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Pebble by Pebble

"My children are my wealth" -- Amma

Amritapuri, India
December 2005

Why does the beach road from the Karunagappally bridge up to the M. A. Math, and then from the M. A. Math on up to the northern tip, look so normal now?

Almost a year ago, the tsunami massacred this island.

Six months ago, everywhere we looked we saw broken houses (as shown below), and piles of rubble that once had been homes.

All around, back then, there were stacks of bricks and mountains of sand, ready to replace those piles of loss with new homes, new hopes.

Now the Alappad District shines with new homes: beautiful, freshly painted, many two-stories high, others one story, but with a staircase to the roof-a place to escape to should another wave smash this place; a place to sleep without fear.

But how has there been so much change so fast, when in many other places hit by the tsunami and the hurricanes, there is too little sign of progress?

It was not only Amma's commitment of $23 million for tsunami relief, and it was not only the government's (tardy) granting of permission to build**, that resulted in this transformation of a 17-km strip of land along the Arabian Sea. Paid professionals came to bulldoze and build, and such supplies as bricks, rebar, cement and pebbles were purchased-but the secret of the success was not only in these factors.

Amma says that most of all it was Amma's children who made the miracle happen. These "children" are M. A. Math residents (brahmacharinis and brahmacharis, householders young and old, and western residents), students from nearby branches of Amrita University, people who had lost their homes on the island, and their neighbors who had not lost their homes, and Amma's supporters and admirers from other parts of Kerala and even further away, other parts of India-in fact, from other parts of the world. It was the volunteers who responded when they heard of the need. Said one man, "If our mother calls, then naturally we come."

Amma's children undertook ceaseless work- sandbag by sandbag, brick by brick, pebble by pebble.

It is true that, where access was possible, heavy equipment was used in the beginning to clear away the rubble and prepare sites, and professional masons and carpenters and M. A. residents (who had learned the work in previous years of building homes for the homeless all over India) were responsible for the construction. But the volunteer work of the diverse group of "Amma's children" was undeniably key in this massive rebuilding project.

Take the problem of getting materials to the sites. Almost everything had to be brought over from the mainland. When trucks couldn't reach the construction area, motorboats normally used to ferry students from the island to their classes on the mainland were pressed into service. Now this boat would be heavily laden (thanks to the efforts of the volunteers, who both loaded and unloaded): it would be filled with windows and doors fabricated at the M. A. Math carpentry shop, or with great piles of sand, or with tons of bricks.

But even once the materials were on this island with only one real (rutted, pot-holed) road and numerous small trails and paths, they had to be transported to the actual building locations-basically by hand. Daily, volunteers-prominent among them fifty to eighty brahmacharinis (women spiritual aspirants from the M. A. Math)-would fill sacks with sand, load these onto wheelbarrows, and team up to pull the loads to the sites.

The volunteers would take the bricks, one by one, from the huge piles near the road, lay them-carefully! Don't break them!-in a cart, and haul this, by hand, to where a house was to be built.

Sand deposited near the road (if brought by truck) or the shore (if brought by boat) needed to be bagged and carried to the building site'

The labour-intensive nature of the work continues even after a house is built: the site has to be cleaned up. Now, in many places, this would mean another visit from bulldozers, which would shove everything into a huge pile; this scrap heap would be loaded into a truck and taken to a landfill (where probably a fee would be paid for dumping).

But when it's Amma's project, both the philosophy and the action are different.

Much of what lies around on the ground after a home is built is not really trash: it is just temporarily chaotic but perfectly useful building material-if the chaos is removed. So this is the work of the post-construction volunteers: to sort through and salvage what lies around.

One of the crucial post-construction jobs is pebble-recovery: the small stones needed to make firm foundations are expensive, but easily scattered and lost. With bare or gloved hands, volunteers sift through sand and dig through mud and dirt and reach into stagnant water to find the small pebbles, which will then be sorted and washed clean for the next job.

