The International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is a part of the United Nations programme of International Days designed to raise awareness and focus action. The theme for 2020 is “COVID-19 and indigenous people’s resilience”. We’ve been fortunate to see first hand how incredibly resilient the young people of Saraswatipur have been during the continuing pandemic. With our own Roshan Xaxa on hand to support the community who live across five villages in and around the Saraswatipur Tea Estate. The community has not only had to contend with loss of work and shortages of food, but also the regular incursion into the village of elephants which has resulted in one loss of life. While being on hand in the village Roshan has also dealt with his own challenges, celebrating the birth of his daughter Aastha during the lockdown.
The villages around Saraswatipur continue to maintain their own lockdown and quarantine programmes, which has allowed work to start in the tea garden. This has been a welcome relief. But schools are still shut and how the future will work out for all the children of the villages is a worry. We have involved as many youngsters as we can in our busy schedule of activities but the network where it exists is weak and only a handful of children have access to mobiles. This makes participation complicated, the walk to the edge of the Teesta River to pick up a good signal is only safe during daylight hours.
Our own centre which we have been working on for a couple of years has not seen any work since the pandemic began and we’re also desperate to get this back on track.
Kichad Rugby won’t be the large scale celebration it has been in previous years. We won’t be able to bring children together even from across the local villages. Our plan is to have small practice sessions in each village, with only the children and coaches from that village. We will follow that with a charcha on what 9 August means and why it is important that we celebrate indigenous culture and life.
We are keeping these plans under review as changes to the rules around what can and can’t be done are regularly updated. Our youngsters understand the risks the coronavirus pandemic has brought and are ready to play their part in ensuring the safety of everyone in the community.
