Wir sind dann mal weg... Paula und Hannah in Indien

Experiences and Thoughts about our visit to a tribal area ENG

It is already a little while back, but in the middle of September we were surrounded by dogs, cows, a lot of bananas, coconuts, govas, delicious vegetables and beautiful nature for a few days. Short: We lived at the farm of our director, near the border of the neighbour state Kerala. Why? We got to know another project of NMCT – the NABARD Project, which supports the native Indians.

Its goal is to foster 750 families in a social-economic way and to sustainably improve their self-confidence. The people are motivated and trained to use their land in an agricultural effective way (e.g. by cultivating mangos, amla and sabotha). Another option for a save and independent source of income is the establishment of livestock farming. Furthermore the people can get counselling in the fields of health, general rights and women empowerment.

As always, our task was to do documentation work. And even though we had some language difficulties it was a lot of fun! We were impressed how open the whole project was introduced to us, including its problems. However, we were shocked to get to know that some of these problems can be traced back to the colonial era.

Back then the Britons had not enough wood for building their ships and railways, so they decided to take the Indian recourses. This caused conflicts with the indigoes people, so that the “forest administration” was founded. Due to the administration, the “colonial fathers” could use and control the Indian forest areas without any problems. With the independence in 1947 the British left the country, but their established system was kept and affects people until today.

But who are these indigoes Indians, about whom we write all the time? They are the native habitants of the Indian subcontinent, today, however, with 8,6% (104 million people) a minority. The majority of the Indian population are people who migrated from central Asia around 1500 until 1000 B.C.

We honestly have to say that we did not experience the tribals as very different people. We were welcomed with the same hospitality as usual. The people lived in the same kind of houses we also see next to our children’s home and they were wearing the Indian clothes. Only very detailed observations and the explanations from the staff members made us see small differences. Elder women, for instance, are wearing no saree-blouse under their saree (by the way: the blouse was also introduced by the Britons). The tribals speak another form of Tamil, they sometimes have other rites, as well as they celebrate functions differently.

We want to say thank you for the chance this trip offered to us. It enabled us to get to know a new and very interesting side of India. Especially we are very happy that we started to learn more about the background of our Abhaya girls, as some of them are coming exactly from this tribal area!