Wednesday 12 October 2011

Down by the beach...

Wow, wow, wow. Sewing, the beach, fishermen and 3 wonderful ladies. What a magical afternoon we've had.

Today was the first part of our Vandamanu visit. Vandamanu is the sewing and screenprinting unit that originally got Jen's Winston ball rolling... to go there today, was therefore especially poignant. The project was set up to help a small seaside village overcome the devastation of the 2004 tsunami by working directly with the UK, taking orders for printed cloth bags like the type you'd use for shopping.

After phone calls between non-Tamil speaking Jen, non-English speaking Geetha, and our very helpful rickshaw driver we eventually pulled into this tiny village and were met by an enthusiastically waving Geetha waiting at the roadside for us. After hugs, giggles, and a further squashed auto-ride, we were led up a stairwell to the turquoise room that is the home of this inspirational project. We were met by further giggles, hot coffee and a sewing demonstration on pedal-operated machines by two other workers- Sandhya and Ummal. After much hand gesturing and non-language communication, the five of us, new friends, took a dusk beach stroll watching fishermen bring in their catch and paddling in the warm Bay of Bengal. As we started off by saying- wow, wow, wow!

Tomorrow we will find out more about how this project actually works as we are meeting Swarna, the UK contact and co-ordinator for breakfast, but for today we could not have asked for more.

1 comment:

  1. Just tried making a comment and it was wiped off. Seems a strange site. I'll just say keep having fun now...and keep making a difference! Love you xx

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