Life in Ogna

Here are my field notes again but I have expanded them and added some pictures for my blog.

12/11/10
•    Sam and I visited village famers where GMKS has done work and interviewed them. We Saw wells and dams constructed by GMKS to help local farmers. The biggest problem in the area is still irrigation and water management. Most of the farmers are subsistence farmers only farming for their family. Some will sell in the market only when they have good surplus. A couple families we also met migrate every couple of years.

13/11/10
•    We visited more village famers to interview. GMKS installed a plaque at one of the newer well sites. We also ate a lot of custard apples.

14/11/10
•    This week is Childrens week and the organization I am working with, GMKS, is celebrating it in  a number of ways. Today we visited a government school with GMKS, played games with the children, watched a traditional dance, and people from my NGO gave a speech about children and their rights.

 15/11/10
•    Visitors from UK from a donating organization came to GMKS to see the kind of work they have been doing.

16/11/10
•    I visited another school where GMKS was hosting another event celebrating child’s week. The primary school had a parade where the children sang chants about their right and girls’ right to education. There were also games and a speech.

17/11/10
•    We went to the Dharamitra for a short while and husked some very poor looking corn. We were planning on spending more time there today but there was a huge rain storm that cut our day short. but the weather did remind me of Minnesota, with the rain wind thunder and lightning, so I really enjoyed it. 

18/11/10
•    Today Sam and I went on another field visit to some water harvesting structures and a commune that GMKS and the Indian government have made. It was mainly more check dams and family houses. I really enjoyed the motor bike ride there too, it was calming and the weather was good.


That is just a day to day overview of what I have been up too. It’s been going pretty good. However I don’t actually have a set project that I’m working on. I am hoping that I will be able to visit more local farmers and talk to them and get a small glimpse of their lifestyle. That has been the most interesting thing so far. One farmer we met had a small house that 15 members of his family lived in. They are subsistence farmers so they only grow food to eat themselves, not to sell in the marking for a profit. But the problem is that this family isn’t able to irrigate their land and can only grow one crop during the year during the monsoon season. The food they grow during this time has to last them 8 months out of the year. I’m sorry to say but from the food stores that they had it was not going to last the 15 of them 8 months. The famer said his family often goes hungry because they do not have enough food. What GMKS has done to help this family has been to install a water harvesting structure, tank and hand pump, so that the rooftop runoff from their house goes into an underground tank that can then be used by the family as drinking water. GMKS has also provided this farmer with some lentil seeds that he will be able to plant next season. This is just one example of the rural village farming families that we have seen. Hopefully I will be able to visit more villages in this area that GMKS has worked with.

Field Notes

I though you all may be intrested in what I have been doing so far working with the Gandhi Manav Kalyan Society in Ogna village. These are some rough feild notes that I wrote up for class and to share with you.

Gandhi Manav Kalyan Society

21/10/10

• At headquarters in Udipur we read about different aspects of GMKS in last year’s annual report and watched several short films GMKS has put out.
o GMKS’s annual report was very insightful to all the things they are doing. However there are many grammatical mistakes. I would like to be able to review this year’s annual report but that is not possible because has already gone for printing.

• In the evening we arrived in Ogna and settled into our accommodations

22/10/10

• Visited our working site, the Dharamitra. Dharamitra means ‘friends of the soil’. It is an organic farm and training center about 2 K from where we are living at the GMKS

• There are 4 girls from the ITS program in Jaipur visiting GMKS for a few days. We joined them in their activities
o It was very nice entering our internship with a little others around. It also provided us with an opportunity to travel and visit the different aspects of the organization as well as rep the benefit of having someone to translate conversations and information.

• We drove around Ogna and neighboring villages viewing different water conservation techniques including check damns, wells, irrigation cannels, and the large government damn. Some had been established by GMKS and other by the government.
o The manual cattle draw well used for irrigation really impressed me. It seems like a very good and sustainable method for drawing water. Other pumps in the area are motorized, including ones at the Dharamitra.
o I have concerns and unanswered questions about the large government damn in the area. How many people where displaced with the low lying lands flooding and what was their compensation?