This is meticulous work that takes hours and hours of patient effort. It is work elderly grandmothers from the M. A. Math show up for every morning. Seeing the priority of this work, the women who normally run the juice stall at the M. A. Math in the mornings and afternoons decided to close that oasis for the mornings during foreign-tour times, and instead give their time to construction clean-up.

Post-building cleanup is not merely cosmetic. The reclaimed sand and pebbles are carefully collected and-again by volunteer muscle power-carried by hand or taken in wheelbarrows to the next construction site. If the next place is far and a truck can be used, they load the truck, sack by sack, brick by brick. But then there is often an intervening step. Especially during the rainy season, the road can become virtually impassable. In such a case, the same volunteers who are bagging and hauling building materials will collect big stones and old concrete rubble (plenty of that lies around, thanks to the Wave), and first take these to fill the holes, basically doing the road-repair themselves.

In the kind of construction Amma's organization carries out, nothing is wasted. Money is well spent: the funds for materials and skilled labor are channeled exactly where they are needed-and not elsewhere. Valuable material does not become garbage: it is salvaged and ready for the next use. Amma's children, unsalaried volunteers, do the "small jobs" that are actually gigantic. When there are such diverse kinds of work to be done, from back-breaking heavy lifting, that calls for a strong body, to careful pebble-sorting and washing, that calls for patience and concentration, there is work for everyone-little, big; strong, weak; young, old; healthy or less well. No willing worker is unneeded or goes unused. No waste.

No waste of Nature's living beauty, either. One of the benefits of labor done by people working together instead of by huge machinery is that it is not necessary to destroy trees to allow equipment access. The result is homes not on barren plots, but already landscaped, Nature's way. This, too, fits the value Amma emphasizes when she tells her children, "The Earth is your Mother. Love your Mother."

The results of this kind of labor are more than what the photographs here show: more is built than houses. By doing seva (selfless service), volunteers develop hearts that are more and more open. Seeing this kind of dedication and compassion, other people become intrigued, attracted, touched…and their hearts open, too. In Alappad, for example, many of the tsunami victims originally stood and watched the volunteers, saying basically, "We lost everything so we're 'entitled'-you do the work." But over time, it turned out that the urge to help was contagious, and more and more local people joined in on the construction work, not only for their own homes, but for those of neighbors, friends and strangers, as well.

Amma says that the way to make the world a better place is not so much to talk about it, nor to exhort people to change, but to "be the change you want to see." This 17-km stretch of fishing villages, with new homes and new hearts, is proof.

These are just a few glimpses of Amma's wealth: people who worked, rain or shine, these past months, helping to transform a shattering disaster into a multifaceted blessing, pebble by pebble.

- Janani

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**At the time of the tsunami, many aid organizations were eager to be among the rebuilders. Although at the time of the disaster Amma had offered to rebuild all the Kerala homes destroyed by the tsunami, the government wanted to permit other organizations to help, and so allotted to each a set number of houses. As the immensity of the effort involved became clear, some of the groups originally contracted to rebuild homes withdrew: "brick by brick and pebble by pebble work" takes hundreds, thousands, of people. It was just too big a job.

It is not too big a job, though, if the gift of selfless service is part of the labor. So when other aid agencies withdrew, and the Government asked Amma if she could take up their allotment, her "yes" was immediate.

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***One of Amma's mantras is: "Don't waste!" Years ago, when the temple was being erected at the M. A. Math, late at night Amma would walk around the building site, picking up dropped nails, straight or bent. She explained that, lying there on the ground, a nail might pierce a worker's foot, leaving him in pain and his family without income. Furthermore, even a bent nail could be straightened and reused. So these things that in many other places are just considered the natural debris of construction (in fact, this expected loss is calculated into materials purchased!)-these old nails not worth salvaging (for time is money!) were salvaged when the M. A. Math was in its infancy.

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