Field Visit #2

Taking GPS points in a banana field....

Tom, i made the photo big just so you could see my grimace.

Last weekend I went to Belgaum city again, for a second visit to my field area. During my first visit, I had already met three wonderful people who will all be my part-time interpreters. Therefore, my most important goals for this visit were the following:
1) Find place to live for when I return in September for a longer stay
2) Determine how I will transport myself and said interpreters to villages to conduct interviews with farmers.
3) Test out my interview questions with a few farmers to see just how dumb and poorly phrased the questions might be.
4) Start to narrow down my selection of possible villages for my study.



On all fronts I have made progress. One of my interpreters has helped me find a nice room I can rent in the back of someone’s house in Belgaum city. Very safe, clean and private, three good things for living and working. I have determined that the inter-village bus system, though complicated, can probably be managed just fine and should be able to get me most anywhere. And, Dad, the price is certainly right: about 57 cents to get to the first village I traveled to, about two hours from Belgaum.



I conducted interviews on three different farms over two days. Of course, they were more like focus groups, since at each farm one farmer would quickly grow into a whole crowd. These farms were run by joint families, so uncles/cousins/brothers/etc. all came out together. Nothing like the attraction of a foreign woman asking dumb questions and walking through fields! Better than television any day! I must admit, at one point I felt fairly intimidated by having literally 8 men all staring at me, waiting for me to ask a question that would be translated into Kannada for them to respond to. And then after a lively discussion, I would get back a one sentence answer from my interpreter. Talk about gatekeepers of meaning…. This will take some time to learn how to deal with, I figure.



And on the final front, I did do some reflecting as to where would be most appropriate to conduct my little “pilot study” research and I realize I still have more reflecting to do. My supervisor calls this an “iterative” process.



All in all, my two days spent in two different villages were pretty amazing and wonderful: spending the night in the home of one of my interpreters in one village, four of us sleeping in the same room, walking with farmers through fields, getting fed lots ands lots of delicious food, watching my host milk the cow and the water buffalo and then being served the milk (after boiling, of course), borrowing a bicycle to ride out to one farmer’s fields (oh, heaven to be back on a bike!)…. The list goes on.



On the other hand, things are not very rosy for farmers right now. The monsoon rains have all but failed in this part of the country, and things are dry, very dry. And though the farmers I talked with were wealthy enough to have deep borewells for irrigation, they were unable to run them sufficiently long, because they were only receiving about two hours of power a day. This is because power shortages throughout the state have been high, due to low rainfall and therefore diminished hydroelectricity capacity. Everywhere I have been the last few weeks, including Bangalore city, have been having at least a few hours, sometimes almost half the day, of power outages each day.



Upon my return to Belgaum, another interpreter’s family invited me to have dinner with them on Sunday night. I agreed, and I also, reluctantly, agreed when they insisted I spend the night. “Too late to take you home!" they said, and I suppose they were right. And let me tell you, my dear friends, it is a d#*% good thing I agreed…oh yes indeed: check out next post, coming shortly....