For the past two years Vavunatheevu villagers have been taking water from our water tank at Shalampailkerny. The tank there was built for the use of the villagers of that village, which has only half the population of Vavunatheevu, and as a result they are sometimes unable to access water for drinking and cooking. Therefore it is reasonable to install water tanks in Vavunatheevu itself. In fact, the local RDS (Rural Development Society – a sort of self-help organization which each village has) made just such a request to ABDF.

Right now the people only have access to water either through a deep hole about a foot wide drilled near the road, or the river that flows through the area. The hole near the road can only bring up a bucket at a time, a very slow process. So most villagers take their water – including drinking water – directly from the river, which is not only problematic in itself (river water being highly unhealthy in general) but there is the wee little fact that parts of the river are also the home to crocodiles, which can make bathing and laundry an exciting proposition.

The result is that, at our project site, Navatkadu Vidyalayam (School), no child has passed the exam in over 12 years. This has an unfortunate snowball effect; since no one has passed in more than a decade, parents don’t think it’s possible and so don’t encourage their kids. It only reinforces the lack of education in the area. This project seeks to help change that.

The school abuts the jungle, which rears up directly behind the newly-rebuilt toilets. There are, among other animals, wild elephants. These fellows frequently cross into the school grounds on their way to the village, the houses of which lie mostly on the opposite side of the road. In doing so they do a lot of damage, seeing the school infrastructure more as something fun to easily knock down, rather than move around. The simple solution is a barbed wire fence, which the elephants don’t seem to like, made with cement posts. The problem has been, in the past, the barbed wire and cement.