A Village Named Datom

Downtown Datom

Datom, a tiny village tucked away in an isolated corner of Jharkhand, India, is where we've found ourselves for the last few weeks.  The reason for being here is to help out some friends who are constructing a health clinic for the region because at the moment, there really isn't much available to the local people.

We jumped onto the train from Kolkutta (a city worthy of its own post, or at least a yarn session) without much of an idea of where we were actually going to, and what we would actually find.  All we keep being told was that we were heading into a Malaria and Maoist bandit zone, so we should be careful.  How we were meant to do that any differently than we had been doing is still a mystery, I'm sure it's not up to us if we get kidnapped or robbed or attacked by mozzies!!  So off into the night we travelled, ticking off stations as we went (we've noticed a severe lack of names and lights at many Indian train stations, so weren't confident of finding our station and getting off in the 2 minutes the train would stop for.).  But all our fears were unfounded and after many hours we had plenty of smiling faces telling us when to get off and wishing us good luck.

We woke the next morning to an amazing concoction of mooing, baaing, cockadoodle dooing, geese honking, lady sweeping, man chatting/ spitting.  The village was awake and ready to show itself to us.  We poked our head out of our room and saw many other head poking around corners to get a glimpse of us.  Many of these heads took off in a cloud of dust when they saw us, one little girl even left her shoes behind in the rush! 

Peak hour in Datom

After a bit of wandering around the village and a trip to the clinic site, we'd pieced together Datom.  No shops, no electricity, no running water, no crazy traffic (apart from cow traffic), no pollution and no worries.  Plenty of rice paddies and harvesters working all day, plenty of curious looks from everyone, plenty of animals walking down the street, plenty of work to do, and most importantly, plenty of great big smiles!

A true Indian style pose, no smiling allowed.
You wouldn't guess he was laughing as soon as the camera was down.

The kids took a couple of days to suss out what the strange white people were all about, but we soon managed to win them over so they could come back to collect their shoes!  And they haven't left since!  They're very keen to have their photo taken, say hello 10 times and shake our hands.  Our second night saw as dragged next door to sit in on the local study group, needless to say this has now turned into a nightly English lesson!

OH&S approved Indian Safety Thongs

So far the routine has been to teach English at night and build a permaculture garden by day. This involves cutting mulch by hand (a tough job that I'm glad we don't have to do at home!), shovelling poo, straw and soil into the garden and carrying concrete in the above 'do everything' dish for the foundations of the kitchen part of the clinic.

Indian Soph

Making mulch..... by hand!

Matt has also gone a little photo mad and has been taking his camera everywhere, but the locals are used to foreigners with cameras and even seem to have a little competition to see who gets there photo take each day!  But everyone is keen to have a look at themselves when the picture is taken and is up for a laugh.  The guys below saw that he was about to star in a photo and told me to wait, he then popped back up holding the straw and knife, talk about well trained!

Soph has been attempting to treat patients in the make shift clinic just outside the kitchen door of Dada's house (also our home) surrounded by kids, farm animals with a massive language barrier and very limited medicines.  The old table gets a blanket thrown on top, a pillow appears and voila, open for business!  She's getting very good at charades, and is looking forward to treating people at home, she'll now be able to do it without any talking! haha

Soph at work in temporary clinic/ courtyard on the street

Chai breaks are a constant occurrence everyday (which we're glad about!) and keep our sugar levels up and above a healthy level.  India really does revolve around chai! We've even had our own cook, Anil, for the past week who spends the day preparing the next meal of top quality local style veggies (the vegetarian stint continues).  He's cooked up a storm and ensured that we will leave here with stretched bellies and smiling faces.

Chai break at home

Everything we do seems to cause a stir (not sure how word gets around).  We dropped into the chemist in the village up the road (we don't have any shops remember) to get some soap and from out of nowhere a crowd of at least thirty people appeared to watch the proceedings.  They obviously had nothing better to do with themselves, we all moved aside thinking they were customers, but they just moved with us!!  We were then escorted home by another swarm of kids who had just finished school.

But that's enough of us talking, if you want some more info then maybe you should come over for yourself.  Traditional Healthcare is the organisation we're working for and they're based in Melbourne.  You can check them out on Facebook (Traditional Healthcare Inc) or have a look at their website (http://www.th.org.au/), they're always looking for help and even 'liking' them on Facebook will help a little!

To finish up, here's a few more photos from Datom, hope you enjoy!

The washing line

From rocks to walls

The DCG - Datom Cricket Ground in full swing
Fielders have to dodge the open well and crop field that dot the field

The Poo tree, growing fresh cow pattie fuel for the fire

Datom night life... there are heaps of fireflies and stars!