Milestone at Jawadhi Hills
Jawadhi Hills: a place apart
Sod Turning Ceremony for a Maternity Hospital and Emergency Center, Veerapanur, Jawadhi Hills.
We boarded our bus on time, only to find out that we were already behind schedule. The direct road into the Jawadhi Hills had been washed out in recent rains. A detour south would add almost an hour to our drive. Upon entrance into the Hills, we dutifully stopped at the military check point, which is manned to prevent poaching in the natural reserve. As we began climbing the Hills, our little caravan of five vehicles ground to a stop. The bus was unable to climb at more than a crawl. We packed ourselves into the other cars to continue the rocky switchback trip. In the car ahead, photographer became sick in the crowded bumpy ride. We stopped again, for some fresh air and a car cleaning. An hour late, we arrived in Veerapanur to celebrate the start of construction for an onsite Maternity Hospital and Emergency facility.
The Jawadhi Hills are a world apart from the sensory bombardment which defines Chennai and Vellore. As part of the eastern Ghats system of mountains, they are quiet, rocky mounds, not too tall, but very steep, with dramatic rocky outcrops and lush valleys. The region is sparsely populated by a native population which has never been integrated into the broader Indian society. They are a people roughly akin to Native Americans, with whom they share many problems; poverty, alcohol abuse, poor sanitation, limited education and opportunity. Though beautiful, the land is steep and rocky, with limited potential for agriculture or development. Our drive up illustrated the need for a Maternity Hospital and Emergency facility. Timely travel out of the Hills for trauma and obstetric emergencies is nearly impossible, resulting in unacceptably high accident, maternal and infant mortality. Christian Medical College, in partnership with the brothers of Don Bosco, has sponsored outreach programs to the Jawadhi Hills since the 1970s, with the engagement becoming ever deeper over time. Their Model Villages program is a comprehensive effort to simultaneously address the multiple interlocking impediments to development in a single village. The success of this program, in five villages to date, became apparent during the ceremony, as the tribal elders began to speak. Sometimes through tears, they thanked CMC for its commitment, requesting continued involvement.
The Scudder Association Foundation became deeply involved with the Jawadhi Hills in 2020. We coordinated with the Vellore CMC Foundation, the Reform Church of American and Friends of Vellore UK in a concerted effort to raise over $500,000 to fund the hospital. Despite the Covid pandemic, we launched a matching gift campaign to raise our $150,000 share. This was our largest fund-raising campaign since the original effort to build Scudder Memorial Hospital. Thanks to multiple donations large (special thanks to Jack Gillmar and Rob Fish) and small we were able to reach our goal. Construction was then delayed four years by the complexities of land acquisition in tribal areas.
The hospital will be a complex endeavor, not just a medical facility, but housing and eating accommodations for the CMC staff who will be on site 24/7. Nothing is easy in the Hills.
Luminaries from CMC attended the ceremony. Ana Rose, medical Director for the Jawadhi Hills spoke with passion and eloquence about CMC’s and her own commitment to the tribes.
After the speeches and felicitations, we all “broke the Sod”, which was actually shoveling a pile of stony clay soil devoid of plant life.
We toured the property with Ana Rose to review the site of construction. Due to limitations in footprint size made the irregular terrain, the complex will consist of three separate structures joined by breeze ways.
Our contingent then retired to the Don Bosco facility for a late lunch with the good padres, mostly biryani, with a modest offering of western food. My strategy: “when in India, eat Indian. Go ahead. Use your fingers.”
We returned to Vellore via the direct (washed out) route. This trip involved a toboggan run down thirty feet of slick clay in the washed-out section. There is no way we could have gone uphill through that quagmire. After fording a rain swollen stream, we were back on the flats of Tamil Nadu ground. Credit to our skilled drivers, all four cars made it home.
This trip reenforced my enthusiasm of the Jawadhi Hills effort. One hundred and fifty thousand from the SAF is money well spent.
