Changing Colors; Jawhar

The city of waterfall, Jawhar at Palghar now a days during the summer shows mixed weather condition from cold wind to hot dry wind. The greenery cover of the ground slowly turned into yellowish fade and later deep brown dry. All herbs and shrubs, trees, fodder grass everything appeared chlorophyll less. The beautiful natural view, gathering and sitting spots in open field’s seems lonely. The location which attracts and gathers seasonal tourist crowd suddenly became baren with few nature lovers/visitors. The rich cultural diversity of tribal community, the traditional farming style, local arts and music, warli art paintings collection at local market and it’s imprints over government building attract everyone attention. Jawhar comprises a hub for tourists from nearer place. Which also help to support the local livelihood. But the challenges which everyone faced here includes lack of adequate availability of water for farming, irrigation and plantation, diagnostic labs for health checkups and testing, with a huge number of roaming cattle on the roads and farms in search of fodder. The main challenge for these cattle’s is the lack of fodder. Another challenge is no public transportation services at night. You can easily find the local buses till dusk to dawn on one hand while the nights are depended on personal or vegetable/vendors vehicle. Sometime, I got an opportunity to see the beauty of moonlight while traveling back to my residence with local commute. The image which portrait at that time made my mind feel the luckiest person to witness the night beauty of white light with few blacky sky cloud like a “beautiful live portray”. During rainy season, July onwards the days are persistently rainy and the working efficiency got associated with colourful raincoats and umbrella. All the dry trees blooms, grasses turning green. The place looks young with greenery all around. The mountains and plains which seems naked once now looked dressing-up with colourful shades. The village community who was waiting long for paddy cultivation gear up for land preparation. Millets, vegetables, rice, cashew, mangoes are grown with ample amount. These become the source of livelihood and daily consumption. The fishery, and poultry are majorly practiced with farming in every village. Increasing trends of vegetable and flower cultivation in younger generation increases now a days.

Green grass cover during rainy season changes to dry brown cover during summer season

Rainy Days and work strategy;

The local transport “Jeep” helps me out with my community work and this become adventurous through peeping all around the way right and left with carrying my notebook and ideas to go for patient visit near health and wellness centre in the community. The co-operation from the village community and the health centre staffs helps me to target my activity directly in the field. The Aanganwadi centre of the village also became the source point of contact from the community members especially the pregnant and lactating mother about the health schemes and programs run by the government. Many days the situation occurred like- the schedule plans need to be rescheduled due to weather condition and availability of the community people. I also get hands on practice to ploughing in the filed for plantation. The cases of vector borne diseases like- dengue, chikungunya, malaria etc occurs frequently during rainy season. The vector surveillance for the breeding site of these mosquitos were identified by the multi-purpose health worker of the village health centre. This the time where I got associated at the home base interaction with the family members. The ground level health awareness in the community requires newer strategy and engagement of more people, mainly community representative, youth, and paramedical student to work under the supervision and association of health staffs from the village health facility like- Community Health Officer (CHO), Auxiliary Nurse and Midwifely (ANM) and Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA), and Multi-Purpose Health Worker (MPW) deliver the content through health promotional tools. The mobile health camps under JSW Foundation also occurred regularly at jawhar. These type of health camps helps me to understand the various diseases and their patterns prevailing in the village community. The health educator and the health module designed at ashram-shala by the Maharashtra government, helps adolescent students about various common diseases, its causative agent, mode of treatment and laboratory diagnosis/testing. The practice of prevention is better than cure by the school students and authority will be taken on priority level. Various cases of underweight, low Hb counts among girls, and skin disease etc, cases within the students are identified at school level health camps in community. This will help the health institution and peripheral health workers to focus and get connected with the treatment services and health programs.

Droplet of heaven

The early onset of rain in the jawhar create a sense of happiness in the community, as the farmers engaged with the process of sowing seeds in their land. Children engaged with skipping/getting late for schools, and soaking wet, playing around the locality. The time is really tough with pets and roaming cattle, on the one hand they got green fresh fodder while on the other hand the continuous rain made them ill suffers. The tourism at jawhar increases during the rainy season. The livelihood from small businesses around these tourist spot like- Sunset point, Hanuman point, and natural waterfall (Dabhosa, Hiranpada and Kalmandavi) helps in the financial support for their life.

Natural waterfall and tourist spot at Jawhar; (Dabhosa, Hiranpada and Kalmandavi)

Changing colors are the symbols of facing all the challenges of living and moving ahead in life. Your passion of work for livelihood and continuous efforts to enjoy the present is the key of happiness in the tribal community.