Siddamma had come here to the US to interact with volunteers/activists who were working for the rights of the Katrina victims in New Orleans. Siddamma had experience in disaster relief and rehabilitation after the tsunami had affected the communities along the Tamil Nadu coast. A group of volunteers from New Orleans had visited her in Chennai during the early part of the year, to learn from her work. She was invited to New Orleans to teach the people, how to organize themselves to make themselves heard by the government.
I had met Siddamma on her previous visit to Austin in February 2006 (actually she had stayed at my place during that visit :D ) and her enthusiasm and passion for her work really inspired all of us. Last time she spent two days in Austin, and all of us barely slept an hour or two each day. We were all amazed by her energy and we were all eager to learn as much as we could from her - about her experiences. On that trip she exerted herself too much and we did not know to stop her, and thus as a result she fell ill because of too much traveling and too much exertion. So this trip was more carefully planned with fewer stops and longer breaks in between.
Her trip to Austin this time was from Sept 1st to Sept 3rd during the Labor Day Weekend. She was to stay in Santhosh's new apartment and I decided to setup camp there too. After some last minute grocery shopping, Santhosh and I picked up Siddamma from the airport in the afternoon. She was very excited about her trip to New Orleans and she told us about her experiences there - There was a conference organized in the New Orleans and Mississippi area, but she told the organizers that she would rather spend time on the ground, meeting the affected people, than spend time closed up in hotel conference rooms. So over the period of a week, she went and met a lot of local people and activists.
It had been the second anniversary of the Katrina storm but not much was being done for the affected people. One of the biggest concerns seemed to be the new plans of development for the city of New Orleans. The public housing which was in pretty good condition after the storm, was fenced off and people were not allowed to enter the area. The city was planning to tear down the housing and come up with something else, so the former residents were asked not to return for another 3 years. Most people felt that this was done to drive out the under-privileged, primarily black, population. The city officials felt that the poor neighborhood did not fit in with the image they wanted to create for New Orleans.
She met an individual (of Indian origin) working for the rights of the immigrant laborers in that area.There are agents in cities like Bombay who collect large sums of money on the promise of good work and money in US. When many of these laborers get here, they realize that there is no work for them, but since they have already paid such large amounts to get here, they cannot go back. These people are then exploited by being lower than minimum wages and being made to work long hours. Their living conditions are deplorable. This was almost the same as the problems faced by the laborers in the Middle East. This particular individual was trying to organize the people working in these conditions so that they could demand their rights and would not be exploited. I think this is an article about an incident in the Gulf Coast -
http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2007/03/9865.php and another article about the abuse of guest workers in the US -
http://www.splcenter.org/legal/guestreport/index.jspAfter resting for sometime, Siddamma spoke to a couple of volunteers/activists from Austin, whom she had met at the conference. One of them told her of organizations she should visit in Austin. One of them was the
Rhizome Collective -
http://www.rhizomecollective.org . We called to check if they were open and then we left to visit them. From their website - the Rhizome Collective is a non-profit group and "an Educational Center for Urban Sustainability and a Center for Community Organizing."
We met someone working the land and went up to speak to him. He had joined the collective very recently and was happy to show us around. Siddamma spoke about her experience with working on the land and trying organic agriculture. At this place the land was very small and was meant to be a place where people could experiment and try out things.
(Please check their website to read more about their efforts or even better, go and visit them)
We spent some time speaking to more volunteers and from one of them we learnt about another organization close by called
Casa Marianella - http://www.casamarianella.org . It is a shelter and home for immigrant laborers. Having nothing planned for the evening we decided to go there. So within six hours of being in Austin, Siddamma had shown us places we had never heard of or seen.
