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Field Report 6th August August 6th 2005 Om Damani The requirements on ground keep changing. Lately we decided to focus on medicines as food-grains have beens served for a while. Suddenly we discover new areas where no help has reached from anywhere even after 10 days. We have decided to bring the focus back on food-grains. Distributing material is becoming harder. It is being felt that it may not be wise to give materials to part of the community as that leads to tensions. Hence we will only go to a community where we can provide for the whole community. Running community kitchen is also not easy. It is hard to turn away anyone who shows up even if they are not from that area. Many community kitchens have seen the increase in number of recipients with every passing day. Hence it may be wound up in areas where it has been running for a while and we may just do grain distribution in yet untouched areas. There is a severe shortage of doctors who can volunteer time. TISS classes started this week and hence many medical students at TISS can no longer volunteer their time. We have been asking donors if they can find doctors. It is a pleasure to see the bamboo and plastic sheets that have come up in Mandala, even if on virtual garbage dumps. In fact last night lot of garbage cleaning was done there by the community. Hopefully this community building exercise will lead to strong communities that are not susceptible to religious bigotry. As Pranav, a student volunteer of Pune said, "Here our office is in a Mosque in day time and we sleep at temple in the night." Bhasha activists returned after the student team from Pune arrived. Latest Pictures from Mandala AID-IITB students collected about to expire medicines from IITB hospital. You can do so from nearby hospitals in you area. The list it given at http://mumbai.aidindia.org IITB has provided a vehicle for the travel purpose to students of "Foundation of Human Horizon". They visited Kandivali-damu nagar, kranti nagar,hanuman nagar slums. The condition out there is horrifying, around 60 people died in the area, 700 around houses are flooded away. Non-IIT students from there group are active in other areas but we are not in direct touch with them. Areas right outside the city like Kalyan, Dombivalli etc. have suffered much heavier damage than the city but have been practically absent from newspaper and media coverage. So many villages around Kalyan, Ulhasnagar, Badlapur have been practically wiped out. If even after 10 days, media is not caring for areas next to Bombay, one can imagine how much the plight of Indian countryside goes unreported. No wonder no one talks of miseries of tribals affected by the Sardar Sarovar and other dams. AID volunteer Ashish Saran travelled two hours to come from Dombivalli to our planning meeting. He said that he was so angry to see continuous images of knee deep water on TV when all around him there was six plus feet of water. We have also not been active in these remote areas since we do not have any trusted partners there. If you know of any credible group doing relief activities in these areas, do let us know. Next few days we plan to expand our relief activities in yet unreached areas. - AID Mumbai Volunteers |