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we don’t no our skills value. 3 weeks before our one voluntary worker Teddy is came and I taught him how to make tea. It was very easy for me. I am making tea for 20 years so I can make very better tea than him.!!! My hands his fixed make in tea. When I make tea that time Teddy say me you learn me, I say this is very easy I teach to Teddy. After few days Teddy was able to make tea. Teddy make very good tea. This day Teddy was very happy and say : “ I have learn one new skill, when I will go back to France (my country) that time I will make tea for my family”. That time I learnt value of my skill. We have lot of skills but we cannot understand value of our skills. When we meet some unknown person who have no skill, that time we can understand our own skills value. Indian domestic wife have lot of skills, for example how to make better food but she doesn’t know value her skills. I think lot of person have lot of skills but they don’t know how to use them.

When some new person learn something, you, that time, you understand value of your own skills.

The dispute at Hunar Ghar over the labour has turned from protectionism to blackmail. We insisted that Karivali people should be allowed to work, and we (eventually) met an agreement where masons could come and work, but labour can. We agreed – I just plan to slowly introduce t labour over the coming weeks too. Now though people are refusing to work unless they get a pay-rise. We’ve said that the principle of a pay-rise is fine, but not so much, they are asking nearly double for the labourers.

Pay-rises are also nothing to do with me, they must be decided by Sharmaji of RBKS. I also distinctly detest the use of bullying to get something they want. No-one, no-one, as come and asked reasonably for a pay-rise from us. A potential reason for this may be that most of then the employers of such people (regarded in some circles as backward and insignificant for nothing but grunt-work) most likely would never in a million years respond to a reasonable request from them, so the habit is that they strike first, think about it later.

As such, I’m keen to separate any pay increase as much as time will allow from them agreeing to go back to work, so the two don’t become associated. We tried going around the village asking the poorest families to come to work – we saw it as an opportunity to include the most marginalised of the marginalised more, as we have been trying to do in recent weeks, but they fear an intra-hamlet backlash at night when we aren’t there if the cross the picket. It seems that we are in stalemate until Sharmaji comes to discuss t problem.

Unfortunately, he has repeatedly delayed this, which delays work. We’ve agreed many times with Sharmaji that he would come once a month to Hunar Ghar, but this rarely happens. It is a great shame, as it really helps with progress at Hunar Ghar each time he does come, helps build better communication between RBKS, Educate for Life and the village, and in other areas he is very good with supporting Hunar Ghar; it is just that his not coming very often doesn’t support his support. Nitu, please encourage Sharmaji to make it a priority!

I’ve wrote last August about how people kick up fusses to influence decisions in their favour when it comes to protectionism of their interests. In the last case it was anti-other-local-village, now anti-other-hamlets has entered the same aggressive arena. On Saturday night Deepak and I spoke at length with Bhuriyaram about taking equal labour from four hamlets -Andat, Ratnat, Doli Magri and Karivali. Bhuriya protested to Karivali. Although at the time he didn’t say anything, I today came to understand that apparently Karivali have before told Andat people they cannot work their. The result, Andat say the same back.

When Ash was here we had a long discussion with Bhuriya, his father Laluji and Dhunji, because they had been politicising Hunar Ghar and not doing their work. As is typical in arguments in the village, they kicked off, standing up and shouting randomly at us, telling us to get out of the village, that we can’t stay there any more, that they will close the school etc. Yawn. It’s pathetic bullying, but it has to be listened to and addressed in a careful way. So again Bhuriya did the same to Deepak today, telling him that he had to leave the village, that we couldn’t work here any more etc. Ash has always been much more attune to the politics of Bhuriya than I have, and has had to explain a lot of things to me. This time I don’t need the explanation! It is a shame because it calls into question the value of everything he said. Only on Saturday was he saying how we are family, part of the village etc, and now this.

When Deepak called this morning I laid out a few options:

• Stop work completely.
• Listen to their demands of only people from Andat, Ratnat and Dolimagri, but take a list of all the trouble makers and ensure they never work at Hunar Ghar again.
• As above and remove their children.
• Take only labour from Karivali.
• If they want to close the school, take all the children and teachers immediately to Karivali, sit under a tree, and carry on as usual.
• Close work until Sharmaji comes for a meeting next week.

Obviously a few of these are slightly ridiculous and we would be being as irrational as they are, but we can take some ideas. For instance, it seems unfair to make children suffer because of their parents’ actions, but there are currently far more children than we can cater for, so equally we are allowing other children to suffer by these people’s actions, which is perhaps worse than making them effect themselves directly. Then maybe they will think. In this instance we will be very strong with working towards uniting the village rather than allowing them to divide it. It is a fantastic opportunity for us to take strong steps forwards in this respect. For instance, A lot of people complain that Hunar Ghar is only for Andat people. We have said many times we don’t want this, but actions speak louder than words and by taking a strong stand we can be very clear with people on our position. This is also a chance for us to nip in the bud the division. It won’t go away completely, but it will reduce. In time I know that we will promote a united village, and then we will be able to start some really exciting village development, but not until then.