There was only one volunteer that evening and he was busy taking in a new resident. There were lots of residents around but most of them only spoke Spanish and other Latin American languages. So we waited for a while outside and then sat in the living area. While we were sitting there waiting we saw a number of residents walk through the living area. All of them took the time to smile and greet us. It was fun communicating with one lady - she was saying something in Spanish and we were talking in English and all of us were using hand gestures to try to explain what we were saying. We finally managed to introduce ourselves. I was amazed by the strong feeling of affection and sense of community I felt in that group there. I have never felt so comfortable in a group of strangers in this country.
After the volunteer had registered the new resident, we spoke to him about the organization and the program they had there. They help immigrants by providing them with food, shelter, clothes for at least a month. There are English classes held, contacts of lawyers for legal counseling, some over the counter medicines for the residents. At this facility nightly occupancy is 21-30 people, and the average length of stay is 30 days. The majority of persons leaving the shelter are able to find stable housing when they leave. A short video tour of the house can be seen at -
http://www.casamarianella.org/video/CasaMarianellaTour.wmvThe new resident they had taken in
Ravi*, was from Nepal. There was another girl
Aarti* who was acting as the translator. Aarti was also a Nepali and had in fact she had lived at Casa Marianella when she had come to the US. Ravi had been held at a detention center while his background was checked and once Casa Marianella heard about it, they paid for Ravi's bond to be released and he was brought to Austin. Aarti helped Ravi get settled and made sure he had everything he needed. Aarti was comfortable in talking in English and Hindi, and we spoke to her at length about the place.
(
* - names have been changed )She said that when she had come to the US and Casa Marianella, she neither know English nor Spanish, but she managed to pick up both these languages very soon. She was very grateful for the help she received here and ever since she had found a job, she paid a small amount to Casa Marianella every month and she also volunteered there. She said that all the residents after securing jobs, paid a small amount to support the house - something like $10/month. Aarti spoke about how she wanted to learn nursing and she was planning to join a school for nursing. She was currently living with her family and she got health-care through Medicaid and collected Food Stamps from the government.
While we had been waiting to talk to the volunteer, I was wondering how we could volunteer to help here. Language seemed to be a barrier to me and I wondered how useful I would be without the knowledge of Spanish. I was surprised to see Nepali residents and at the same time I realized that I really could volunteer and help out. Nepali citizens most times understand Hindi and this was one way we could help. I soon realized that if the will to volunteer is there, I could definitely find some way to make myself useful. I also learned that once a week, they collected old clothes and sorted them out for use by the residents.
Siddamma was very excited to meet Aarti and she wanted to put her in touch with the person she had met in New Orleans who was working with immigrant labor. After this we got home and made dinner, while we discussed what we had seen during the day. There were so many opportunities to volunteer locally and learn. I guess we just needed someone to show us the way.
Day 2 Next morning Siddamma made some amazing breakfast and lunch. (Seems like she did not trust our cooking). The Asha volunteers came for an early meeting to meet with Siddamma and learn about her work. First we saw a documentary she had got from New Orleans. It described the struggle of the people who had been displaced and were now trying to return to the city and their homes in the public housing project. The documentary can be seen online -
http://www.advancementproject.org/ourwork/other-initiatives/hurricane-katrina/video1.php . Siddamma spoke about what she learned in New Orleans and drew parallels to what she had seen in India after the tsunami. As an example, the fishermen community which had lived along the sea-shore were not allowed to return on the pretext of their safety. Now the sea-front properties were being given to developers for the construction of resorts and hotels.
Siddamma spoke about her work in India, especially related to the projects supported from Asha Austin. She spoke at length about the Resource Center and was even carrying a whole bunch of photographs. She said that she was from a farmer family and she could see how things had changed in the last few years. Agriculture has now become a very risky business with high input costs which forces the farmer to take loans at very high interest rates. It has been this debt which has been the cause of most farmer suicides in the last decade. The high input costs come from buying - GM (Genetically modified) seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides - all of which are very expensive. For example when a farmer buys GM seeds, they have to buy a certain brand of fertilizer and pesticide along with it, each of which is very expensive. At the end of the year the farmer cannot even save the seeds for next year as the seeds from GM plants are engineered not to work. So in case everything goes well, the farmer will make some money and pay back his loans. But in case something goes wrong, say, the rains fail, the farmer has a lot to lose. Another problem over the last few years has been a shift from food crops to cash crops. Most farmers have started growing cash crops and nothing else, based on the promise of greater returns. This, according to Siddamma, is a big problem as the farmers are now dependent on the sale of their cash crop for the food. In case of food grains, even if the farmer cant sell them in the market, the family at least has something to eat.
