Parties, Pujas, and Plastic Taps

We're writing this entry in the short window between school finishing (10:45) and shops closing for the afternoon (1ish pm). India time is it's own being, and most of our shopping gets done on our way back to the house where we are staying at about 10pm each night, when streetlife is at it's peak!! So it might be a short one before we have to get back for lunch (LOTS of dahl and rice and vegies).
The last few days have been a real highlight for all of us. We have spent some time checking out a women's self-reliant group which CCD set up about 10 years ago in a local village - Duttapukur. This is a small project where women are taught vocational skills, and then form groups where savings are pooled in order to allow loans for large items such as sewing machines, tractors, wedding celebrations, houses, cows etc. These items would be otherwise unobtainable. The groups also have a strong focus on social cohesion, such that all groups are made up of women from similar age groups and very small geographical locations. This enables them to offer one another social support, especially when significant social issues exist such as domestic violence. In this particular village, we are told that domestic violence has all but disappeared, and we really felt the positive vibe of the place - lush greenery, healthy livestock and children, women who seem much more empowered, better quality housing and a vibrant school and creche. A couple of the rules for connecting with the self-reliance program are that you must vaccinate your children and commit to their schooling. There has also been some very successful family planning education happen, which is evident in the family sizes. This gave us all a real boost to witness, particularly after some time visiting sites of exploitative child labour and learning more about the issues.
We also visited ISW, which is the women's organisation that Friends of Kolkata works with. We spent some time running workshops at a school in Kidderpore for children of the local slum areas. They have been running for 30 years and have seen a number of muslim families commit to sending all their daughters to school (a huge cultural shift!). We particularly loved spending time with Sumi - an amazing artist and designer who has been employed as a result of F.O.K support to teach the girls art and design. They have been making goods such as jewellery which will be sold for a fair price in Oz and the money sent back.
We have managed to weedle our way into the CCD kitchen to alleviate the cooks a bit (much to their chagrin!), and yesterday we enjoyed celebrating Kylie's birthday (one of our team mates) with a delicious meal of pasta (weirdo Indian style yellow penne! - we bought Madhyam gram out!) and vegie spagetti sauce, sponge cake and flowers. Apparently the India way to cook pasta is to deep fry it (of course - we should have known!).
School was chaos today, due to the much-talked about puja tomorrow - a Hindu celebration to the god of education. The kids are pumped and we're looking forward to quite a party!!
The reference to plastic taps stems from Jeff's impressive start to this morning, waking up the hosts of our house at 6am by tightening the plastic tap so hard it broke off in his hands. Amidst a geyser of water we eventually turned it off at the mains...leaving Suhaus with a repair job to keep him busy today! I think they thought it was quite amusing!
Thinking of you all in the midst of Melbourne's weirdo weather.
Lotsa luv,
Jack and Jill (or so we've become known!)

ps. we've fixed the comments so you don't have to have gmail to comment - sorry about that!