More on Bhuj

Kutch is an incredibly diverse and beautiful area. There are so many different communities that I am having a very hard time working out who is who. Our contacts at Agrocel were busy this week, but Alice will be going to Mandvi tomorrow to arrange the next set of interviews. She is having a hard time communicating with Agrocel employees over the phone, and I’ve refused to step in because I thought it was best if she remained the primary contact… Things seem to get done best when we can speak with people face to face! Especially when all the parties involved are speaking in their second or third language!
While Agrocel has been busy we took time to chat with a few more NGO’s working in the area. In the interviews we did with farmers it was interesting to hear that they had “no health problems”. What I’ve come to understand in talking with NGO’s that work directly in health related issues, is that its not easy to get somebody to admit they have health problems! Also, many people have no idea what kind of health problems they might have. Knowledge of HIV/AIDS, and other illnesses is pretty unsubstantial. In the news today I read that the Kutch area has no access to HIV drugs or medications, and that in the past month 18 patients died due to the lack of access to medication. This kind of information, along with reports we’ve collected from other NGO’s should help put into context the interview data we have collected from farmers.

We visited Shrujan on a pretty perfect day. Shrujan had recently won some Rolex international development award, and in turn was putting on a celebration for all the artisans involved in the organization! We showed up to find 1500 of the Shrujan embroiderers all visiting the Shrujan head office and sales outlet. We had no translator with us, so we have no idea what the speeches were about - but the music and food was great.

Yesterday we took a tour with four other travellers, two Bangalorean, an Australian, and a German. We visited a number of nearby towns which rely heavily on crafts production. I can’t get over the feeling that I’m an invader - not speaking the language is a huge barrier - and a translator just doesn’t get us passed it. A real conversation is 100% impossible with a translator. I would never want to conduct any serious ‘cultural’ research in an area where I was not fluent in the local language - because the kinds of questions you can ask, and the kinds of responses are very limited. We can get a general sense of whats going on, but its hard to gain peoples trust and to have them let down their guard. (ie why we cant get information on health problems in a community simply by asking them). Funny enough, spending money works to break down barriers very well.
For example when we arrived in one town, I asked if I could take a picture of a man and woman. They didn’t want me to take the picture, so I thanked them anyways and put away the camera. We walked around the round houses, looked at the interesting paintings on house walls, then after a few minutes started to feel like uninvited aliens. Thankfully a woman came up to us and invited us into one of the houses - this made us feel a bit more welcome. The house we were invited into was the ‘trading post’ of sorts. The room was filled with beautiful embroidery. We bought a couple pieces and immediately everyone seemed happier and livelier. We stepped out of the house and the man who denied my photo, asked me to take his photograph. Then all the kids surrounded us and asked us to take their pictures as well.
Spending money works to break the ice it seems… We were alien intruders up until we filled our role as “foreign rich ass big spenders”. Being on a tour with other tourists we didn’t bother trying to get passed this… Tourism can be strange.

I’m pretty convinced doing interviews through a translator is a bit hopeless - it works, but it works a lot better speaking the language! Maybe paying people for the interview time would help too!

artisans visiting exhibit of their own work at Shrujan + speeches, music, lunch, as thanks for winning the Rolex award.

Some more pics from around Bhuj…

Some pics from our tourist shopping tour around nearby communities…

and a few more…

This entry was posted on December 14, 2006 at 4:02 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.