your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
“Food is difficult to afford. Somedays there is nothing. Nothing to eat.”
Thirumawathy lives in Vivekandhapuram with her husband. They have been married for 30 years.
He takes whatever daily wage work that comes his way, but work is hard to find. Most months he gets between two and six days of it. What he earns barely covers basic food and not much more. For everything else, they borrow, either from a weekly group loan or from people they know.
On the days when money runs short, they try and eat rice with sambol. They also keep a small home garden growing corn, yam, and other crops to help feed themselves through the lean stretches.
Their house is unfinished. Construction started with government help, but the support fell away. And part of what had been built had to be pulled down. The timber frame is still there. But the roof leaks. There are no proper rooms or a hall. And there is no toilet.
They built a small shelter using palmyra leaves to manage in the meantime. Thirumawathy has written to government aid and other organizations, asking for help with a toilet. Nothing has come of it so far. She keeps at it anyway.
Thirumawathy grew up in a family that lost its footing early. Her father died when she was about 3 years old, leaving her mother to raise eight children on her own. There were days without three meals, even then. There were years without proper clothing.
During the conflict in 1990, the family fled and sheltered at Kalthalai. She has known hardship for as long as she can remember.
Today, she tends to her garden. She tracks their borrowings. She submitted those letters and has not stopped following up. The group loan scheme she contributes to is one more way she tries to hold things together on a thin margin. They keep trying, despite their circumstances.
What Thirumawathy wants most right now is to finish the house they have started and build a proper toilet, so that she and her husband can have a home that is stable and complete.