Wednesday 16 June 2010

Anyone for a curry………

(Hannah here again)
Thought people might be interested in the food here. I’ve certainly haven’t yet had a bad meal in India (except for something very odd we had for breakfast at the airport). South India is famous world wide for its cuisine – lots of colours, flavours, aromas and textures. Coming from a culture where we eat vast amounts of meat, it’s amazing and Mysore 20100415 004beautiful to see how many different ways vegetables can be used in cooking, and how varied and even ‘meaty’ they can taste (if that makes sense).
We’ve tried many of the different dishes – somehow it’s not quite as scary to point at a dish in a language you don’t understand when there’s no chance it’s going to be some odd bit of animal, that now placed in front of you you have to eat (Nick would remember a few yak dishes we’ve had in the past!).
The South Indian Thali (as seen in pic) is very inexpensive (about £1) and you usually get rice, 3 different kinds of curry, breads, curd (yoghurt) and chutney. Refilled until you’re full. Mysore is famous for it’s Dosa – a large savoury pancake, usually served with a hot sauce and cooling coconut. Often eaten at breakfast with stuffed and spiced potato.   

Mysore 032We’ve found some good places to eat in Mysore. We discovered the Park Lane Hotel when we first arrived here. Staying in a hotel close by we noticed that it served porridge all day. Not very Indian you may say – but it means Nick and I can happily have a meal and the girls are happy too. They haven’t really taken to the cuisine (apart from the rice/bread and curd) and not many places have non-spicy food on the menu (this place also serves cheese sandwiches and chips!). My favourite for a very mad experience is the Indra Cafe’s Paras (near to the famous Devaraja market). It’sIMG_0201 always absolutely packed and getting a table is a feat in itself – we’ve truly discovered that queuing is a very British thing! As in most excursions, the girls are centre of attention – Beth taking a picture of people taking their pictures. For once the girls having fun as opposed to burying their head in my lap!

We’re getting better at cooking at home Mysore 052having progressed from a one burner stove to a two
burner! Also managed to find a cook book section in the local bookshop so are having more success. We’ve had a few soggy and bitter veg dishes! (Thanks for those who have sent some recipes from home). I also managed to find a kids book on veg and their names  – sounds bizarre but it’s not that easy to cook dishes when you can’t actually find the ingredients. We’ve befriended a good veg stall and the guy who runs it is very helpful. The girls fill up the metal bowls, which all get weighed together, and smile sweetly so that they get a free banana!  Beth will happily eat all the sweet mangoes, lychee, papaya and pomegranates. Isla is more keen on her fill of peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate gems (smartie look-alikes).
DSCF3015To be fair I’ve trawled all the supermarkets and between them we’ve managed to find; pasta, peanut butter, marmite, cornflakes, weetabix (£4 for 24!!), cream, mayonnaise, ketchup, tuna, sliced bread, noodles and cheese. So we’re certainly not starving, but when we hear of people having BBQ’s at home, there is a serious salivation problem! We do manage to get chicken about once/ twice a week to cook at home. The supermarket supply is very sporadic and neither Nick or I have the balls to go to the butcher and choose our own live chicken (hypocritical I know). All fun – not sure the Sainsbury’s veg counter is going to be quite the same when we head home………
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Since writing this a few days ago we have expanded our kitchen appliances to include an oven. Hooray. It’s very amusing and gives a whole new meaning to temperature control (it sits on top of the gas burner), but think it will be fun trying it out. I will let you know how we get on………


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………given I still haven’t posted this blog yet ( we don’t seem very good at that!) I thought you might like to see Beth & Isla’s cake. Yes, it came from a cake mix packet, but it tasted good and it worked!!! Cheese soufflĂ© next…….

Wednesday 2 June 2010

Kabini Organics

My major project here at MYKAPS is to create a website to support the foundation of Kabini Organics. Kabini Organics is a farmer led, farmer owned producer company designed to maximise producer power for poor smallholder farmers. Farmers have increasingly found it difficult to make any money here, and there is a national problem of farmer suicide (here and here) due to high debt caused by interaction with money lenders and poor crop yields. Kabini Organics currently has about 1000 farmer members  (collectively about 3000 acres), and is supported by MYKAPS, ETC India, and funds from the Rabobank foundation.

Geoff admires his chillies.In their particular areas surrounding the Kabini river (B Matakere), the farmers are surrounded on three sides by national parks and forestry. Whilst this is good for the conservation of elephants, it is less good for the farmers as animals have a habit of coming out of the forests and eating the crops. The normal way of stopping this is to use “solar wire” (electric fences powered by solar panels and car batteries) , but this is not available to poor smallholder farmers. So there is an arms race between the animals of the forest and the farmers; farmers are not able to grow ‘food’ crops easily.

On the upside, the soil is extremely good at growing ELS cotton (Extra Long Staple – longer cotton fibres and commanding a higher market price). Therefore they are experimenting with growing organic cotton here, and trying to ensure a solid and reliable purchase chain. By cutting out various middle men, by removing the moneylenders, and by removing various shennanigans relating to incorrect use of weighing scales, they are able, best case,  to save about 870Rs per quintal (a quintal is 100kg – with a market value of ~3200Rs) by becoming a producer company.

Being ‘organic’ requires compliance to the organic rules of the market you are trying to sell into. In the case of the EU, this means that you must have been growing organic produce for at least two years (3 years for the US), and there are various other regulations like:

  • you have to have a map of your farm showing what is sown in which field
  • you must keep a diary of what you do each day (what fertiliser etc., sowing, harvesting)
  • you must only used allowable fertilisers etc.
  • you must not mix organic and non organic crop (either in the field or in storage etc.)
  • and a host of other rules.

