Mice in my hair

Last night I woke up to a mouse in my hair. I don't know what it was doing, but it had somehow made its way under the mosquito net and into my hair. This encounter with the mouse of the house has helped make our decision to vacate the jungle house earlier than planned. We will be heading into town, Kumily, today, after just two nights in the jungle. The farm here is not what we expected and there is not really any work for us to do. On top of that, the owner left the same day we arrived, so we have been alone in her house, on the farm, supposedly looking for work to do. Of course, neither Hannah nor I have experience in cardamum or coffee cultivation so without direction, the work we can do is extremely limited. In terms of research for my thesis work, the owner is an ex-pat from Germany and is married to a woman from Tamil Nadu, and they export to Germany, so the community development side of this organic farm really has nothing to do with India and its development. As for HAnnah's interest in organic farming, there was a man spraying pesticides just near the house...we are unsure of where the property ends, but cross contamination seems inevitable if it isnt their land he was actually spraying. So this, added together with the resident mouse, has helped us decide to pack 'er in and head to town.

From town I think we will visit the nearby wildlife reserve and see some elephants and tigers!
We will be staying in a tree house! That will be neat!! Hopefully there will be internet nearby and we can spend some quality time doing research and writing for our projects.

We came from Munnar, which is an area of vast, green, tea trees that don't grow taller than our thighs. It was beautiful and quite chilly up in the mountains. We visited the tea museum and the processing plant and wandered the hills with trees and met some of the women pickers. We learned how white tea, green tea and black tea are made, their prices, and their history. This is all black tea, just oxidized, and sifted differently.
We also saw many pesticides being sprayed on these trees. We visited the "welfare" project of the tea plantation, called DARE. The entire area of tea plantations is owned by one company, TATA, who also makes cars and electronics, among other things. They have owned the plantations since the early 20s. They have a welfare centre where "differently abled" children attend classes and then are given jobs dying fabrics, or making jam or paper. Although it is neat to see such an old initiative, of what we now know as "CSR, Corporate Social Responsibilty", it was disturbing to see how many physically disabled children and young people are living in the tea plantations. This made us wonder why, is it because of the pesticides?
The interesting thing about the towns in the hills is that they are communes, funded and set up by TATA to house, school, and provide health care for the workers and their families. So everyone lives, works, and grows up together under TATAs care. Those who are disabled end up at DARE. The men seem to spray and process the tea, and other care for the trees, and the women pluck the buds for processing. Anyway, more research into this concept of commune living and abundant labour needs to be done.
Needless to say, we didn't purchase any tea from the outlet. We are in search of some small plantation or locally owned grower to sell perhaps some local, organic tea? We'll see if that is possible.

This is the amazing backwaters tour that we did in Cochin.
Cochin was probably my favourite stop so far. We spent the first two nights couchsurfing at a guys place about half hour from Fort Kochi. Then we moved to town when we played his music all night long and we didnt sleep well. We did some shopping and took a spontaneous tour of stores, a woman's cooperative, a ginger processing plant, and a candle making shop. Our tour guide was a rickshaw driver who sang the Barbie girl song, called his 3-wheel Baja a Ferrari, and bahhed at the goats on the road.
The next day we took the back water tour up the back waters nearby. It was a 7 hour trip on a boat with about 15 other people. We were punted up and down the cannals. It was very peaceful. We also stopped to see a Lime powder factory where they make lime out of a shell they extract from the river water. Then we stopped to see a demontration of twine making from coconut. Then we had lunch. It was relaxing and peaceful.
On Sunday, we visited the oldest church in INdia, St. Francis Church in Fort Kochi, but the english service was cancelled so we tried at the Basilica (KErala is a highly Christian state), but no english that day either. I went back and sat through most of the Malayalam service at the St. Francis church which was interesting. Later that day we visited the oldest synagogue in India. It is located in a neighbourhood called Jew Town in Fort Kochi. We arrived COMPLETELY soaked!! It poured possibly the hardest rain we've seen on the ride to the synagogue, and the roads were all flooded. Then we had a snack and brushed paths with the manager of the Australian cricket team who was in town for a match, but was rained out.
That night we went to a show of Kathakali, a traditional dance drama from Kerala. The make up application takes longer than the show!
Oh, and we found a great cafe that served real coffee!

Hannah and I have yet to find an organic farm or organization that integrates community development, gender equality and sustainable agriculture here in India. Yesterday we pondered the idea that maybe all that is incompatible...or maybe we are looking in the wrong areas. Anyways, we will keep searching...we have some leads of offices in Delhi we will visit once we are back up north...and we might have a week or so to visit some other places up around Uttarakhand as well.