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Our young friends in the neighborhood were recently trying their hand at the design and mock up of a new houseboat. The parents of most of the children in the Our Gang, Thevara series are fishermen and fish___ (if you know the name for wives who clean and process the fish for sale, please comment). Most build and maintain their own simple boats.  Kids follow in their footsteps, traditionally, but this being Kerala our neighborhood gang is also getting a superb education at their local public school.  Some will leave the fishing and boat-making to siblings and cousins.  Some will become boat designers, we imagine.The houseboats that Raxa Collective operates on Kerala’s backwaters represent one of the largest investments of any made to preserve the traditional form of boat-making unique to the Malabar coast.  So we think we know what we are talking about when we say: this young man has a future in houseboats if he so chooses!