All these things are required to be certified organic – a certification received from an independent certification agency (such as IMO).

Whilst there may sound achievable to you and me, there is a relatively high illiteracy rate here, and the concept of commitment to what may seem arbitrary long term rules is difficult when you do not have enough money to eat. Education of what the rules are, and audit (internal and external) to ensure compliance are therefore key.

My project, therefore, is to create a website to help explain the background, some the economics and the difficulties, and therefore help create some brand value and brand awareness for Kabini Organics. This is somewhat tricky as they won’t have any certified cotton until next year, and it is not entirely clear to me who we are trying to enlighten (ie who the website’s market is .. end consumer, or purchaser). But it is coming along and at least allows me to add some of my skill and experience into the mix.

If anyone has any questions, do ask me as it is all helpful to try and get the ‘story’ into an easily conveyable format ….

KabiniOrganics

Tuesday 1 June 2010

A month at MYKAPS

I’ve been chastised by a few of you for not posting any updates in the blog, so I am forthwith rectifying the situation. About two weeks ago I drafted some monstrously long entry about MYKAPS (the NGO I am working with) and what they do and what it means and what I think about it and blah blah blah.. On rereading it I bored myself silly. Not such a good sign. So I’ll write a shorter post about the work and I am doing here, and then backfill some of our exploits over the last month – GRS Fantasy Park (a waterslide park thing), Srirangapatna (temples), Chamundi Hill (more temples). A menu of delights.
I have now been working at MYKAPS (Myrada Kaveri Pradeshika Samsthe) for about a month. I tend to work Monday to Thursday and then spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday helping Hannah with the kids. The monsoons haven’t hit yet, but they are due any day now – maybe this week. Perhaps my commute will turn into a mudbath.
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MYKAPS spun off from its parent organisation, MYRADA, in 2008. Originally the people working here (most people seem to have been here 15-20 years) worked with PLAN, a UK based charity focussing on the welfare of children. However Plan moved out of Southern India in 2008, leaving MYKAPS without its major sponsor. This prompted a significant directional change for MYKAPS, which now has a greater emphasis on domestic funding (ie from within India), and more farming and agricultural based projects. MYKAPS employs about 50 people in various different locations, with about 20 in the ‘head office’ where I work.
Their mission
Here is their mission statement:
  • To build and strengthen livelihoods of farm and non farm rural house holds in such a way that all families are able to live in prosperity and with dignity.
  • To spread the adoption of ecologically better practices so that soil, water and air are protected from further deterioration and nurtured back to healthy and optimally productive levels.
  • To promote the development of agriculture as an enterprise, balancing productivity with environmental concerns and securing appropriate credit and market linkages
  • To increase awareness and facilitate attitudinal and behavioral changes in the areas of health and sanitation so that health risks are reduced.
  • To ensure that all the rights of children are respected at all times, and that children are groomed to contribute to the healthy growth of the community and the nation.
  • To ensure that all the above are achieved with gender sensitivity and through building and strengthening local level people’s institutions, working with panchayats (local government), networking with other governmental and non governmental institutions and strategic partnerships with resource institutions.
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Projects
They are involved in a number of projects, the main ones being:
  • MSK (Mission Sunehra Kal) Project – helping farmers with watershed development, organic land use and sustainable farming
  • CMRCs – Community Managed Resource Centres. 16 regional self help centres that help people do things like: understand what government schemes are available, fill in forms, submit forms, make links to banks, receive training (organisation forming, accounting,  computing etc.)
  • Kabini Organics – a group of farmers who have got together to produce organic products (principally cotton). Getting certified as an organic producer takes at least two years (or three years for plantation crops) and requires strict adherence to a set of farming rules (you must not mix organic and non organic crops, you must write a log of everything you do each day, you must not use GM seed etc.)
  • CIDOR - Centre for Institutional Development and Organizational Reforms. A training centre that teaches and facilitates in many areas, including a lot of ‘train the trainer’ work. Their courses include a range of organisational theory type courses (how to form and register a self help group, how to apply for funding, how to build good team dynamics), as well as training government officials, other NGOs etc.
  • HIV /Aids prevention – supported by the CDC (US centre for disease control) helps in two areas: pre infection information (telling high risk groups about HIV) and helping people who already have it.

So what does it feel like?
The stuff I have just reeled off there sounds a bit like a promotional leaflet or a wordified powerpoint presentation. What does it all add up to? What does it feel like to be here?


DSCF3295 The first thing to note is that it feels a lot like work. I don’t mean “OMG they are working me hard”, I mean that it is recognisably like other ‘commercial’ work I have done in my life. This may be violently obvious to anyone who has worked in a charity or an NGO before, but actually was quite surprising to me. I am not sure exactly what I expected. I think I thought it would feel fundamentally different somehow, more ‘holy’, more righteous. So the day is not shot through with beauty and radiance and ‘doing right’. It is shot  through with checking email, completing proposals, having meetings about progress on projects. I think I was incredibly naive about this and this is therefore perhaps a most important lesson.

DSCF3298Some people work here because they really believe in what they are doing. Some people  work here because they get paid. Some people play Solitaire when no-one is looking. There is the usual office stuff. Laughter, flirtations (although, this being India, somewhat muted), gossip (at least this is how I interpret it - humour me- my Kannada isn’t that hot). But all in all it feels like a place where things get done. Which is good.

 

 

 

This is all getting quite long, so I will tell you in another post what my primary project is. ….


Asleep. Not dead, in case you were worrying.

 

One of the dogs who lives here. Apparently named after a terrorist. Some of this humour is a little lost on me.