ABDF

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Hi everybody!

Only five more weeks until the end of the 2008 season. All but two of our big projects are finished. One project, the water tank in Navatkadu, is actually complete, but I still need to get pictures. There is a small festival at the kovil next door in a week; the official opening ceremony will take place at the same time. The other project, our coconut seedlings, will finish October 1, when we distribute them to the recipients. Other than that. I’ve been engaged in a few small projects of the quick-n-dirty sort. Sometimes, however, even these can be complicated.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Hi everybody!

I don’t have much to report since my last dispatch as very little has happened.

Yesterday I took the Synergy kids out to lunch. It was Bathsala’s birthday and so I thought we ought to do something different. We went into Kattankudy to a restaurant known as the best food in town, the Taj Hotel. We had Briyani, which is a special rice with a side of roast chicken. Normally at these places you order the main lunch dish and it is served family-style with a host of smaller side dishes; vegetables cooked in different ways, as well as one or two sambals. A sambal is a side dish made from ground fresh coconut and chilies and one or two other ingredients, also ground or finely shopped. The other ingredients vary, which is why there are million different sambals. They can include anything from sugar to Maldive (Mal-dee-vee) fish, which are named for that island country. Maldive fish are usually dried then flaked and have a woody salted taste that is only a tiny bit fishy. Maldive fish sambal is really delicious and compliments a good spicy curry.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Hi everybody!

Well, September dawns. I have less than two months left in this years’ season. Almost all of our earlier projects are either complete, or are winding down. For example, remember the coconut seedlings? This month we’re to distribute them to the recipients in Thiriamadhu tsunami resettlement village. This week our water tank in Navatkadu is finished; and while I’m disappointed that we were unable to supply the tube well in Iruunovil, due to extraordinary cost (I’m still shopping the project to the bigger agencies), at least we were able to supply clean water to one of our two targets.