100 trees planted

Car puncture seems to be part of learning at O-campus. Today I had fifth time puncture in my car. We were waiting for the tyre to come, as spare tyre was also punctured, two people came and said “edi”, I guessed this to be “sidi (ladder in Hindi)”. I said “we do not have Sidi”.

After some rounds with Hindi, English and mixed Kannada , Tamil words they managed to convey to us that they have come from forest dept and wanted to see the tree pits. After inspecting few they were convinced with our intentions. We all together went to forest nursery to get tree saplings, Asa was very excited and managing with her knowledge of Kannada counting – she selected 100 tress and we planted ALL – yippee !!!!!!!!!!!

Meanwhile the work on shed also started. Workers have some marriage in village, Sriram’s workers are busy, he brought few kids who helped him in fetching water etc and also he trained them in mixing mortar etc. I was thinking “should I talk about child labour or leave to real life learning for these kids, I left it”.

Today we were on the site whole day, noon sun did not feel too harsh with all the excitement of tress. Venkattappa’s team helped us to plant the trees.

For today to happen a lot of people worked. Suchi and Prakash went hunting for forets dept and nursery, Asa and Mina identified tree spots, Mina went in rounds to get the workers in place. Finally today Venkattappa brought his workers in the morning and action started.

Venkattapaa is interested in cleaning the site and making boundary wall. He uses the word “I will make the whole site pak (means pure, but he uses as clean). I like it “pura site pak bana dalega”. Lets see how this decision goes, have given him contract on Rs 11,000/- to clean all the thorny bushes on the site and make a boundary with the same.

Our first Solar lights have come, Vishal is on his journey of exploring energy on the site.

The fun at O-campus began with few village kids coming to the site. They announced themselves as cricketers – Suresh Raina, Yuvraj, Sachin………..All jumping in sump pit and Dhrupad exploring with them. Asa was rolling with laughter with the kids fun. One of them said “I am joke man”. Looking forward to explore with village kids.