India Uncut - The Tsunami Posts
At the end of December 2004 and the beginning of January 2005, I travelled through the tsunami-affected areas of Tamil Nadu, India. These are the posts from just before, during and after my trip that I wrote for my blog, India Uncut.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Despatches 38: Ironing out the creases
One of the main reasons that affected people don't like accepting old clothes is that they are too proud to wear a hand-me-down. The Rotary Club had told us in Chennai that it intends to get past this by washing and ironing whichever old clothes they find to be salvagable, and segregating them neatly by gender, size etc, before going out to distribute them. This is, they believe, a basic level of respect that one should have for the affected people, and a number of groups across the coast have begun doing just this. Good for them. But there are still way too many old clothes out there.
