What others are saying about 
 'My Life Among the Paniyas of the Nilgiri Hills'

Eastern Anthropologist Review Article 2009 of this book

... Dear Mother Hen: Your book is utterly charming! .... It is the most genuine writing I have read about anyone on a CUSO assignment. I suppose that is because you have edited the letters you sent each week, and it has the immediacy of actually being in the fields or walking all those miles, and gazing at the ants...
 
…I really think Henning's book ranks with the best writing on this fascinating organization (CUSO) and the testing life of its volunteers and is a wondrous window into those early days. As a collection of letters, it is better than journals and diaries that too often are selfserving.  It is lyrical, but you are also in the mud of those distant fields. It is shiningly genuine, because you can't fool your fiancée or your parents. It has been the most enjoyable read I have had for months. I hope you relish it as much.
 
Clyde Sanger
former Board Member of CUSO 1969-72
journalist for 55 years in Britain, Africa and Canada
author of numerous development-related books including
Half a Loaf: Canada's semi-role in developing countries
 
Respectful, modest, enthusiastic, moving: Mündel’s My Life among the Paniyas of the Nilgiri Hills  merits all of these adjectives and more. That the young Canadian agriculturalist could enter so fully into the life of twenty-five Paniya tribal families only recently freed from the status of bonded labourers is nothing short of remarkable.  Far from making himself the hero of this anecdote-rich account, Mündel’s focus is on the  openness of a warm and resilient people whose trust in him overcame the barrier of language and went well beyond agricultural matters.  Revisiting the colony with his son in 1986, Mündel noted with satisfaction its new crops and amenities, but he perhaps took a special, quiet, pride in seeing that the timid children he had enrolled in school twenty years earlier had become “some of the real ‘movers and shakers’” in their community.
 
  CUSO alumni from the 1960s frequently observe that they got back far more than they gave during their brief assignments in the developing world. Probably so: they were young and naïve and inexperienced.  But they were also enthusiastic. And when that quality was wedded to common sense and compassion and a stick-to-it attitude, as in Mündel’s case, the giving flowed both ways.  
 
Ruth Compton Brouwer
Professor and Chair of History at King’s University College,
University of Western Ontario.
Has published two books and many articles on Canadian women in colonial Asia and Africa.  Her current research deals with CUSO volunteers in the 1960s and 1970s.
 
The time is 1966, the place, a remote part of Tamilnadu in South India near to its border of Kerala. Hans-Henning a young German from Canada who has been studying agriculture has been sent on a volunteer assignment to India by CUSO, a Canadian equivalent of VSO.  This placement has been organised at the request of Dr Narasimhan, a champion of the Adivasis or tribal groups living in the Nilgiri Hills.…
 
Dr Narasimhan was one of those rare souls who not only takes the trouble to comprehend how a wrong has come about but actually takes action to put it to rights. …. And so it was that Hans-Henning, the author of this book, as a 24-year-old agricultural student from Canada found himself appointed Farm Manager for a group of illiterate and poverty stricken families with the objective of helping them to become a cooperative agricultural colony.  This book is Henning's fascinating account of the months he spent there, put together forty years later from the letters he wrote at the time to his fiancée and parents in Canada. …His account brings to light many obstacles and difficulties he had to face but it also shows his remarkable resilience and open-mindedness and considerable success in making friends with the families in his charge, not to mention what was achieved in the planting and husbanding of a variety of crops…..Hans-Henning deserves praise for the efforts he put into a brave experiment as well as for this vivid chronicle of it.
 
Rosaleen Mulji
an ex-officio member of the Managing Committee of the Nilgiris
Adivasi Welfare Association in Kotagiri
Secretary of the Nilgiris Adivasi Trust in England
  From: "Dieter Radecki" <dradecki@cgocable

  <
 
Those Alumni who, like Hans Henning, got their first exposure to international development through CUSO will enjoy this retelling of that adventure, and will wonder whatever happened to the letters they sent home to family and friends, which is what Hans-Henning Mündel has used as his sources.
 
The Paniyas belong to the Adivasi, ‘tribal’ peoples, India’s First Nations. Mündel's CUSO assignment was an example of very early efforts to improve the welfare of India's autochthons—efforts getting more attention today as witness IDRC's research into their role in the preservation of biodiversity. 
 
Reading Mündel's ‘letters home’ one is witness to two initiations: on the one hand to follow a group of people taking the first steps on the path to the economic and social development that is the raison d’être of IDRC; and, on the other hand, to follow the droit de passage of a young Canadian scientist engaged in a learn-by-doing development assignment that calls for knowledge contributed with humility, trepidation, patience and kindness.
 
It is a book that will be enjoyed by those who have ‘been there done that’ and by those just setting out on careers in IDRC, CIDA, World Bank, name any development agency, and by those taking the Hobbit's way into development work with CUSO, VSO, UNV, Peace Corps, name any NGO.
 
