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Today is another important day we’re going to pay a long visit to highly regarded project – St Mary’s Mahila Shikshan Kendra. We heard a lot about it and everyone in the group is willing to meet the nun and talk to the women. St Mary’s is a christian congregation of francescan nuns that instead that spending the whole day praying is doing something for the community. This project is based in one of the poor neighbourhood of the Ahmedabad (Gontipur)  and they are employing local women to do embroydery work on items that are then sold through Traidcraft and other FT organisations.

St Mary’s home is a three storeis building that includes between other things a schools and a hospital. This place is very welcoming; as soon as you step in your feel home. We walked up to the top floor to meet the founder – sister Lucia. This lovely spaniard was sent here 50 years ago and through sweat and tears she was able to create this productive iniciative. She is now helped and supported by sister Sylvia and a local designer.
The way in which St.Mary’s works is fairly simple, they contact various FairTrade wholesalers and agree on items and quantities. Once the orders are finalised they prepare the so call sets, these include the fabric, printed, and the tread to complete the embroidery according to specification. Women are free to carry out the work wherever they like – this is done to allow them to run their household. They are welcome to work in the workshop too, the same place where if they are asked to produce a new embroidery they can go to have help and support.

While there, we met few of the ladies working and we had a chat with the sisters. What an interesting work they’re doing! This has totally changed my attitude toward nuns. What I came to realise is that the ones working on the field are nothing like classic clericals, just praying and with little or no ability to help with the practical things in life.

Sister Lucia and Sylvia are truly ispiring in what they are doing and the local community believe in what they are doing. At the same time they are running this project properly making real planning and costing. And at the end of the year after “fairly” paying all the women working, if there’s any profit left they prepare a gift pack for each woman.

We concluded this visit by going into some workers’ houses. They all look very happy to have us there even if they didn’t seem to have any question for us. The things that they wanted to say was like “please order more” – so I can only amplify their message through this blog by publishing links to various e-shops that are stocking their products.

Traidcraft (UK)

Altromercato (Italy)

Ten Thousand Villages (USA – Canada)

Back at the hotel we all feel very happy to have visited the project and met the lovely people that are working there. For our surprise we had dinner with the sisters at a local restaurant. They were both wearing a Saree and is so refreshing seeing nuns doing common things. I hope that we’ll keep in contact with both sisters via email – Lucia didn’t lose any of her spanish and Sylvia has a very good english.

The road to the capital of Gujarat is for the majority very well kept so we made into our hotel in record time. Going back to a big city (6m) after days in villages is a bit of a shock for the: extremely high volume of traffic, car horns and pollution. Ahmedabad is a real city; we drove by a number of shopping centres, cinemas and one McDonald. Big cities on the other hand also attract a number of problems including slums and beggars that are nowhere to be seen in villages.

We cross the river and after few misses, the driver doesn’t know the city, we get to our hotel. We are back to a western style accommodation: aircon and all type of amenities. I am glad that we are going to spend three days here; travelling too much by road is very tiring without actually doing anything.
 
Ahmedabad is the 7th largest city in India and due to the fact that British colonialism didn’t interfere, the region developed in a different way. The city and region continued doing trade as previously to the colonialism time, without relying on British support. People here speak a little less English and Gujarat saw the birth of many independence movements including Ghandi’s.

Considering its size we spent the first day just visiting it, we started with an heritage walk and visits by coach. Tourism in an India city is normally a business of seeing a lot of temples and mosques. Religion here is very important and this is reflected in the number of religious buildings. Additionally to this bazaars are another part of the sightseeing, while for local is just a normal market, for us is something rather unique with tens of stalls selling any sort of product. Here colour and smells are rather unique and difficult to describe. We visited the city museum (more interesting that I thought) and concluded the day in a local mosque where we found a number of families were enjoying the sunny day.
 
This was a very challenging day for our group, the temperature topped 38 C. and walking around for the whole day left a sign on someone. Nothing too serious but Manu got a heatstroke that forced her into bed for the rest of the day. Fortunately A/C and a cold shower helped to lower her body temperature. The morning after she was as good as new!