23/10/10

• First day of work at the Dharamitra. Cleaned the cow barn and delivered waste to vermi-compost bins. We also cleaned a field of left over brush after all the turmeric was harvested.
o We are learning methods of organic agriculture through hands on experiences. Recycling cow waste into compost puts heath into the soil.

• That afternoon we sat in on a workshop with village farmers.
o The workshop was entirely in Hindi and Mawari but it was still a good experience watching this group of farmers interact with each other. Many of them where very shy at first and even had trouble introducing themselves. Later on most seemed open.

24/10/10

• Workshop demo with farmers at the Dharamitra. Practical session.
o Short and to the point. Again presented in Hindi. We saw organic practices done at the Dharamitra: fertilizer bins that drain into the field, the fertilizer is made from cow urine and tree leaves, but can only be used on certain crops, vermin-compost bins to create healthy soil, intercropping techniques, natural pesticides and an array of organic seeds.

25/10/10

• Visited Kathodi rehabilitation center for tribals, sponsored by GMKS. GMKS built the houses and acquired land in the area for the people to farm and make a living from.
o I read about this center in GMKS’s annual report.

26/10/10

• Dharamitra field work. 7am. cleared a field of cut sufed muesli waste and fed it to the cows.
o This is one sustainable method used at the Dharamitra: using the waste of a harvest to feed the cows is a good. This is a good use of resources.

• After breakfast helped set up irrigation pipes for a field of ginger, away from dharamitra but still owned by GMKS
o It is interesting that farm fields here are very small neighboring ones are often owned by different people.

27/10/10

• Morning: continued the same irrigation pipes as yesterday.

28/10/10

• Dharamitra: hulled dried lentil brush out of field and piled to be processed later. We helped harvest sufed (white) musli from the ground with other laborers.
o It is hard to ask questions and get answers because of the language barrier. The few people that speak a little English are not with us on a daily basis. I am curious about where the laborers come from and how much they get paid. Also if this is their main source of income or just a seasonal job. I also would like to know where the harvest crops are sold and for how much. They must be different from other crops because they are being sold under the organic label.

29-31/10/10

• Weekend off. Traveled to Udipur.

1/11/10

• Dharamitra: set up irrigation pipes on a newly planted wheat field
o It is interesting the choices of crops grown in the area. Most famers do not seem to be subsistence farmers and are growing cash crops. In some well irrigated areas there are even fields of sugar cane. This is surprising because water is a very sought after resources here and sugar cane takes a lot of water to grow. On the other hand the monsoon this season has been very good so they may have the surplus of water to grow such cash crops.

• Helped harvest ginger with many of the same laborers as before.
o I much prefer the ginger to the muesli simply because it is easier to harvest and has a pleasant smell.

2/11/10

• Continued ginger harvesting.

• Course work.

3-4/11/10

• Course work.

5-7/11/10

• Holiday off. Traveled to Udipur for Diwali

8-11/11/10

• Traveling to Jaipur for our mid-intership seminar. I should be back in Ogna on the night of the 11th.

Post 6

I am very sorry it has been so long sense I have blogged. I was caught up in school work when our courses were wrapping up in Jaipur and once I reached my internship I have had no Internet or cell phone services. So I hope this will make up for some lost time.

Sept. 28-30
We had a overnight weekend fieldtrip to the region of Shekhawati in northern Rajasthan. The hotel we stayed at was really nice and even had a pool. It was nice to be able to take a swim. We visited an organic farm training center run by the Morarka Foundation as well as visited a large family farm connected with the foundation. It was really interesting to learn about some of the organic farming techniques. The foundation was actually pretty large scale and sold most of its production to overseas markets where organic foods make better profits.

During our trip we also visited an old haveli which we got to explore, the architecture and paintings where really neat. I wish my whole family could move into one, cousins and all.

