From Paderborn to Pudukuppam
MEERA MOHANTY
|
How the tsunami united a German town with a Tamil Nadu village
|
FRIENDS FROM AFAR: Pudukuppam will benefit from the homes and schools Paderborn plans for it.
Last Christmas when news of the tsunami reached the small German city of Paderborn, Michaela Buttner went to her neighbours and said: "Let's do something about it."
After all, her neighbours were the same kind people who had so generously come forward to help her when her uninsured house had burnt down. But as news filtered back from the disaster-hit areas, Michaela realised theirs would be too insignificant a contribution.
So she turned to the radio and placed ads in the newspapers — and money started pouring in, entrusted to a woman who had looked beyond her cosy little world to make an appeal.
It was way more money than she had expected and way more than she could handle alone.
A lawyer was hired, a bank account opened by special arrangement over the New Year's holidays, and an association formed to organise the aid.
Communities were organising street festivals, bake sales, car washes... one person was selling foldable yardsticks for more than they were worth — and many were buying them at ten euros a piece.
Soon all of Paderborn had joined in, including Michael Pein who was recently in the Chennai as their representative. "It was big on emotion," says Pein. "Women baked and sold waffela," he says, typing into his little palm gadget to find the English translation. "Waffels!"
Retired from a career in the IT industry, Pein is a football coach and president of his children's school's parent-teacher association, and now field officer/manager of `Paderborn - a city cares' (www.paderborn-eine-region-hilft.de) .
Paderborn, with its medieval churches and tall steeples, its grand 12th century palace, its baroque architecture and 1,200 years of history, its international airport and computer museum (the largest in the world), has it all. "I won't call it a fairy land, but it's close to one," says Pein.
Today, Paderborn is building 150 houses in the village of Pudukuppam in Nagapattinam district. Levelling the land, laying water and sanitary lines, arranging equipment and electricity has taken time. But finally, the first house, No. 87, is up and standing.
"We are totally new to this sort of business, but we knew that we wanted all the money— every single euro — to go to the tsunami victims," says Pein. In fact, the city had initially settled on a project in Sri Lanka, but the fifty per cent tax imposed on all donations by the Sri Lankan Government made India the next choice.
A world away
For a group of people a continent away and far removed from life here, the people of Paderborn have not just shown great generosity but a commitment and far-sightedness that rivals that of experienced disaster management professionals.
Life there is very different from that in Pudukuppam. So different that Michaela is yet to visit India.
Paderborn has employed the women of Pudukuppam to make bricks for the houses. But that couldn't have possible without their project partners SOS Children's Village, Chatnath Trust and Uma Narayanan. "They've been true friends, the kind you can blindly trust with your money," says Pein.
After all, he says, it is not money coming from the very rich, but from the common citizens of Paderborn.
And that is why he finds it a little unpleasant when the villagers bargain for higher wages. There are other small issues too. "Only the women come to our meetings, I suppose it's an Indian problem; men must be going out fishing and leaving everything else to their wives. They might have been doing this for thousands of years. But they will have to change with time," says Pein.
The village has been resettled two km from the shore. "It is only natural that the villagers, particularly the women, start looking at alternate sources of livelihood," says Pein. "A micro-credit system could assist entrepreneurs or provide loans for education."
But banks here seem to be charging too high a rate of interest, says Pein. Plans for a community centre and a school are awaiting funds.
A spontaneous little act of generosity has turned into a long-term relationship between the people of Paderborn and Pudukuppam.
TSUNAMI A YEAR AFTER
