11th September, Bhaliya

We started early for Bhaliya as it was a three hour journey from our accommodation but still managed to reach only by 1 pm. Immediately the camp was set up and the doctors went into action.

Meanwhile myself and Nijamrita went to Rehapura, another village, travelling by four wheeler and two wheeler,  then by walk and by boat. We saw 1000’s and 1000’s of acres of paddy, corn and banana fields submerged in at least four feet of water are either rotting or drying. The farmers had taken loans from banks or invested their life savings to cultivate their land and now everything had been lost. It was interesting to see that the middle level farmers who owned few acres of lands, some cattle etc were still stayed in their homes despite the water and moved around in small boats.
They looked quite healthy as they used to work hard all day long on their fields.
Some of them were even keen to visit the ashram in Kerala and have Amma’s Darshan.

At Bowanipur the shelters are coming up quite well and would be ready in a day or two. There was talk all around the town and even a remote village as Rehapura had come to know that an Ashram from Kerala is doing great service and were soon going to start their own relief camps, wherein they would be given food, clothing, medicines and also some kind of vocational training and primary education for children during their stay there. They were all eagerly expecting our camp to start functioning. There is great expectation all around that ours will be a camp to emulate. With Amma’s abundant grace it should not be a difficult thing at all!

Sadasiva Chaitanya