Oct. 2nd-3rd

Yes that is the real Taj Mahal. It almost didn’t even look real when we were standing right in front of it. I can really see why it is such a big attraction of India. I have a lot more pictures that I can show all of you when I get home. In Agra we also visited Agra fort which had a really cool view of the Taj next to the river. After our day trip to Agra we spent the night at a hostel in Bharatpur. There we visited a bird sanctuary. It was like a large state park. We wanted to rent bikes so we could bike around and see more of the park but they were already all sold out for the day. but just walking around, it was really nice to see some Indian wildlife.

On the 9th of October a group of us went to Chokhi Dhani in the evening. It is on the outskirts of Jaipur and is kind of like a theme park except it embraces Rajasthan culture. We ate really good traditional food and went on a manual fairs-wheel ride which was run by a man climbing in-between the spokes of the fairs-wheel. we also watched dances, a magic show and went on a elephant ride. This actually made me quiet sad because the elephant looked very unhappy.

The Next day we went to a Dandhiya festival in Jaipur. It is a traditional dance of Gujarat, the state just south of us. We watched the experienced dancers in their elaborate consumes and even got to try it out for ourselves in the beginners circle. It was a local festival so we were the only foreigners there. Which happens a lot, so natural we attracted a lot of attention and even got an interview with the media, however I don’t think we actually made the news.

October 14-17 was our long weekend off of class so a group of 10 of us headed to Jaisalmer. We took an overnight sleeper bus to Jaisalmer and then had to take a local bus to a village outside the city called Khuri where we were going on an overnight camel safari. The bus we took was actually extremely over packed with people so some of us ended up riding up on the roof of the bus. We were traveling like Indians. Plus there was a nice breeze and it wasn’t stuffy like the inside, although it was just as crowded. Don’t worry there was a small sort of guard rail to hang on to for life.

We took off from for our safari in the afternoon. Camels are big and very bouncy, especially when they run. We stopped at a well to fill up with water then headed out into the dunes. The dunes weren’t like that of what you would think would be in a desert. They were sparsely scattered between grasses and small brush. We stopped in a small village of about 300 people all living in small mud-dung plaster huts that are a common site around the state. Then we raced the sunset and settled on some dunes for the night. We ate dinner and then played games in the dunes with our guides like tag and sardines. It was a lot of fun. We slept on blankets on the dunes. At night it got really cold and after the moon set the sky lit up with stairs scattered across the Milkyway. The next day we packed up and ended our safari but the adventure. We bus backed to Jaisalmer and spent the night.

Before our bus left for Jaipur six of us rented scooters for a few hours. We had a little bit of a rough start getting use to driving them but then we took off. We drove down to the lake in Jaisalmer which was very pretty and then set out to find a temple on the outskirts of the city. We found the temple where the temple was but didn’t actually make it there because we found a secret garden in a village that a man let us into there was a hidden pool with a bunch of young local kids swimming. I wish we would have brought our swimming suits.

The 19th was our last day of class before we all headed off for our independent internships around the state. I know I left a lot of information out about what has been going on in the class room in my blog. It’s not really the exciting part about being in India and there are not many stories to tell without making things too boring for a blog post. I have learned a lot about development in India and around the globe. I have also come to understand a little bit more about Indian history and culture. I know a lot more Hindi now then I knew when I arrived but I still don’t feel like it’s enough to socialize with. It was a short amount of time but a lot of information has been stuffed into my brain.

The Internship Phase

On the 20th I took a car to Udaipur with a few other students who are interning in the area. By the evening of the 21st I was in Ogna Village. I am working for an NGO called the Gandhi Manav Kalyan Society (GMKS) in the field of organic agriculture. I am here with one other intern, Sam, from my program. For the time being we are working at the Dharamitra which is an organic agricultural farm and training center. Dharamitra means ‘friend of soil’. GMKS also does other work with village and tribes people including water and natural resource management, and human resource, tribal, child, women and community development. I will be working here until December 3rd. It is a short amount of time for an internship but I think I will be able to accomplish and learn a lot.