“I am very proud of my home garden and the activities of my daily life with the help of my wife”
Background of this Village
My village Eachchalavakkai is 35 kilo meters away from Mannar town. It is surrounded by thick forest and a large pond. Most of them are farmers, laborers and small scale traders. My village is of 2 kilometers width and 3 kilometer length. This village was named as Eachchalawakkai in 1972.There is a small stream which flows through the Northern side of this village and by the sides of river bank, a kind of eatable fruit trees, we call it in Tamil “Eachcham palam”. For the Tamil meaning of stream is Alai. That’s why we call this village by the name of Eachalawakkai. The people of this village were displaced during 2008 and then were resettled in 2010.
Family situation
Mr.Ravindran is a farmer, living with his wife in this particular village. My main source of income is home gardening and small scale business. We had a plot of land and where we had highland crop cultivation. During the war period, we were displaced initially to Vellankulam and from there went up to the place of Vadduwaan, Mullivaaikaal. After that we had brought to the camp of rehabilitation, Zone-4. Then we were taken to the camp at Jeevanagar with my wife for 05 months. At last we resettled at our native place Eachchalawakkai. We don’t have children.
Turning point of his life
Due to the disease caused I lost my right side of eye sight. “Due to loss of my one eye sight my wife is the one who took up the burden of our family” said Mr.Ravindran with tears.
He further shared proudly and happily, ‘Earlier I had few plants in my garden for our own food consumption, but after the involvement with Caritas-Valvuthayam we improved our knowledge and skills in the field of gardening through training programme provided and exposure visits we participated. It gives us satisfaction of mind in life.
I took the yield of the products to the local market once in two days. When there is more yield I took the products to Mannar market too. At the same time, friends and relatives of mine used to come home to buy the vegetables and fruits. As the products are purely organic there is a high demand for our vegetables and fruits.
I have varieties of vegetables at my home garden, such as bitter guard, beans, snake guard, chilies, pumpkin, limes, water apple, mangoes, bread fruit, sweet limes, water melon, jack fruit, plantain, passion fruit, guava, coconut trees, varieties of green leaves and so on’.
The activity had a positive impact on food insecurity and malnutrition as well as providing additional benefits such as income and livelihood opportunity.
