Touch Down in Bangalore

From here .... London Heathrow ..
to here .... Evoma Hotel garden in Bangalore
We met up at Belfast City Airport at 5.45 am on Saturday and after a fairly uneventful journey, we arrived in Bangalore at about 5 am on Sunday morning. We were transferred to our hotel and had a nice relaxed day to recover ! The hotel has been taken over by Habitat for the duration of the build and there are women here from all corners .. many from the US and Canada. We've adopted 2 new members to our Irish team, that's Rachel from Syndey Australia and Meenal originally from Mumbai but now living in Dubai.

We had a lovely Welcome dinner in the hotel and then our local orientation. We were welcomed very warrmly by the local Habitat team and introduced to the folks who will look after us for the duration of the build. We learned a bit more about the project. The homes we'll build are in the Hegde Nagar district to the North of Bangalore, and are in a resettlement colony, where people from the slums pockets of a number of surrounding provinces have been moved to. Initially, as they were illegal encroachers of government land, they had no rights and no land. The cause was championed by the late Shri. Ramakrishna Hegde, and the area is named after him. The families were moved from the slums and allocated small pockets of land in the urban fringe of Bangalore, at Hegde Nagar. This is the land we will be building on.

The homes will be for Women's Self help groups. These are groups of women, who individually would not have access to bank accounts or loans/mortgages for the homes. However, as a group, when they pool their resources, they can gain this access and the practise is that the group signs as guarantor for a loan or mortgage for a member. The member then, though savings, will repay the group and will pay the mortgage for the home through their income from local hourly paid employment. This is an excellent example of Habitat's policy for a 'Hand-Up' rather than a 'Hand-Out'

We met Charlie (right) , who is our site supervisor. He sounds like great fun and I'm sure he will keep us on our toes. I loved his comment that a western toilet on the site is more important in India than the Taj Mahal ! and he assured us that we'll be reasonably well served.

Tomorrow, after breakfast, we will celebrate International Women's day at the Opening Cermoney along with about 2,500 others, volunteers, local house owners and Indian dignatories. We'll be introduced the the familes whom we'll build for and we'll start to build in the afternoon.

We're all really looking forward to getting started tomorrow.

The internet facilities at the hotel are great - so I should have no problems updating every day.

Good night from Bangalore,

Kate + team.

P.S. can you believe that Bangalore hs a popultaion of 6 million. That's the whole of Ireland North and South put together living here in the city.