This time getting to our Guest House was just a one hour business. I immediately fell in love with the Aga Khan Guest House, the cosy courtyard, the simple but comfortable rooms and the caring guys working there. This place is certainly a winner- nothing like a traditional British Guest Book but none the less a nice place to stay. I say than is not conventional because it is another training centre – this time training Indians in how to harvest rain water.

The whole structure is built around a massive 15,000 litres tank, every single roof collects rain waters and through a system of pipes it sends it to the the tank. You see here every utility is a bit of a problem; electricity, gas and water cannot be distributed centrally as in the majority of Europe. The vast territory makes it impossible, so in order to have a provision of these services you need to source them very locally. So in India you’ll find a number of Electricity Generators, Rainwater harvesting systems and many other ingenious ways to get basic services.

Back to the Aga Khan Training Centre, this is to help local people to make the most out of rainwater in their community in a safe way. Normally the first two rains of the season are used to wash roofs and tank – also is particularly important to filter the water in the tank before consumption. In order to show how the system works there is a miniature village were they can simulate precipitations. See Manuela posing in super-size!

Before leaving for Ahemabad we visited another community of tailors that decided to make their life incredibly complicated. In this case in fact the technique used to weave starts from already dyed thread that needs to be perfectly allinead in order to get the pattern right. The real experts of this are arts are masochistically using dyed tread horizontally and vertically. This technique is called tie-and-dye, the explanation is a bit convoluted, but as usual a picture can say more than a thousand words:

A long coach trip is the title of today – but considering the terrible nigh and accommodation nobody complained. Our driver [Mad Max] drove us from Mandvi to Dhrangadhra in a little more than five hours. It was as bad as I thought, the road was better than expected and we also stop for a break in a service area.
 
This time at the restaurant I avoided the usual Thali. I really cannot eat it more than once a day! So I went for some Chinese noodles and even if I was told that it wasn’t a good idea I’m totally glad to have done so. Tasting something different for once was a really nice change to the usual stuff.

After lunch the most interesting visit of all the Agrocel factory that process Fair Trade and Organic Cotton. The place is incredible – lorries arrive full of cottons ball and these are downloaded in a specific outside area. In this area a suction system transports the cotton after pre-washing it into the factory itself. The first process that the cotton goes through is Ginning – this is nothing else than removing the seed from the cotton ball. As per every process in this factory this is done by a machine. The cotton is then brought to the right level of humidity and pressed into 170-5 Kg pallets. The final product is then sent to the south of India for spinning and knitting.

 
Everything in India is re-used and this place makes no exceptions. The cotton seed is pressed in order to make oil and animal feed. This facility also includes a labour quarter, a little and very basic accommodation block for employees.
 
This visit was simply incredible, seeing the first stage of the process that transforms cotton balls into a t-shirt – all done in accordance with FT / Org standards. Employees in the factory were really nice with us ans after a wee chat we all ended up in one’s house to have a very nice tea.

Having had a look at the website of this place expectation where high – swimming pool. Unfortunately is the whole thing was a real joke. When we arrived the only person on side was the security chap – the place was deserted, no water in the fountain no water in the swimming pool! It took the man 15 min to find the keys of the awful rooms – here the word “basic” assumed a new meaning for me altogether. The only good thing was that it was only for one night!

We left our luggage behind and in a lighter coach we drove to the Vivekananda Gramodhyog Society and Research and Training Institute. The Shroff Family created this centre too – here the key goal is in one hand to maintain the tradition of making Batic on the other help local farmers developing more efficient crops.

The batic making business is interesting; cloth are bleached before skilled artisans draw pattern with wax. At this point the wax dries up and making the applied area dye-resistant. The whole cloth is then dyed and once the wax is removed the drawn areas are still be in the original colour of the cloth – the result is very interesting.

The research and training institute works on different projects to improve farming practices in the area. While we were there they were working Beet Sugar and also methane/gas electricity.

The evening was all organised for us with kids of the local school performing  on a stage setup in the courtyard. On a less exiting note we also discovered that we were suppose to perform for them too. The show was lovely, with primary school kids dancing and singing for us. The pressure was high when we were called up on the stage and we start singing some songs – it wasn’t perfect but they seem to enjoy seeing us making a fool of ourselves!

After the usual Thali, that by now nobody in the group can stand anymore we are back at the “Resort”. This was a long and draining day that resulted in a sleepless night due to a migraine.

