A day in

Krushnar

We reached around 8 am. KRUSHNAR is a proper tribal village. Most of the houses were made using natural resources. When I started observing the people passing by, I was also able to notice slight tribal traditions fading through clothes. I came to understand the difference when I saw an old lady who was wearing tribal (their cultural dress).

I felt like this was the perfect outfit for summer.

Then we went to a local’s house, whose name was Ganesh. I met a cute parrot and spent some time with it.

After some time ,rutuja Di and Pratamesh bhaiya, ashwini and swapna shruthi went to call out young people and children for a workshop in the village. For children they organized essay and drawing competitions.

For youth, we had different designed workshops on awareness of many things they go through. Firstly it was some Introduction & Icebreaker Activities , then pratamesh bhaiya talked about Cultural Preservation.Rutuja Di explained about differentiating love, friendship, and attraction. Then, there was a game to learn gender equality through participatory activities. Rutuja Di also explained about menstrual health and hygiene education, and finally, Pratamesh Bhaiya demonstrated the science behind magic tricks by performing some magic.

I got a task while the workshop was going on, to do filming and photography. We had brunch, as well as a regional drink called am bill (made of rice and Jowar), rested for a while, and I was assigned another task to do editing. It took me 3 hrs to edit. Since it was too hot, we had ice cream. Around 3 pm, Ashwini and I went to the village to conduct a survey about people's menstrual hygiene routine. In the survey form, the questions were like (age, name (basic information), and where do you live during your periods, what are you afraid of, do you roam around the village during your periods, how many times do you change the pad in a day, do you get scared of fines, where do you get water during your periods, etc.) . Some people were hesitating to answer in front of men. Most of the answers were that they stay in the kurma ghar, store pads in the godsey, use river water, do not roam around, and have fear of touching things or seeing priests, among other reasons. I didn't get a chance to interact much with the people due to the language barrier, so Ashwini was helping me translate and conduct the survey.

During the survey , small group of women were preparing some kind of tribal drink(alcohol) .It was very interesting to know about

After the survey ,we went to Ashwini Di’s house. She is the Shero I felt. By her way of talking,working,clothing and by hearing her achievements. Outside her house ,I found another interesting thing

These are kind of pumpkins. They dry them and use them as spoons or to take baths, like showers. Then we had chai and went to roam around nearby. We saw a government-built kurma ghar, which was partially broken. We also saw farming fields (how they grow cactus all around the farm like a compound so that animals won't eat or spoil it).

After all this, at last we had one task: to gather people again for the screening. On the way, we also discussed the construction of the library and the villagers' contribution. Lastly, there was a screening, and Pratamesh Bhaiya sang some local language songs. We had dinner in Ashwini Di's house, saw a tribal dance, and came back. This is how we called it a day.