I was concerned about the news of floods in the two states and loss of innocent lives, but i was not really concerned about the relief till ILP sent a mail regarding this. Thanks to all our senior volunteers who set the ball rolling in the first place. There was a clear demand from UNICEF office in Yemmiganur, Kurnool, about number of children who need help and what relief they want. The Cash and Kind donations started to trickle in. My friends Sastry and Victor had already volunteered and visited the districts like Koppal and Raichur in Karnataka.
I readily volunteered when i heard the materials will be sent to Yemmiganur, Kurnool. I had visited this place earlier for the child tracking system and had known UNICEF coordinator Mr Janardhan. Yemmiganur in particular and kurnool in general is known for many child labours, including the most cruel form of using young children for Cotton pollination.
The Gokuldas Garments, Yeshwantpur came forward with 2000 pieces of new cloths. This was sent to IIM, from there Prof Trilochan Sastry & Prof Rajaluxmi made arrangements to deliver it to a common venue RMV Clusters II Phase, North Bangalore. Sindhu and Jagdish spoke to apartment office bearers and got basement office rooms as a place to store them. The cloths neatly packed in 36 medium size cartoon boxes were delivered in a IIM bus on 16 Oct. Meanwhile Suchitra and other volunteers had bought new cloths like churidars (200 pieces?) and inner garments.
One thing that was on everybody's, mind was that this should be delivered at earliest to the relief areas. As the things got collected right in the middle of Diwali holidays, getting a transport and a volunteer to accompany with me become difficult. On Sunday, 18 Oct afternoon i called Kiran, Trustee of ILP to know if he can accompany me on 19 Oct to Yemmiganur. He readily agreed, i called up a taxi service for Toyota Innova and arranged to pick us up by early morning on 19th.
Early Morning
On 19th October the day started early at 4.00 am, its going to be a long day. That we know, but we didnt know how long it will become actually. At 4.30 am I picked up Kiran and left to RMV clusters, where Sindhu and Jagdish were already waiting with keys to open the basement office rooms. We started to load the boxes one by one in the innova with backseats folded down. Soon we realized that we will not be able to carry all boxes in the car. We made a quick decision that we will take only cloths like churidars and kids cloths. There were 3 huge boxes for the girls cloths and innerwears. We loaded boxes on top carrier bolted in the car. The sigh from the driver Subramani was deeper at some point, we decided to stop. We had loaded 12 cartoon boxes with cloths for 400 -500 kids and 3 huge boxes of 200 pieces of cloths for girls. He tied them neatly with ropes, not once did we had trouble on our way.
The previous night i had done research on which road to take, (i did sleep for only 2 or 3 hrs on that day ) There seems to be many road to reach yemmiganur. Finally decided the following route which i set in the GPS. Bangalore to Gooty road, then Gooty Railway station road to Adoni and finally Adoni to Yemmiganur. All in all about 350 kms
On the Road
We started at 6.o am, left the RMV clusters for the long journey. There were new well laid out roads till Gooty Road. But many work was still going on, hence the smooth ride was hindered by numerous diversions. At 9.15 am we reached Anantpur, we had our breakfast break. I called up Janardhan and informed him that we are half way to reach yemmiganur. The drive become longer and roads become narrower after Gooty road. From Gooty Railway station road to Adoni, the road goes through a large patch of agricultural lands with undulating terrains, which was a good treat to the eyes.
We reached Adoni and turned into road for our last leg to Yemmiganur, after a while the GPS ditched us showing no road in it. So continued without the GPS with the road we can see. We reached Yemmiganur, after few calls we located UNICEF office. We reached exactly at 1.0 pm.
Yemmiganur
Met some of the staff, as Janardhan was yet to reach yemmiganur from Kurnool. We could understand Telugu but we could not speak to them in any intelligent way to them. They had a big laugh on our problem. We were trying to find out which villages got affected and what is the plan for distributing the materials. We had to wait till Janardhan came to office. He had kept a file for Flood relief with neatly printed sheets of paper with village names and relief required in each of them. We didnt realize how far the flooded river Thungabhdra has submerged villages on either side of its banks which actually divides the villages between Karnataka and AP in this stretch. Irrespective of the state they were living, the villagers were devastated in this floods.
Janardhan informed us that 21 villages completely near submerged during the flood (This is only villages which Janardhan can reach from his yemmiganur office, the flood occurred in other areas too, which are not mentioned here). They are : Nagaladinne, Nadhikairavadi, Gurujala, Royachothi, Chinnakottallki, Pedakottallki, Mantralayam, Rampuram, Thungabhadra, Kachapuram, Sathanuru, Agasanuru, Kadadoddi, Nadhichagi, Madhavaram, Marali, Kumbalanoor, Vallur, Gudikambali and T.Narayanpur and Joharapuram.
There are about 2461 boys and 2288 girls studying in standards 1 -10. The girls include about 500 adolescents.
