Rajoda Village, beautiful colours and life

This post is the other half of our visit to Dewas, on our first field day trip. In the morning, we visited the Dewas office and in the afternoon, we were taken to Rajoda village where we met a group of ladies who are in a SHG (self help group) and a farm. Why did we go to these places? Concept Society has been involved in assisting the lives of the people in Dewas for the past few years.

One program run by Concept Society is to teach people that working together towards a common goal will enable success for the whole community when looked at in a savings context. Self help groups are assembled and they all contribute to a communal savings fund, each tracking their own inputs and when the group has enough money- they purchase an item that will benefit the community and generate income back to the group when they rent out that item to neighbouring locations. Agriculture is another area where Concept Society is heavily involved and I won't even attempt to explain in my own words what is achieved here as I really don't know enough about the process or land to do it justice.

But first, let me share with you the welcome we received from our first village visit since arriving in Indore.

Hemal pictured here with the ladies of the Self Help Group (SHG). She is like a queen in these parts due to the amount of positive impact her work has had. Hemal is the founder and CEO of this NGO and has been working tirelessly in these villages since 2005.

Some of the children that came out to see us.

This was really special. The women sung us the welcome song of their village:

The kids were amazing and friendly. There was one little girl though who made us work a little harder for her attention. She had pigtails and a small look of attitude on her face, sighing loudly and flicking her pony-tails over her shoulders as she looked at us; indicating she didn't really have time to bother with the likes of us. I loved her. She reminded me of me when I was little.

Here she is <3

I took this video of her as I wanted to capture her flicking her hair. Managed to get a small part of it when she was waiting for a photo to be taken by Tyler:

I asked the ladies of the village to tell me their name:

Rajoda Village- me with the ladies

Just outside the back door

Saying goodbye

Group photo with Hemal, Anika, Tyler and I

Candid photo

These girls were family and wanted me to take a picture of their home, behind them.

Ladies in the street of their village

Dewas Village- thanks to Anika for this photo and some of the others I have borrowed to share here

Visiting a farmer who is considered to lead 'best practice' here in this village.

This is the kitchen of one of the houses. Now think to your own kitchen. Compare to this one. We are all human beings but look to the capacity of difference we have managed to create.

I don't have the numbers exactly right here, but essentially Concept Society gave these farms 5000 worms are they were able to turn them into 90 000. This is the currency that allows them to prove their worth to banks and surrounding areas. The farmers were really proud of this achievement. The way they engineered gases to be used from this production is nothing less than impressive.

Cow dung patties

Walking through their veggie garden: 

You can see the progression of work here

Check out what the guy is sitting on.

Boy in the village, on the farm

Some of the men of the farm with Tyler, sitting on one side of the room in our meeting

Us girls on the other side, in the meeting

The farmer told us that the women work the hardest on the farm. Can see an example of this here where she is carrying bricks on her head.

The baby calf being friends with Tyler

The baby calf being friends with Anika

And the baby calf hating me, yelping as it pulled away.

Our farmer looking a little suspicious of the sweets that Anika brought with her from Germany. Love the expression.

That is all from me tonight folks, it is 12.46am and it has taken me two hours to do this post. Not sure why. Internet speed is a little slow even though I'm plugged into the lan. Have a yoga class at 7am- yep, that's right, doing yoga in India. This will feature in a blog (and to preempt my beautiful friend Pearl- I have no idea what type of yoga it is but I will ask, so far all we know it is the 'sweaty yoga' not the 'relaxing yoga' xx).

Shedding the carapace we have been building so assiduously on the surface, we must by definition give up exactly what we thought was necessary to protect us from further harm. The outlaw is the radical, the one close to the roots of existence. The one who refuses to forget their humanity and in remembering, helps everyone else remember too - David Whyte

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