Kajro Festival 2013 – Diu, India
Coconut Festival at Diu, once a year, and we were lucky enough to be there at that precise moment. 😀
I got this front row view, thanks to 2 girls that were taking care of me the whole time, they were really nice to me and gave me their front row spot!
I wanted to create a special section for the women in the villages because we have been in all this meetings with farmers where I´m always the only woman in the meeting, but I wanted to share a little bit of my experience because Bhimsi (Our Client) suggested us that only another woman can approach the women in the farms, just to demonstrate respect, and because of this I think I am experiencing something extra than my teammates Malcolm and Anton, since I am allowed to go into the kitchen with the ladies and they show me their homes and they are really really kind to me, they also do their best to speak in English with me so I can understand their explanations and well what can I say, it is just amazing to see this important part of their lives too.
In the second picture, the woman that is holding my hand is the owner of the farm and she was showing me all their different crops. And she holds my hand just to show her friendliness and hospitality.
Last Thursday 15th, was Indian Independence Day and it is a National Public Holiday, we arrived to one of the village´s school just after the ceremony of raising the flag, and we joined the celebration, the kids were playing “musical chairs” and after that they received some awards which we were asked to give to the kids.
From Wednesday 14th thru Friday 16th we have been visiting farmers in their villages and some agrishops to get some inputs for our work while we are in here, and it has been amazing, the hospitality of the people is great everywhere we go we are offered some chai and at the end of the day we get like 7 chais, and if we find the rickshaw driving adventurous, well I can say now that we´ve been in the road, the adrenaline is much higher and of course with much more ostacles!!!
Monday Aug 12th, we had our very first face to face contact with our client, he arrived earlier than expected and he and his partners were so polite and interested in this project, we had some great inputs from them and we made the arrangement for the transportation and the next couple of days, which actually our transport to the office happens to be in a Rickshaw 😉
On Sunday we went to the supermarket for some water and stuff, and it was soooo crowded, as you can observe!
               
We arrived to Jamnagar, finally, after an hour flight from Bombay,and the hotel seems really nice, and is even nicer inside the rooms and the staff are all so warm, Girish, who is our local contact at the hotel, shared with us the history of the hotel, Keith has the whole history at his blog :http://kmackenzie63.wordpress.com/
And we did also have our first meal in here, and it was fantastic, we had this dish with a little bit of everything which I was pretty amused with.
I also learned that regarding food, the waiters will keep serving you more and more food if you don´t ask them to please stop.
Today, the rest of the team will be arriving during the day, so Keith and I, since we were the first ones to arrive Bombay met at the lobby at 12 PM, and there we met Malcolm from Australia, we went for some coffee, and we were told that it was near the hotel, right around the corner, so we learned our first lesson, the concept “near” in here is much different, since we walked longer than expected, but we finally got there and we had some cappuccinos, on our way back to the hotel we met Nina (UK) and Paula(Brazil), so they joined us and we went to have lunch, we took a rickshaw so we had our very first rickshaw trip, we arrived at the restaurant and then we read the menu, and nobody knew what to order so we just asked the waiters to recommend something vegetarian for Nina, Paula and myself, Malcolm and Keith choose Chicken Masala, and all of our meals were great, the spicy was medium so it was a good first approach to Indian food, after lunch, we took again a rickshaw back to the hotel, later that day we met Emily (USA) and Peter (Germany) and we went dinner, but this time we have some help from Emily who knows a little bit more about Indian food, however again it seemed to me that we are having “surprise meals” since we still don´t understand much about the names and what they are, but we have been lucky enough to have great meals so far, I hope this lucks continues :D…
My arrival was at 3:00 AM and in the same flight from Dubai to Bombay I knew Keith will be in there, so I was looking for him at the airport with no luck, however when I got into the airplane I noticed him, he was seating just a couple seats away, so once we arrived to Bombay Shruti was already waiting for us and she took us to the hotel so we were able to rest the rest of the night.
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