Visiting the Agrocell HQ was the first task for today – the building is certainly not imposing but it is included in an interesting field. Agrocell was created 20 years ago by a Excel the same chemical company founded and owned by the Shroff family. We are here because this organisation is the world leader in Fairtrade and Organic Cotton. They work with hundreds of local cotton farmers and help them with the various procedures needed to get certified. Is a good bunch of people that has been working with Traidcraft / People Tree since the very beginning to develop various products.

The attached farm is a sort of nusery farm, where a variety of crops are planted and tested. The method of irrigation used is so called “drip” technique – in other words is a series of mini pipes that are lay in the fields and just switching on the tap will do the job for the whole field. It is an expensive method but the government is offering some helps toward buying this equipment.

As an additional activity using Neem seeds they produce Neem oil (that apparently is in demand from the German market) and a good cow feed. We also went into their shop where farmer can purchase any sort of items from totally organic to the real nasty pesticide. Here is important to mention that even if the Fair Trade and Organic movements are rising they still account for less than 5% of the market. There are a variety of reason for this, starting from the demand from the West not extremely high, as well as the fact that getting certified is a long and expensive job.

After visiting the office and exchanging some words with staff went to the Misuji Resort that is going to be our accommodation for the night.

Nothing to note about the flight only that on arrival the were surprised by the temperature, we travelled north and the ground temperature hit 37 C. It has to be said that Bhuj in Gujarat is a desertic area, but the hot wind was still incredible.

Bhuj Airport

The landscape is now different, very different; drier and more yellow and beige. There is also to say that we are in a scarsely populated region and car traffic is much lighter. We didn’t even have time to get to the hotel so we headed straight to our first visit: Shrujan. Embroidery is a form of art that passed on for generations is this part of India and after the 2001 earthquake funds were made available to reconstruct as well as to keep traditions alive. In that occasion this project took form and its scope is to keep the embroidery work going. They are not only commissioning works from women but they also train young and they set up a museum to show the different embroidery styles of the various communities. Shrujan’s building is unique as this organisation, very modern but with traditional touches. The store is very upbeat offering a variety of embroiled products.

We went on the same dusty road to visit one of the re-built villages. After the earthquake a lot of villages were not safe to live anymore, for this reason with all the aid money the government reconstructed brand new villages just few hundreds feet away.
Dhaneti Village is one example of this idea, as our guide put it “these villages look like a concentration camps”. Not a very PC comment but the fact that they are surrounded by high walls and also considering that all houses look exactly the same do do work his way.
Our group was welcome by an elderly lady that introduced us to her extended family (three generations) and showed us around her home. Even if people here are missing their “original” village, they recognise that the new village is more secure and organised – even so they like to go back to their village regularly. The partially destroyed Ramkrishnaangar is interesting and we are welcome by a heard of cows and buffalos that were walking the main road looking for food. Women here are keeping embroidery alive but the community still rely heavily on agriculture to survive.
In this place we were interestingly allowed into the local wee temple. Nothing too swanky – a big room with painted walls and a central shrine. The local religious leader explained that the walls are painted with the life of Shiva one of the main good in this part of the country. The shrine included not only Shiva but a number of different gods, this is very common here and I find fascinating that in the local temple you can pray for a variety of local gods as well as muslim and christian pictures of god are included.

Shrujan's vivid colours

Back at the hotel restaurant we had one of the best meal so far. This is interesting considering that Gujurat is a 100% vegetarian state. Yes, I forgot to mention that Gujarat is a very traditional region, no meat/fish is available and most importantly is a “dry” state – alchool is sold only in big cities to foreigners. This is due to Ghandi, the local hero was born here – but also by the local strict tradition about this matter. So for five days we went veggy! At the beginning was just fine but when we started staying and visiting rural community, the menu, was a bit repetitive. So breakfast lunch and dinner were extremely similar.

After a annoyingly slow service for breakfast we head to out first visit of the day: the block printing village of Ajrakhpur. Dr Ismail Khatri welcomes us into his office and starts explaining us the old art of block printing. His english is much better than anyone around here and we soon discover why, he’s a real doctor from an English university. in fact he was awarded a honorary doctorate from an UK university. We then visit the other parts of the community, from were they prepare the various dyes and finally where the really work of art is created: the printing hall. Here three highly skilled men are manually block printing very intricate patterns onto tissue sheets that later become pieces of clothing and other house accessories. This work is incredible, the ability in repeating the same pattern again with more than one prints applied to the same tissue is very complicated and still people here are working at a good pace.

