Odi in the Mid-1970s

With its giant new college, however, and with the earlier boost it received with the establishment of  Peder and Ulla Gowenius’ Weaving project, it may be that Odi can no longer be regarded as either typical or representative.When I first visited it, Odi was a very small, very poor settlement with, at that time, little to distinguish it from any other village of similar size.

In the background description in his report, Lewicky states that the village’s population in 1971 had been just 630 but had grown by 1977 to 930. The primary school had 352 students (200 in 1974) and 13 teachers and there was a small clinic staffed by two nurses. The village had two privately owned stores, a multi-purpose Coop, and a recently opened bottle store.