Daily working life

Another week has flown by we have finished the second week of training with the ladies.  It has been a pleasure to spend another week with them.  They are so joyful & kind - bringing us custard apples as gifts in the morning - like an apple for the teacher, and are continually amused by our attempts at learning Tamil...consisting mainly of words for jewellery tools and terms, such as beads is money, & wire is cambi.

The women's working day here at the production unit begins at 9.30am, they come from both the hostel here on the farm at MAT, and from the scattered surrounding villages. They have mostly done a days work before beginning - washing, cooking & cleaning for their families, or doing duties on the farm & helping care for the children at the orphanage, also here at MAT. 

They work leisurely but methodically throughout the day, laughing, giggling and teasing each other constantly!  There is a really supportive atmosphere & they all seem to really enjoy coming to work alongside their friends (sisters, as they call us).  They enjoy snacks and sweets that they bring to share with everybody.  They work in bare feet (which has proved a little hazardous with shards of metal littering the floor!), mainly sitting on mats on the floor to sew.

They break for lunch sabre at 1.00, eating outside in amongst potted plants that they have placed around the front of the production unit.  They bring rice & dahl or curry gravy in stainless steel tiffin boxes, wrapped in fabric or carried in baskets. 


Immediately around the unit lie paddy fields, vines growing bitter gourds & thousands of peanut plants.  Small thatched shacks house chickens and a couple of pretty vicious turkeys!  There is no toilet in the unit so the ladies disappear in ones or twos in amongst all the greenery...their saris are perfect for them to be able to do this discretely, albeit the squats of delicious colours glowing from a distance in the complimentary vibrant green vegetation...our trousers, however, are not so designed and I am sure we flash a white bum to the surrounding farm workers whenever we need to go!


The ladies finish at 5.00, sweeping up all the off cuts and threads with pointy hand brooms, rolling up the mats & closing all the windows.  Whilst working after they had finished one night this week, Lottie spotted a cheeky chipmonk sneaking into the building through a broken window and running (for his life, when he realise he wasn't alone) across the main room and into the small room that houses all the spare fabric.  We surmised that it would make a very comfy nest for little chipmonk babies & so had to draw pictures of the creature to be able to explain to the ladies of the new inhabitant - we didn't know the Tamil for chipmonk!

Week Two Photographs

Peanuts drying in the sun

Grace with the new arrivals!

The Production Unit

Peanut picking

Jewels

Tuesday and Wednesday

We have spent the last two days with the ladies developing a new design for necklaces and bracelets inspired by some we saw in Udipi, a Hindu temple town in Karnataka.  Lots of shops near to the temples sold coloured kum kum powders for blessing Gods, chalk -for drawing patterns on the floor outside houses, and simple beaded necklaces to hang around the shines in the temples.

We bought some cut glass beads in the markets on Seppings Road in Bangalore, they come in such an array of colours it was hard to pick…and we ended up with a large bag full!

The ladies have really enjoyed learning how to link the beads together with brass wire, it is a technique that they recognise from the beads that they see and wear themselves.

It is a tricky technique but they have picked it up so quickly, aided with packets of Indian Worther’s Original & chocolate eclairs! 

Second Week Of Training

Monday 4^th October

After almost three weeks of rambling travelling holiday around Karnataka & Goa, hopping from peaceful Hindu temple town to golden palm tree lined beaches, we returned to our base in Bangalore on Friday and back to work (as much as you can call this work anyway). 

We spent the weekend buying more materials - this invariably takes longer than one can possible expect.  When visiting Shanthi Metals on Saturday to buy more brass wire & sheet, despite having called early to see if they were open and being told that they close at two, we arrived at ten to two to find the shop perfectly open but with no shopkeeper in sight!  The man that vaguely seemed to be watching the shop, or waiting for the owner, I couldn’t work out, ensured us that he would be back in ten minutes…a hour and a half later (after a broken but very passionate conversation about the Muslim/Hindu conflict in Andra Pradesh accompanied by disgustingly sweet Chai that I had to make myself drink as he had so kindly bought it for me), the owner returns from his lunch.  It was worth the wait – he didn’t have what we needed but disappeared once again down the road somewhere and came back with 2.5 kilo coil of shining brass wire – it should keep us going for a while!

We caught the 6.30am train back to Dharmapuri.  A very pleasant train journey - watching Indian life in full flow through the wide open windows & doors; scenes of make shift tents, palm trees & people pooing, dowsed in morning light & appearing through the lifting mist as the sun re-finds it’s heat;,savouring hot coffee, the shouts of ‘Chai Chai’ and the smells of morning dosa.  Followed by a very bumpy rickshaw ride further still into rural Tamil Nadu to the farm and large project in which our small production unit sits.

We arrived to find a sea of peanuts (grown on the farm here) drying in the sun outside of our room, and to find the one of the dogs – Twinky - has had puppies!  Now we have puppies, kittens and baby children to play with (all riddled with flees!).

We received a really warm welcome from the ladies – ‘Good morning sister how are you I’m fine thank you’ & back into the training as if we had never left.

I think a few wires got crossed with regards to the work that we left for them to do whilst we were away (i.e. not much was done!) but they were all eager to get started again & don’t seem to have lost their enthusiasm for making jewellery.   

However, there are three new faces here this week, two of whom the ladies had gone through all the processes & techniques with them, as we had done with them, and they were proudly wearing their handmade bracelets.  This is really exciting, to know they want to pass on their new skills, & encouraging, as they are able to.  Laxshmi had also produced a new earring design!  Lottie & I have been thinking a lot about how lucky we have been to receive an art training - something most people here cannot even comprehend, so it is really heart warming to be able to encourage peoples creativity & to watch them find it.  We had a hugely productive day making time-consuming but beautiful necklaces.  All in all a wonderful first day back.

I have been writing this whilst watching the sunset, with the distant sound of thunder to accompany it (it never seems far away despite us having seen hardly any rain), but the mosquitos are threatening to get me and warm chapatis are now beckoning.  

Bangalore

We have had a lovely weekend in Bangalore but have been a little hampered in the sourcing materials mission as it has been both the end of Ramadan & the Hindu Ganesha festival so everybody has been on holiday and almost all of the shops have been closed.   

It has felt a bit like Christmas as there are twinkle lights everywhere, people making & selling exquisite garlands of flowers threaded on cotton on every street corner, and truly hideous gigantic statues of Ganesha in fluorescent colours (a rival to the blow up Father Christmas’ at home!).   On Saturday night everybody gathers at the lakeside with their statues, big - on the back of vans & small - in their hands, to throw them into the lake.

So back to the materials & we have a few links to wholesale silver in Bangalore but the city has about the same population of London & so it feels a bit like finding a needle in a haystack!

We are visiting another crafts project here in Bangalore with a view to maybe developing some jewellery here too, & to perhaps getting some cards & packaging for the jewellery printed. 

Lottie & I are heading to Mysore tomorrow and onwards for a couple of weeks travelling before heading back to Bangalore & the project again at the beginning of October.  We will be in touch when we return.

Love love x

Photographs from Week One

Geeta

Selvi

                                                      

Rubiya

  

Suguna

Vanita

  

Geeta

Rubiya

Mani & Suguna

Geeta & Rubiya

Priya, Vanita & Selvi

       

The Kitten of Death

Sunset over Eastern Ghats