Dr Ismail Khatri

The afternoon reserved a visiting a Weaving house where we witness the antique and modern art of weaving. Starting from the tread, sheets are created with the help of a traditional weaving loom . Here too they use a variety of dyes to get the desired colour. The owner shows us around the various properties that go from the more traditional to the very modern style villas. Here Manuela and I had a close encounter with a lovely cow cub, he tried to lick us all the time .

See if you can touch me!

We went back to Shrujan for lunch, we were give Thali, the same that they serve to their employees. This was very traditional and I felt in a friendly environment so I had it the local way – with my hands (sorry hand, just the right one). It went really well, not easy at first but with the right food is not that difficult – trust me.

After a little siesta we went around Bhuj with the second guide – Kamal. He’s employed by Agrocell and he was assigned to us for our time in Gujurat. What can I say, rather disappointing – the local museums are really run down and the guide wasn’t good at keeping everybody together and explain things. Anyway we came across a couple of nice little animals and we also went into the local garden for an Mango Dolly (ice-cream).

I read about India-confusion before travelling here but until you see it in person you don’t believe it! As soon as you land in this part of the world, you immediately realise that there is something unusual about it. What first hit my sense was the smell, and not the sort of smell you can think off. The airport smells fumes, petrol fumes like anything I’ve ever experienced before.

The second shock is the burocracy, after waiting more than two weeks for a visa you would assume that you’ve gone through all the papers needed to be a tourist in India. That’s not true, you still need to fill in another useless form that includes all the information on the visa! My favourite anyway is the wee paper slip that where you have to write the number of hand luggage and check-in luggage that you have. Absolutely essential to leave the airport!

And to conclude the noise, this is something that will stay with you all day long. It is mostly linked with road traffic but not only. Everyone in this subcontinent seems to abuse the horn, if you are on the road is a continuous sound that never leaves you. To tackle all this the local government is at the moment just running advertising campaigns that do not seem to work.

I am not surprise that Mumbai is not the prime tourist destination in the country. There is something wrong about it. Is maybe a question of size and luck but all the sight seems to be very far apart and in between there isn’t a lot to do. The train station, Gate of India and the Taj Maja Hotel are certainly nice to see from outside, but in my opinion the only nice sight is the slum. We join the Dharavi Slum Tour organised by the Reality Tour and it was a revelation: interesting catching and informative. All in a very ethical way, this is a camera-free tour and locals seems more than happy with us being there. The tour is pretty intense, two and a half hours of walking in narrow alleys or under the scorching sun but it was worth every single drop of sweat. This slum in unique in fact in it a number of activities take place: recycling, the making of clay pots, embroidery, brodery, soap making are only a few examples. For more information visit their website : www.realitytoursandtravel.com

Slum

Mumbai is a modern Indian metropolis perfect for doing business and little less for leisure. So be warned, it is a nice place to spend a couple of days and see how an Indian business city looks like but not much more.

As part of our tour, just before living for the airport (for our first internal flight) we went to the C.C Shroff Self Help Centre in the outskirt of Mumbai. This centre was setup to help local people to improve their quality of life, the concept of “Self Help” in India could be described as the ability to empower people from humble background to reach their full potentials. In this centre this is achieved by training them on a variety of transferable skills that are mostly related with office skills but most importantly to tailoring skills. The latter is what we are interesting in because they supply Traidcraft with amazing products.

This project is helping mostly women and to help them not disrupting their family life, they are working from home for the majority of time. Their creating are then check and collected by the organisation and women are then paid a fair fee for each work. We had the luck to meet the founder of this centre , Pretty [link to wikipedia - rolex award] – she is an active and capable woman that thank to the wealth of her family was able to do what she really wanted to do.

Shopping time, this is something that will become a sort of routine – every project/centre that we’re going to visit, will sell their products directly to us. Considering the relatively low value of the rupees everything, according to Manuela, is a Bargain!

After taking some group shots it was time for us to go to the airport for our first internal flight – destination Bhuj.