8/3/2012
As part of a service learning conference that my professor, Miriam Samuel ma'am was leading, we went out to visit a backwater community (fishing community). The whole conference group (about 30 in number) went along and toured the estuarine biological laboratory ran by MCC and then got a look into the community.
Fishermen sending the sustainable boat out to the bay. It is new, just built and purchased, so the ceremony taking place is prayer and then a breaking of a coconut on the hull to bless it. This exchange took place between the Hindu group and Muslim group, if I remember correctly.
The boats directly next to the one going out to the water are boats that NGOs have brought in, thinking they were helping the community. They are painted with toxins/chemical paint, and are fiber, not wood. They are not built for the kind of water that is experienced in the lake, and so they capsize easily. Just the past week, the man leading us was saying that a family of 22 capsized and 20 died. Two young boys clung on and were saved.
Then, after the boat is not usable anymore, it pollutes even further by not being made from natural materials. The sustainable boat is made of local wood and is crafted by laborers, which helps support the local economy. They are built heavier and wider and withstand the waves better. The only thing is that this boat does not do well outside of the lake in the bay. The bay is more suitable for the fiber boats, because they can cut through the big waves.
Here is what a sustainable boat looks like in skeleton form:
We visited an old Dutch cemetery. Pulicat was originally controlled by Dutch settlers. At one time, they caught pneumonia and 100 of their people died, just in one year. So, this cemetery was constructed just for their community.
I thought it was funny that kids were running on the gravestones...
...and men were playing a marble game right there, too.
Some girls from the village that wanted to be in a picture.
And a look into a street of Pulicat:
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