The road to Cheepunkal

FATHER JOSEPH PUTHENPURA is a Carmelite of the Immaculate Virgin, the first indigenous congregation in India, which was founded in 1831. He is the parish priest of Cheepunkal, a small village in the district of Kottayam, in the state of Kerala, Southern India. There are 45 Catholic families living in the village, along with families of other religions, especially Hindu. The devotion to Saint Anthony is so widespread, even among non-Catholics, that Cheepunkal is known as the village of the devoted to the Saint.

Cheepunkal, says Father Puthenpura, lies in a swampy area; to the West there is lake Vembanadan, while the river Pennar flows through the middle of the village. All around the countryside is full of rice paddies, upon whose borders the people have built wooden huts with coconut-leaf roofs. The area is isolated and extremely poor. Every year floods cover the entire area for four months, destroying any man-made artefacts, including the crops, and condemning the population to a condition of poverty. The only resources are fishing and the cultivation of rice and coconuts. But the most difficult hardship, until your providential intervention, was living in isolation. Until last December there were no roads to take the elderly and the children to hospital or to school; the only means of transportation were the long boats picture in the photos.
When we asked for your help, about a year ago, the road that connects the cities of Kotttayam and Vaikom had just been built. These cities are located respectively 20 kilometres to the South and 12 kilometres to the North of Cheepunkal. This was an opportunity to come out of isolation, because Cheepunkal is only three kilometres from this road, as the crow flies. It seems like a short distance, but it’s no small task to build a road on swampy ground, which requires you to raise the level of the road surface, to build bridges and canals around the rice paddies. And the road was not exactly the most urgent thing needed: there were ten extremely poor families who were homeless. We had to think of them first.

We estimated that it would take about 40 thousand dollars to build the ten homes and the road; but people around here haven’t even got enough money to survive. The village’s parish church, which was dedicated to Saint Anthony, could only contribute its meagre savings, about 600 dollars. There wasn’t much we could do under these circumstances. The turning point came when the government launched a campaign for the development of poor areas in the country: there would be loans and grants if the local population made available money and work for worthy projects. But even the small amount requested by the government campaign was too much for my people, even though this new opportunity opened the way to other solutions. One of these was to ask Saint Anthony’s Charities, which had already helped the community to build a multi-use parish hall the previous year, where the whole village now meets and where courses and lessons are held to promote the people’s ideas, and from which a small elementary school operates.

I was rather light-hearted about making the request, because I knew that the maximum contribution necessary, thanks to the government grants, would have been about 15 thousand dollars at the most. This was March, 1999. The affirmative reply arrived a few months later, and it literally made my heart glow. I told the local authorities about your generosity. A commission was formed by the members of each of the various religious communities and social classes, to co-ordinate and supervise the project. At this point Saint Anthony performed a miracle: people started saving all the money they could. The owners of the land turned over the property upon which the road was to pass free of charge. The inhabitants were motivated by the same cause. Everyone forgot their divisions and arguments and others, who were threatened that they would receive no help, quit drinking. More than three-thousand people offered their labour free of charge. Some cleared the roadway. Some used their boats to transport sand. Others transported mud with baskets carried on their heads or with wheelbarrows. The same thing happened for the houses: the commission divided up the money equally among the poor members of the various religions, which created a good deal of harmony and tolerance. Some who already had homes began to renovate them. You could feel the enthusiasm in the air.

Building the road was an enormous job: it took 36 days of hard work, with an average of 85 workers per day. We used 370 boats brim full of mud and 135 truckloads of red earth, which came from an area 40 kilometres away. Today the road is open to rick-shaw travel, and the cars that pass help protect us from the poisonous snakes which used to hide among the bushes.
The commitment of the people made the money go much farther. We were able to build 24 houses instead of only 10. And what’s more, having seen the results of the project, the government now wants to transform our area, which is very beautiful from a naturalistic point of view, into an important region for tourism, and build other infrastructures.

We are extremely grateful for all of this. I can say this on behalf of all of the poor people in Cheepunkal. Your solidarity has worked wonders in our village.