Tidbits

I'm putting off blogging about the key things of the visit a little bit more, here are some assorted tidbits.

Timbaktu started with one couple, Bablu and Mary, who after doing various things in development work, bought a patch of degraded land in Anantapur dt. to try to heal and regenerate it. The work was very successful. They continued the work in the areas around them, and at the same time, they opened their space to other people who had their own ideas and wanted to implement them. Several initiatives thus emerged: in watershed development, education (several small schools) and recently in an organic farming project. Besides the facilities at the original land they acquired Timbaktu now also has a good 'field office' that they constructed last year.

The original location is run completely off solar power (though they cheat sometimes with generators). So they don't even have a grid connection there. The basic output of the solar is DC power, though some of the buildings have been converted to AC. The bulbs they use for the DC are similar to the ones in cars for interior lights. One of the consequences of using solar is that they have to be stingy with power so some of the houses don't have heaters or running water. I used to pump my own water from the pump in the picture :-), though I wasn't expected to do it, there were workers who were supposed to do that.


Kalyani is one of the interesting people at Timbaktu. She had a lot of commitment to do things differently than the mainstream because of the problems she found in the mainstream, and she joined Timbaktu as a teacher very early when the facilities were far more primitive than they are now. She married one of the Timbaktu people. Couple of interesting things I got from her: I had forgotten to get soap, so I asked her for some and she gave me handmade soap that she had made herself. It was pretty good and I didn't have any problems using it. Its not that difficult to make soap it seems, the children at the school do it as a project. She also gave me homoeopathic medicine for a cold that I got. I thought homoeopathy was good only for long term illnesses and even then the efficacy was dubious. However using the medicine she gave me, there was symptomatic relief very quickly and although the cold still persisted, I clearly felt a lot better for the medicine. She also used leaves of some tree to set up a steam inhalation for me that worked well. One of the school people also told me of a natural medicine that they use to reduce fever and body aches. They have used it on the kids in statistically signficant numbers and they see that it works. I am a lot more open and interested in alternative medicine systems after this.

I got a fairly solid immersion in Telugu during the week I was there, and my Telugu has improved for it. In reading (and to a lesser extent writing) especially, I needed to read some of the reports so I'm significantly better off. One of the nice side effects of the trip.

As I said in some of the previous posts, Timbaktu is structured an a virtual 'panchayat' of sorts, with members being all the full time (paid) members of the group. They try to make decisions through democracy/consensus in a monthly meeting that they have. They address each other as 'anna' and 'akka' (elder brother, elder sister in Telugu). Like: Ushakka, Obuleshanna. Its a bit strange to us outsiders but it definitely builds a sense of solidarity and mutual respect.