A VISIT TO A VILLAGE

A few months back I had a chance to visit Ahirajpur, a remote village in Orissa's Kendrapara district. As part of a Red Cross programme I was assigned to take a group of school children from Bhubaneswar to the village so that they could see what a typical Indian village was like. The children were very excited and got into the school bus and we were on our way to the village.

As soon as the bus reached the village, a crowd of children gathered all around. Apparently, a school bus was not a common sight in the village. They stared at the school children as we got down from the bus and then started talking to each pointing with their fingers at the various features of the bus that interested them.

The first thing that struck the school children was that the village was very different from the city in which they lived. There were kutcha mud houses and brick houses painted with yellow or blue paint. There were puddles of water here and there where the rain water had collected. Outside the houses was an open gutter filled with filthy water with mosquitoes floating on it.

The village ward member and a few Red Cross volunteers came to greet us and take us around. We were first taken to the temple. We passed through the narrow muddy lanes scarcely place for two people to walk abreast. So we formed a queue and followed our volunteers. The villagers collected on the corner of the street or stood in their doorways to look at us as if we were animals from a zoo, one of the children from our group said. They were actually quite surprised to see school children paying them a visit.

The temple was built of brick and stone and was painted white. There was a holl and in strong contrast to the muck outside, was surprisingly clean. The hall was cool and the children were quite surprised to see the priest lying on a chaarpai at one corner with his mouth open. There were three small rooms for idols of Gods and Goddesses but these were locked at this time of the day.

We were next taken to see the primary school. The school was a yellow building with five or six rooms. I peeped into one classroom and saw the teacher standing by her desk and the children reciting arithmetic tables in sing song voices. We were told that the school was upto the fifth standard. The teacher said that the younger children were fairly regular at school however, the attendabce dropped because parents would take them away to work in the fields or to help them at home to mind their younger brothers and sisters while their parents were away at work. We had created quite a disturbance at the school and the children and the teachers stopped their work and gaped at us. So we quickly left and were taken to the fields.

The farmlands offered a lovely sight. There was a cool breeze blowing. The tall green stalks of grain seemed to wave at us. The fields stretched on endlessly till the eyes could see. Here and there in the midst of the fields there were scarecrows (an object in the shape of a person set up in a field to keep away birds) with their loose clothes and hats waving in the breeze and frightening away the birds. Farmhouses built of mud and thached roofs could also be seen. After being told the various methods used for irrigating the farmland, and the dependence of the farmers on the right weather conditions, the children were taken to see the Red Cross community center.

The community center was a big hall where women were taught to stitch clothes and adult education and disaster management classes were held. Various other activities were conducted by Red Cross personnel who visited the village three times a week for this purpose. We also met the village Sarpanch who was very proud of it for that was one achievement to his credit, since he had put in a lot of effort to get it built and again request the Red Cross and the State Government to send qualified doctors to the village. The children in my group were quite impressed by the enthusiasm and the dedication of this man to uplift his village.

Finally, I took my group back home. We felt sorry for the villagers who were still living in such backward conditions. Inspite of the best efforts of the Red Cross we could see that it would still be a long time before one could be proud of that village.

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