Ground Zero
We started at 3.0 pm with UNICEF staff to go to Nadhikairavadi. Its about 30 - 35 km yemmiganur. We have to go through Mantralayam. This pilgrim town is on the banks of Thungabhadra. In a normal season, we can see a huge stretch of water flowing behind this town. First thing we saw was the greyish / whitish dust that has settled all over the road. The road was completely invisible, the greyish dust was covering it. We turned into the road towards
Nadhikairavadi. The road was motorable but broken with tar removed, it will become soon unmotorable. We were able to see huge stretch of paddy field laid wasted with unknown sand / salt left by the draining water. There were number of Electrical /Telephone poles toppled down by the water. The remaining standing poles bears the sign of height to which the water reached during the night when it flooded. This will be the reminder of the ordeal the people went through. We can also see that cloths
were thrown out on either side of the road, which we presume are the used cloths which the donors had given and villagers decided to dump them.
We were shown from the road the village Nadhikairavadi which was submerged. It was close to the banks of the river. Just then we came across the site where many tents were pitched
on the side of Road. People greeted us, the village head greeted Janardhan as we had already informed that we are coming. We can see that they were curious to find what we are carrying with us. But they were not unruly. I hesitated to take pictures, this is not a tour or a good sight to see people running to get things. But unwillingly i took pictures for the record. This village has two camp sites separated about 400 - 500 metres between them, one site for Backward class and minorities and another site for scheduled caste people.
We didnt have a plan on what or how we are going to distribute, as we thought the field volunteers would have a plan.This is a important lesson we learnt. The boxes were slowly
unloded one by one, first the kids boxes. We took into the camp site, where already the villagers had made all children to sit. Other adults were standing around them. The first box we opened had cloths for 3 -4 years. We didnt know what each box contained, this is another big lesson we learnt on that day. We asked all mothers with babies to come and collect the cloths.
We can see all the curious eyes happy to see new cloths being given to them. The quality of the cloths were very good. Next box we opened had tshirts for ages 6 -9. We asked the village
head to give to the children. Slowly we realized there are older children waiting for thier turn, we opened the huge bundle Suchi had ordered.
The box contained new churidhars with bright colors, we can see a happy smile in the girls faces. This went out fast. Now kids who got already the cloths were even more curious and want to get the new churidhars also. It didnt take much time for us to realize that we have problem in our
hands not knowing if we can distribute the cloths to all who need and avoid giving to same child again and again. To an certain extent the village head and some villagers controlled children who are taking cloths again. But it could not be avoided. After nearly an hour we realized that we should move on with the remaining cloths. The children and adults on behalf of their children were asking for the cloths till we moved out of place. It was not a sight which we wanted to happen, it was difficult for us to say no to them.
We made a plan that we will go back to UNICEF office in Yemmiganur, sort all the cloths age wise and keep it ready for the next day. We also asked the village head to list out number of children and age group in the camp. We promised them that we will give cloths to all left out children. We would have distributed about 100 odd cloths. It was already 5.30 pm, we started back again to yemmiganur.
We stopped briefly at Mantralayam, we went close to the river and saw the devastation it had left. We were told that the water reached upto first floor of the big temple complex. It should be 12 -15 feet in height. We cannot imagine the damage such a huge surge of water can do.
What more to be done?
We came back to UNICEF office, we briefly discussed the things they still need. The following are some of the things required:
* Uniform cloths for children for the 4500 odd children.
Boys shirts - 4060 meters Girls shirts - 4985 meters
Boys Trousers - 2353 metres Girls skirts - 6218 meters
* Chapals for children (5-18 age)
* Mats - 2 to 3 mats per tent as they are going to stay for atleast 2 months
* Vessels / Buckets/ Jugs/ Water storing cans
We had asked Janardhan and staff to sort the boxes age wise and distribute evenly between the two camps or if needed distribute more in the scheduled caste campsites as they are not the first beneficiaries most of the time.
End after 24 Hours
We started our journey back at 7.0 pm. We asked the driver to go easy on roads. The GPS was handy to show the turns in the dark. We reached Bangalore at 3.30 am on 20th oct. We had travelled almost 800 kms in a day. So it has become a whirlwind tour of 24 hours, i hardly slept as i had to talk to the driver all through to keep him awake.
Are we content / satisfied with our trip? No. We had a expensive taxi, we couldn't carry everything, we couldnt distribute everything, we couldnt reach all the villages. But there was a consolation that we could take things what we can and reach there in due time it was necessary. We learnt a lot about what to do and what not to do in future. We were there to share in their distress. They were happy to see us.
ps: Janardhan has informed me that all cloths left were distributed in three villages, Nadhikairavadi, Sathanuru and Mantralayam. The 200 odd cloths for ages 3-5 will be given to anganawadi centres.
- Sashi & Kiran