This is where the resource center comes in. It was with the idea to show the farmers nearby, how traditional means of agriculture had lesser risk and was more suited for small land-holdings. Siddamma spoke of how one needed just a pair of cows on the land to make the whole system sustainable. Apart from providing milk, the cow urine and cow dung have numerous uses on the farm. Cow-dung can be used for manure and also as a fuel for cooking. The cow urine mixed with cow-dung, buttermilk and some other secret ingredients (:D) can be used for making a natural pesticide. Food for the cows - you can provide the paddy and other organic waste that is generated on the farm. By adding cows to the farm, makes it almost a self-sustaining eco-system.
Siddamma showed a bunch of photographs from the Resource Center. The photographs helped us visualize what we had been talking about all along - the check dams, the bunds, the cow shed, the raised platform for the paddy, etc. Over the last year they have had a very good crop of groundnuts and sunflower. Siddamma told us how their work, was raising the interest of the neighboring farmers and many of them had dropped by to see what was going on there. Many of them even decided to try out some of the techniques on their own land. This was exactly the objective of starting the Resource Center and slowly but surely the results can be seen. The next step is to try to get the "Organic" certification and make their produce available in the local market.
After the Asha meeting, we all went to the university for a talk organized for Siddamma's visit. Siddamma spoke about her various projects and her experiences and there was a good discussion about the resource center. There was a video recording of most of the talk which will be put up online at some point. (Contact Santhosh or me if you want a copy of the video). After the talk a bunch of us met up again at Santhosh's place, where the discussions continued. Siddamma finally trusted us to make dinner.
Siddamma spent a good amount of time talking about the tsunami housing project. They had worked on low-cost housing for the families who had been affected. We saw a whole bunch of pictures of the houses and they were quite impressive. It was a one-room house with a kitchen and it was a pucca house built with bricks. The bricks used were compressed bricks which were made in the countryside and were much cheaper than the bricks from the kilns. So not only was it cheaper but it also provided work to people in the community. Most of the construction of the house was done by the family for whom the house was being built. This way the labor cost was substantially reduced. In many of the houses the roofs were made of cement/brick and this was the most expensive part. In the future Siddamma was thinking of using earthen tiles for the roofing. This would not only provide employment to the rural potter families but would also save a lot of money. Another unique feature about this project was that - the house was in the name of the woman of the house.
During the discussion Siddamma came up with the idea of "Build a Home" just like the "support a child" programs we have. She estimated that a pucca house could be built for as low as Rs 50,000 or about $1250. She said that people could support the whole construction costs or part of it and they could provide the donor with updates and pictures. As we were discussing this Siddamma and all the volunteers became more and more convinced and excited about this idea for low cost housing. There was some talk of including the government at some stage. (A more detailed proposal of the same will be drawn up and you could contact Santhosh or me if you are interested in this).
After this we decided to call it a day, as Siddamma had an early morning flight to Seattle. We packed everything at night and got to the airport on time. It was difficult to believe how the last two days had flown by and I wished Siddamma had a longer stay in Austin but I guess that also would not have been enough. She invited everybody to visit the resource center and stay for atleast a couple of days. There is only rule there - you have to work to get food :D
The pictures from the visit can be seen here -
http://data.ashanet.org/datastore/data/Chapters/Austin/Projectpics/siddamma/Siddamma_US_tour_07/album/Austin/index.html
