Wow, what a day! Today I joined the Hyderabad Sai Young Adult group to do grama seva (service to villages) in a small hamlet called Pitalagudem. Pitalagudem is made up of several half built brick homes, thatched huts, and homes built out of plastic and bamboo sticks. The people here live in abject poverty, work as day laborers in a near by village, and get by on eating a watery rice mixture called "Kangi." Apparently two to three years ago, the Indian government made a pact with the village chief (referred to as the Sarpanch) that if the villagers paid a minimum sum to construct the basic foundation of the homes, the Indian government with subsidize the remainder of the cost to construct the homes. Somewhere along the way, this deal fell through leaving the villagers
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