Timbaktu

I had another exciting weekend. This is getting to be a habit. May it continue !!

I went to Timbaktu Collective last weekend with Santosh, a friend at work. There's more info about Timbaktu at www.timbaktu.org. At high level its a non-profit group, not necessarily that different from others, but among the very good ones. Here are some things about it:

They work in areas like land restoration, womens empowerment, children etc. There was a very interesting presentation about how they worked with the government on regulating the water release from a local dam in a way as to maximise benefit based on the farmers agreeing as a community where the water should go. I don't know if you find that interesting, but I do. One of the key issues going forward in water, will be to get agreement from stakeholders on how to use the limited amounts of water available.

I saw a forest fire upclose while I was there !! There was one in the hills a couple of kilometers away from Timbaktu. It was a pretty awesome spectacle.

The architecture and construction were great and I'd love to be there, from that point of view.

This visit for me culminates several strands that have started over the past few years. I first heard of TC way back when I was in the US on some mailing list and was very intrigued by the name. Later I bought this *great* book called Bapu Kuti about alternative development models and there was stuff there about Timbuktu. Still later when I was doing the RIN project http://www.geocities.com/ahminotep/Writings/RIN_project.html

I talked to Shambhu Prasad who is associated with TC, and encouraged me to visit there. And finally the founders of TC were featured on the cover of a weekly newsmagazine here in India (The Week). So finally I did go there so and its great to complete that loop. Yesterday after returning, I went back to read the Bapu Kuti article again and it was fascinating to correlate what was written about the people to what I had just seen in person.

TC operates as a 'virtual' panchayat of all its full-time members. They meet once a month and give reports and come out with to-do items and make decisions. Its pretty interesting structure and has some of the useful elements of corporate working in it. Its mostly funded by donations at the current time though, which is not so sustainable.

The setting is gorgeous (in its way). Its in the barren hills of Anantapur and is surrounded on 3 sides by hills. I liked the scenery very much. And I'm more and more struck by feeling the truth about the cliches of going back to nature etc. The break from city life is refreshing and stronger than refreshing, I feel it causes some change in you.

Before I left I had contracted a cold, and I wasn't able to take appropriate care there due to the circumstances. I had severe earache one night and since then I have had a persistent ringing in the ear. I am quite concerned about this, I think it may be permanent. I've heard about this in the past, the medical term is tinnutis (probably got the spelling wrong).

The founders of TC, Bablu and Mary are pretty striking people. Their background is really interesting and you would find it interesting but I won't blog about it much. He is Bengali, she is Keralite, they both learnt the local language and settled in AP. Bablu in particular is a great bear of a man and radiates energy. There were several other remarkable people there.

In talking with Mary, I found out that one of their problems currently is keeping up with the documentation and reporting required by their donors. I suggested that I might help them out for some time with that, and they responded very favourably. More about that soon ! I did spent some time their continuing to think about what I should do after quitting the job and I am converging towards spending some time doing odd jobs and volunteer work. I would enjoy this immensely as I would get to work with many diferent people and do many different interesting things. And I would be looking around for what to do on a permanent basis. There are already several things that I am seeing, including TC, which I could usefully do.