14 November
After the disappointment of last week and not being able to go out with Ian it was good to get up to a dry day. Ian was waiting for us as planned in the reception and soon negotiated a Tuktuk that took us out of town to an old railway line.
I was expecting to see squalor but not on this scale. The first thing I noticed was a huge pile of plastic bags just sitting rotting. A mother hen was pecking away at them looking for food with her three baby chicks hardly visible because of the depth of the rubbish.
We were honoured to see a train approach and everyone that was sitting/playing on the railway line moved to the side as the giant train passed slowly. Then life returns to normal.
Some of the sights I will remember are the ladies doing their washing, squatting over a large tin bowl and scrubbing away at the clothes.
The clothes are normally hung on coat hangers which are hung anywhere or just laid over the fences. The lady squatting on a platform dissecting chicken, with bowls of fresh veg next to her.
It wasn’t long before the children came to greet us. They can all speak the odd word of English and are proud of it. A normal conversation is ” Hello” followed by “What’s your name?” The most amazing thing is the smiling faces of all the children, they have nothing to do other than climb on the piles of rubbish or run up and down the railway line.
The “houses” are bits of tin and wood that make some sort of shelter. Most had a platform inside which is the family bed. I never saw mattress’s or covers. I did see a couple that had a few pieces of furniture similar to wardrobes made from heavy wood. I only saw one television and I have no idea how they managed to run that with no electricity to the street. To think that a week ago all of this was knee deep in flood water and yet still their lives go on. We saw the remains of the floods in the lower levels of the ‘village’. Not only is this one street along the railway line, the houses are three and four deep, some sat among green stagnant water.
Up expectedly we came to the ‘village store’. One of these shacks was used as the shop and from what I saw they sold most things from crisps, cans of pop, toothpaste and other things stacked so high, I cant imagine how they find anything, or store things in date order!!
Work was mostly carried out by the woman. They cook and prepare little shell fish which looked very much like winkles. They were cooked in large pots with wood fires underneath. They are then spread out on large trolleys to dry/cool before they trolleys are pushed into the nearby streets for selling. The ground around these pots were inches deep in shells which were just walked over.
Every now and again we sawwhat looked like rice spread out on a sheet of plastic. Sometimes this was on the walkway or on the railway track. Other times on makeshift tables by the houses. Ian explained to me that the people do not waste anything. This rice would have been left over from previous meals and is put out in the sun to dry. It is then crushed to make a form of flour that the woman then make bread with. This really made me feel bad to think that the rice could be several days old, some even had remains of sauce on it. It was left to dry where motor bikes passed very close to it, people walked by and all the animals on the street took a look at it. To think it was then served as another meal. How lucky are we in England?
Good shots ….