A Real Community
The village of Kakkudamon is a cluster of homes that perch on a rocky hill near the edge of a national forest in the south Indian state of Kerala.
The families who make up these households live here because the land is cheap—they can’t afford to live anywhere else. This community didn’t come together because they share a religion or culture; Muslims, Christians, and Hindus from a variety of sects live together here. What has brought this community together is their lack of options.
Part of the reason for the cheap land in Kakkudamon is the lack of water. The community attempted more than once to dig a well by hand, but the the hill where Kakkudamon sits is so rocky that digging always ended with shovels scraping granite.
For years, the nearest source of water was a contaminated, hand-dug well in the floor of the valley—more than a half mile away. The rocky path to the well slopes steeply away from Kakkudamon; when it rains, the path becomes treacherous. Almost everyone I talked to in the village had a story about twisting an ankle or breaking a bone on the slippery downhill slope.
