Naxalites, Maoists, and Elephants! Oh my!: Jharkhand, Day 2

On the second day, we went to CWD - an NGO ran by nuns. They work with tribal children far up in the hills of Jharkhand. Many of the villages have no electricity and are only accesible by 4 wheel drive. FUN! The sisters, Saloni and I piled into a really old jeep. They have an old jeep and a new jeep. They of course take the old jeep because the Maoists think any new car is a government vehicle and promptly attack it. The Maoists also recognize the sisters' old jeep as belonging to the sisters. The sisters have an informal agreement with them - the sisters won't be targeted because they are helping the tribal people.

The project I work on in India is helping this particular NGO to start balwadis, or pre-school and kindergarten, for tribal children. They are so precious! It was just like any other kindergarten class (except it was in a room with no electricity and lots of bugs), but their art was hanging up everywhere and they were singing interactive songs. This is a big deal in a country who's education system is based purely on roat memorization. CWD also has a good rapport with the formal school, so the children are able to mainstream quite well.

These are the villages that have elephant problems this time of year. The wild elephants are very wise creatures indeed. They know that in this time of crop scarcity, (elephants also love human crops) the locals hide their grain in the center of their mud houses. In the middle of the night, the elephants will come to the village and knock down the houses to get to the grain. Could you imagine? So each night during the rainy season, someone has to stay up and bang a drum and be on elephant watch. Snakes are a big issue during the rainy season. Luckily, I didn't come across any cobras.

Now I'm back in Delhi with just a couple of days to go until my departure...