverfis- og samgöngusvið Reykjavíkurborgar því aðeins nokkrir metrar eru á milli húsanna, Skúlatúns 6 og Borgartúns 10-12. Reyndar svolítið skrítið að vera núna að vinna í glerhýsinu sem smám saman skyggði á Esjuna úr gluggunum okkar hjá Landvernd. Og sem allt hristist og nötraði vegna þegar verið var að sprengja fyrir.
Fleira skemmtilegt. Fyrstu vikuna í júlí verðum við Sólveig vinkona uppi á Fimmvörðuhálsi í skálavörslu. Það verður þá 4. sumarið mitt sem ég tek viku þar. Það er aaalgjör sæla. Háls á milli tveggja jökla, útsýni til allra átta, svakalega hreint loft, veður og vindar, sólarrafhlaða fyrir 2 perur og gemsahleðslu, bræddur snjór/jökull fyrir vatnsnotkun, friður og ró hálfan daginn og skemmtilegt fólk hinn helminginn. Ég veit ekki hvort ég á nokkuð að vera að tala um þvagskálina sem er bæði fyrir konur og karla (sú eina sinnar tegundar í heiminum - sérsmíðuð), eða kúkaföturnar. En það er nú bara sjarmi. En ég VERÐ að minnast á að ef þið ætlið að ganga yfir þá er þarna allra veðra von og alveg bannað að vera í bómullarfötum og að hafa ekki með sér þokkalega regnheld hlífðarföt. Ull, ull og aftur ull og svo eitthvað flís ef vill. Ég er oft skíthrædd um útlendingana sem komast yfir í gallabuxum og bómullarbolum, bara á heppninni.

On to Tamil Nadu

The next three months I spent at a Human Rights Organization: Social Action Movement, and got to know loads of nice people in Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu is the southernmost state on east coast. I posted two posts now about the beginning of that stay on the Icelandic Church Aid's website. Here are the links:

Fréttabréf I

Fréttabréf II

In the footsteps of elephants

After the course in Bangalore, me and a Danish friend went to Munnar and had a great time Hiking in the mountains and exploring the place with a grate Rikshaw driver who was also our hiking guide. Some part of the way there were tracks, but they wern't sheep or peoples tracks like I know so well from Iceland. They were elephant tracks!! Weeeery exotic for me. We also saw a place where they sleep and lots of pooh! The interesting part is that the paths they make are quite narrow.

The most difficult part of the one day hike we made were the leaches. Small black creatures that bite through the skin and suck blood. And they are so fast to crawl up the shoes and onto your leg. I was the lucky one as my sneakers were tight and I could put my pants into the socks. But the guide was barefoot in sandals and my friend had wide sneakers that gave a free way for the leaches into her shoe.

Munnar is a beautiful place in the mountains in Kerala with lots of tea plantations around. And tea plantations are really beautiful. The climate was also good, but for the first time in India we had to fight the cold as it was also raining quite a lot. It is a very popular place for South Indians to go for honeymoon. Surprisingly we met the couple we had just attended the wedding off!