To quote Clyde's Forward: “It is lyrical, but you are also in the mud of those distant fields. It is shiningly genuine, because you can’t fool your fiancée or your parents. It has been the most enjoyable read I have had in months. I hope you relish it.”
 
I Did.
 
Christopher Smart former Director, Special Initiatives IDRC; former Chair, Board of Directors, Voluntary Service Overseas Canada (VSO-Canada)
 
I have just completed your Book Henning and must say that it was very touching, extremely well written and interesting all the way through.
 
What an experience when you are in your early 20th and wind up with a responsibility which is this huge and overwhelming, working and living in conditions which our bodies and minds are not prepared for growing up in western affluence. The struggle for each bit of food every day and the fight to get some cloth or haircuts and medical assistance for your charges, I don't know how you managed the struggle and yet all your actions and contributions made their lives a tiny bit better than they were before.
 
Your insistence on the schooling of some of these children will slowly have a ripple effect over the generations and who knows how large the seed will grow which you have planted in this community? I am not sure that you left Canada with the expectation to tend to such a complex human garden.
 
But I was most impressed with the Henning Muendel who I guess I really did not know at all, the humble humanitarian, unassuming in all your actions, the physical and mental efforts you took upon yourself without one word of complaint or bitterness (at the lack of monetary support to do this task effectively) I was extremely impressed with the human being I encountered here. How much must you have benefited from this experience? I am very grateful that you wrote this book.
 
I also remember contributing to a well, or bucket and rope, for which your mother collected when we where in the Okanagan.
 
I am now looking forward to your next book with anticipation .... whatever this may be.
 
Thanks Henning, Regards Dieter
 
Dieter Radecki
  retired recording music industry executive; Henning's cousin
 
Wow Henning!
I just finished your book!  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Clyde Sanger's& introduction was great - the first few sentences really capture why I felt I could identify so well with your stories.  It is because your  experience is so vividly described, and so many of your experiences,your culture shock, your isolation are very common for those kinds of experiences. Like Glencree!
  At first when I was reading, it was interesting because I knew you, but then somehow it wasn't the Henning I know now, but maybe a Henning that I was meeting at age 25- and that Henning is his own person!
 
I like how clearly everything is recounted and all the detail - I  could really picture a lot.  I teared up a little when Bev finally visited a year and a half after you had left - it must have been  difficult to be apart, but so great to share the experience with her  finally!  I thought it was funny how you talked about how irritating  the really optimistic young people are, but then you were so positive  throughout your experience!  It is amazing to me how committed you  were, and how you managed in such isolation.  I would like all of the  Glencree volunteers to read this to understand what real tests of  character look like, and what it means to be committed to being of  service.
 
I also really like to see how much of an ongoing impact you have had  for the community.  It is hopeful to see that if a person contributes  everything they've got, they can trust that some good will come from it!
 
Thanks a million for sharing your stories!
 
Keep well,Megan
 Megan Jerke family friend of Henning & Bev; graduate student; former volunteer and Staff at the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation,Ireland
 
Thank you for writing it (this book), as it struck a cord with me.  Your communicative writing style portrayed images of a young struggling Canadian whose no-nonsense approach to both the Paniyans and those who would like to continue to take from them, painted vivid images of your challenges and successes.
  As an educator who never travelled and gave of himself to international assistance I enjoyed reading your day-to-day accounts of your efforts.  I was especially drawn in to your attention to the children.  Perhaps it was because I am a teacher, but I also feel that your intuition about the needs of dealing with your vocation, farming practices, and your focus on the future of the village, namely the children, established a completeness to your contribution to the NAWA vision that endured through your later visits.  It was a powerful image when I read about your son visiting and interacting with the seeds that you had planted some twenty years before
 
Thank you for selling your efforts to me and for taking the time to write them into a book format.  It was a very enjoyable read and one that gave me a glimpse into the international assistance experiences that I never had. Thanks again.
  Dan Ryder
 >, Principal, Dorothy Dalgliesh School, Picture Butte, AB
 
You are an incredibly practical person who listens and acts on his highest instincts.  I don't know how else to put it.  …. I have to say that …. now I can see you probably have been a light in many people's lives. That book was just a confirmation for me of how I (and probably many other people) perceive you
  Daphne Stieda, Piano teacher, Hungary, godchild of Henning.
 
Thank you very much for your wonderful book. I believe it's a unique and very precious source about a population rather unknown but really very interesting like Paniyas. I think that it has been a privilege for you to live an experience among such a beautiful tribe. You've certainly worked hard, but I believe that probably you've been rewarded by the tribal themselves, their faces and their way of life. Or at least it's my opinion.....
  Stefano FerrariniMantova, Italy
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  Mir macht Dein Buch viel Spass.  Man erkennt Dich darinnen- Deine Art, Deinen Humor und Deine Schwungkraft. Es muss eine frustrierende aber doch sehr dankbare Zeit gewesen sein.
  Nixe Gerbitz, family friend for half a century.p