Final Day in Ranchi Village Re-Construction Program

For our final day in at the Ranchi YMCA we were very fortunate to be taken to tour their village re-construction program conducted in the 68 villages of Maranghada. The programs there are as follows: a children's school in 5 villages and 1 night school, indigenous and tribal sports, games, songs, and dance, agricultural extension program with in support of Birsa Agriculture, health care programs, food for work programs, construction of roads, tanks, wells, electricity, and small irrigation canals, vocational programs (tailoring, typing, bamboo handicraft, bee keeping, tile making, pickle processing, oil extraction, village marketing), awareness programs of witchcraft/superstition, AIDS, population expansion, environment, and hygiene, and promotion of community forestry, conservation, and alternative energy. Whew!!!!!

After over an hour drive we arrived at the Y headquarters to a wonderful welcoming of tribal song and dance. They gifted us with many lei's of flower garlands. We also joined in the traditional dance. The people of these villages are tribal people, therefore their language is not Hindi or Bengali but one of the many tribal languages present throughout India. Therefore, whenever we spoke we needed two interpreters!! One to put the tribal language into Hindi or Bengali then another person to translate into English! Anyways after the welcoming dance we visited the villages that are 3rd world status. Here the teacher must go door to door to collect children for school because the parent often would prefer their help out in the field. There are only 1 or 2 crops of rice cultivation a year as this area tends to be very dry. Many of the villages have no electricity and they are very very poor. These villages truly are without any modern amenities or lifestyle. It is a bit hard to explain all we saw and I am running out of computer time :-D

So to sum up the trip we also saw some of the programs stated above being enacted and visited a man whom produces honey which was quite tasty and we brought some back with us. We had a delicious lunch prepared in the traditional way cooked over wood burning fires and headed back to Ranchi. From Ranchi we caught our train home. We were very thankful to M. Sagna for all his and the Y's hospitality and the programs we saw and the way they helped the people of India will truly never be forgotten.