We decided to close the work and wait for Sharmaji to come. Sometimes it is useful to have an outsider call the decisions, it takes the ‘blame’ away from us. Deepak spoke to Laluji, and he expressed support for us in this matter, saying that we should take labour from Karivali. If Dhunji also supports, then we are in a better position, but in this instance and in the future. Ultimately, we will make sure that we resolve the situation in favour of inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness, even in the case of those that are making the trouble. To exclude them only makes them further agitators later, and it would be to stoop to their level of games. When these matters fly up each time we can, if we handle it correctly, make ourselves much stronger than before. This we will do.

It was a bit of a whizzy trip up to Hunar Ghar and back. The train left at 11:15 on the Friday night, arrived at 7am, then it took another two hours to get to Hunar Ghar. I worked straight through to 11pm, fell asleep so completely exhausted I was almost hallucinating, it felt like, got up at 7 and went straight to the station (two hour trip followed by a slightly faster train, only 4 and a half hours) back to Ahmedabad.

As far as time travelling vs. time there goes, it was pretty inefficient, but it was really good to be there and I think the trip was quite useful. When I arrived the first thing I was struck by was that Deepak had had his hair cut. It was neat and tidy, and his clothes were neat and tidy. The room he was standing in was neat and tidy, and he was talking in a clear, neat and tidy way. Now, I’ve been far too campaigned against by my mother(!) about tidy appearance and tidy minds, which I resisted as best I could for a certain amount of time, to have any kind of objective view on the situation. But looking through my coloured glasses I saw what I interpreted as a positive change in attitude. A similar positive change was seen when I got to our Mandwa home that night and saw that that too was tidier and more organised.

These changes are part of what Ash, Deepak and myself spent a lot of time talking about – getting the basic things right in order to do the complicated things well. A complicated thing is, after all, only a series of simple things done consistently and done well over a period of time. Deepak’s language has also changed to take in these ideas and I feel he understands them as much better, rather than just talking about them in a ritualistic sense. It was thus most satisfying to see the conversion of an idea to action, well done Deepak!

As for Teddy, he is getting on remarkably. Like Rob, he doesn’t let his little giardia friend get in the way. He has almost completed a test strut made of bamboo which will serve as a basic unit to the new roof structure. The horrible room so shoddily built is now a pile of rubble which will reform itself in a new carnation as a  beautiful, well built room. New areas for leveling have been instructed, blueprints are being formed, materials bought, instructions given, work going on (well, more of that in a moment in my next post) – and he has only been in the country barely a week!

The teachers are now doing ‘per day planning’. This means that on Saturday the sit down and decide exactly what they will do for the following Monday to Friday. It is incredibly time consuming and inefficient, but it is an excellent beginning to a process of making Hunar Ghar much better, their work easier, more valuable and more satisfying. It was good to see the teachers sitting around in different classrooms, getting on with their work either along or sharing ideas. We stopped for a bit of lunch and carried on, I bought some pepsis for a mid afternoon refreshment and still they worked. I’m super proud of how they were all getting on. Even in their faces some of the teachers are looking a lot better. i can’t say that that is anything to do with us, but still it makes me happy to see it. Those teachers that didn’t get all their planning done on the Saturday arranged to come to our house on Sunday and carry on. It is nice to see how people are starting to organise themselves better, happily get on with work ‘outside of hours’ and that it is being done in a collaborative, friendly way. These guys are creating some serious potential for themselves.

This Saturday I have no classes at MGIS and there are no training workshops for the teachers, which leaves me free to take a trip to Hunar Ghar. I’m getting the train from Ahmedabad at 11 pm tonight, arriving in Swaroopganj, about 2 hours jeep journey (by the time you have waited for one to fill up and leave etc) from Bakhel. I’ll stay for Saturday then come right back to Ahmedabad on Sunday morning. It’s not much of a time there, but it will at least give me to opportunity to say hello and catch up a bit with what is going on there.

Deepak, Ash and I also recently sat down and discussed measures we were going to take improve the basic qualities of the systems at Hunar Ghar. I’ll use my trip as an opportunity to promote the uptake of these. More generally, I’m really starting to think about the systems side of Educate for Life and Hunar Ghar. Looking at MGIS, a huge amount of dedicated work goes into making it possible. They are not, of course, perfectly efficient, but it does make me wonder just how possible it is to create and sustain that level of dedication, especially without becoming myopic to what is going on. It is a challenge, and the feasibility of it, particularly in a rural setting, is questionable. Which perhapos makes Hunar Ghar’s actual value and potential value questionable?