A Volunteer Celebration With The Kerala Builders

No Comments | June 24th, 2007 | Trackback

One of the extra-curricular highlights of my volunteer stint in India was attending the farewell party for a team of builders; they had come all the way from Kerala to central India to build some new structures for the organization I was volunteering with. The party was a bit mis-timed because they weren’t actually done, nor were they actually leaving any time soon, but the plan had been for them to finish around that time. The construction hadn’t gone according to plan, but that didn’t mean the party shouldn’t.

Communication was an issue, as India has several languages – fortunately one of the organization workers was from Kerala, and so shared their mother tongue, and spoke Hindi and English as well. He did most of the translating between the organization employees and workers, and on occasion the volunteers and the workers.

It was already dark when we arrived and everyone – thirty people or so – sat in a large gazebo-type structure, around the outside. Before the meal was the performance…and the drinking. Several small teams of workers and then organization staff would get up and perform – perhaps a song or a funny poem (a good amount was lost in translation of course) or a dance.

One of the very long term volunteers performed a song she had written and actually recorded for the cause. Another volunteer suggested I perform a song from a recent Bosnian comedic film – I had been living in Bosnia prior to that - but I declined. I hadn’t yet had enough to drink.

The best part of this though was following the three workers posing as a camera crew. They didn’t have a camera, or a microphone, or a light…but they had mobile phones, which sort of looked like those things. It was a bizarre addition to the show to see them moving around as if they were Jerry Springer’s crew. Then there was the most reserved staff member cutting lose in the style of a pop star. He put Brittney to shame.

Then there was the food. This group of MEN had spent all day cooking traditional Keralan food. They served us some kind of white carrot which, to this day, I don’t know what it is* (it was good!), and some kind of very spicy sauce, as well as a lot of fish. They didn’t have that much, more due to lack of planning than lack of resources, and this was all clearly very popular home food among them - but they served the foreigners first and made sure we had a lot.

Looking back it is also striking just to realize that while this organization existed only because of a very dire social and health need caused by a disaster…it wasn’t a sad place. Some of the organization staff had been personally affected by the disaster; all of them saw the consequences of it all day every day in their work. But here were thirty plus people from different parts of the same country, from different language, religious and educational backgrounds…enjoying each other’s company and sharing their food. And it was pretty neat to have the chance to share in that.

*Google images and an elderly English woman to the rescue: it was parsnip