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Home Partner |
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| My husband is proud of me |
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Shanti Amma’s old house is dark, with a low, pitched tin roof and untreated wood beams that are infested with termites. The house is kept as clean and decorated as she can manage, though. Seven people live inside this house-Shanti Amma, her husband, sister, and her eldest widowed son and his three children. Five of them sleep on the floor, with their legs under the twin-sized bed.
Still, Shanti Amma says, “It is better than the thatched-leaf house we first built when we moved here.”
In 1973, five years after Shanti Amma and her husband, Krishnan, were married, Krishnan’s health deteriorated. She has been the main income-earner for the family ever since, working first as a housemaid, then as a helper at a Montessori School, where she looks after children and cleans the restrooms. Shanti Amma has learned four different languages thanks to the different homes and schools where she has worked.
“My husband is proud of me,” she says with a smile. |
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Other family members pitch in, too, hoping to make enough to provide proper schooling for the grandchildren. Her eldest son sells vegetables from a pushcart in the community, and the family makes their own brooms, which they sell for 10 Rupees each whenever they have extras.
Three years ago, Shanti Amma joined a local Self-Help Group and has contributed savings each month. She will take out her first loan from the group to build her new Habitat house.
“I’m so thankful to have a new home,” Shanti Amma says. “Honestly, |
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I never thought I could. But we will soon have a bigger, cleaner house.”
International volunteers helped finish the walls on the family’s new house during the Women Build. While other family members pitched in, Shanti Amma had to work at school most days. She always looked forward to returning home.
“Day by day, as the blocks build up, I’m so happy to see them rising when I come home,” she says. “It’s just hard for myself to believe.” |
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