With the indefinite strike in Darjeeling passing its 90th day, there is much confusion in the area as to how much progress has been made in the talks between Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM). Rival factions within the GJM are making different demands and one faction – the Tamang – is trying to get the area back to normal while the other – Gurung – wants the strike to continue until the official talks resume in October. The situation remains unclear but continues to cause much hardship for residents and business people as food and essentials are in very short supply. We have had further communication with Sister Andrea, the Principal of St. Mary’s (our sponsored school), and have managed to transfer some funds to her whic she is now using to help the locals in Singla and Darjeeling. Here are some latest extracts from her emails, in her own words, which as before give a flavour of how it must be to live through such a long and destructive strike
“Greetings from Andrea 11th Sept. 2017.
The situation in Darjeeling is still bad. Nothing is improving. But we were able to provide food materials for the people quite a few times. Very many people were generous to donate food materials many times. So our area - Singla do not suffer much. But Darjeeling and KLIMPONG ARE IN A POORER SITUATION. They get less food materials. But they are still surviving. The tea garden looks like a big forest. I do not think anything can be done. Tomorrow there will be another meeting, but no one knows what might be the result of it. According to hearsay nothing much may happen - but we are hoping against hope”.
“We have regular classes for Year 10 and we got the information that there will Board exams for them. But the rest - we don't even know where they are: a large no. of our students are working here and there, on road construction sites, hotels, markets, etc. in Sikkim, Delhi, and other places. Some of them ring up once in awhile. We are all waiting for a better tomorrow, which we hope will be soon.
Thanks for the money which is coming. Now do not send any more, somehow I will be in touch if I need more. For the time being this is enough. Please give my greeting to all the children, staff, Julie at St. Mary's Aston. I do think of those children too. I miss mine very much. May God bless each one of them. Only God knows when I will see them again.
If and when possible I will be in touch. With much love Andrea.”
“Here I am once again to say hello to you. As I mentioned earlier the money came. So far I have spent Rs. 20000.00 of it. This is how I did it. In our Church area there are 44 families. Out of these, 34 families were suffering due to lack of food. So we bought rice, 5 kg each, dry peas, half kg, oil half kg, green vegetables (squash) 4 each to each of these families. Then we selected 10 families (those who deserve) from 7 villages and gave them the same quantity of items to each of them. I did not make a public announcement regarding this distribution in order to avoid the crowd. I will send some photos of our distribution a little later. The rest of the money about 29000.00 is still with me. A little later I shall do the same with the money. Once again thank you for your generous help. Andrea”