Arrival at Kothara

Dear All,


Our first post from Kothara Hospital where we will now stay for a month.


Thanks for the (nine) comments from you - all lovely to receive. Two were from St Mary's Kelbrook. Do you rememeber our Home & Overseas Project from the 80's?We raised money for the School attached to Kothara. It made my heart lift to be puling in through the entry gates with their TLM sign, which I recalled from photos we used at the time and to be actually here.I remain very proud of what we all achieved in the Project and remember the big cheque being held up for the press photo with Hugh McKee of TLM being there and Bob Fort and Doug Hall. The idea for it all came from Liz Grose as I recall, who said in the PCC we could not refurbish St Mary's without we did something for those much poorer than us. So we did it pound for pound (just discovered by the way the indian laptops don't carry a pound sign on the toolbar) and raised money on an equal basis for our church and for Kothara TLM Hopsital School. Yesterday we saw the School and the uniformed kids. It's a happy/sad story. It's no longer a TLM School but a state one, though still owned and managed by TLM. The reason for this change is that the numbers of leprosy affected children have drastically reduced since the 80's. Dr Xavier the Director here told me that when he came here in 04 there were only five kids in the school. So they made it over to the govt. The decline in numbers of kids is less that they don't get leprosy but that the stigma is less and they don't get thrown out of their families like they used which is great. Dr Jai says he can get us into the school to look around and maybe see the laboratory which we donated.



Apart from that perhaps a few notes on Goa will interest you. We saw loads of birds: Brahmin kites, sea eagles, a green bee-eater, a fantastic big kingfisher, egrets, cormorants and some "flying fox" fruit bats, hanging on trees like big handbags until they took off showing a ochre coloured underbelly and a big wingspan. You don't want to be a bit of fruit around those guys. Animal - wise ; three mongoose crossed our path one day, there were water buffalo - they paint their horns red for some reason and cows wandering free down the roads.



We got bikes one day and cycled in the locality. The houses varied from hovels to sizable villas, not unlike some of those around Plaxtol. These last were in vibrant colours usually, vivid lemon, bright cyclamen, orange, acid green, shocking pink prevailing. I was imagining the notes from the Parish Council meeting, planning application section if someone fancied a creation like one of these in The Street - the word "Objection" came to mind. Its a fishing area. They go out in narrow dug-out canoes and dive for shellfish, clams and mussels mainly. We saw them doing this and also the women sitting patiently bashing the shells open with hammers.

Other than this we just spent our time enjoying the hotel and the beach. Elizabeth has forbidden me to tell the tale of her altercation over a sunbed with one of the huge, fat, blingy, shaven headed Russian mafia men who adorned the place (returning with a different girlfriend each year, according to a local jeweller, who locked up most of his stock when they came in, he said). Frankly, I would have let him have the sunbed, but not our E. I was just glad not to discover myself joining the the South Goan Diving Club briefly, wearing their new concrete diving shoes.

Out transit to Nagpur by two internal flights on sat was interesting. The flight leaving Goa Airport was 54 minutes late, so we expected to miss our connection in Mumbai, only having 40 minutes between flights. However on touchdown in Mumbai they announced the Nagpur people were to announce themselves. When we did this, the hostess summoned a bus just for us and took us over the tarmac straight to the Nagpur plane. As we climbed the stairs we expected to find it full of impatient people waiting for us, but it was completely empty. For a wild moment I thought we were to be flown by private jet, but in fact they loaded up after that. We had been bothered about missing the connection because it would mean missing those kindly waiting to pick us up at Nagpur and the whole thing seemed an answer to the prayers of those supporting us.

Nagpur is a city of some 200,000 people and they were all out on their scooters that night it seemed as we had our first taste of Indian urban traffic. If not a scooter then a push-bike and if not that then a tuck-tuck, a three wheeled affair with a cabin behind a scooter. These light vehicles are all over the road like lice. The buses and trucks (not too many private cars) plough through them regardless as did Silas our driver who rarely got off his mobile phone.
We then had a 4 hour drive to Kothara on a narrow bumpy road full of the above plus lorries. When darkness fell not all of them had lights. It was a hair raising journey with horns honking continuously as we swerved round vehicles and cows and people.
We arrived at Kothara about 9.30 pm and were made very welcome in the guesthouse with a double ensuite room. This is not what you are imagining, believe me, but comfortable if spartan and all the elderly equipment works, including a flush loo.
Bye for now
Andrew and Elizabeth