Was there a point after which the people accepted you?

Continuing with the lovely time at Rishi Valley:

Would I want to chat with students in the Sociology class? Well I would - but what do I chat on? This was how the conversation on the topic started. Suggestions from teachers then made things easier for me: How about talking on meetings (and interactions) when you initially went to the villages in Mizoram? Also what you observed in and learnt from the villages during initial days– especially in context of your work?

As I started jotting notes I was clear that I would talk of initial days in Baghmara (South Garo Hills, Meghalaya) and put to use neither images nor power-point. Images in this post are those scanned from the album of monsoon 2004. These I dug out only last evening and I have put in the image names I then used. As I write I recall Rama Bijapurkar in Telegraph writing that power-points hardly had power and seldom conveyed the point!

In the space below I share some of these notes and questions that followed:

Office beckons

Notes

When I arrived in May 2004 the initial surveys had been undertaken and we had gone with 2 bags each to initiate our field base (office and home). Lovely house along the Rompha river where we swam and washed clothes after office.

We selected villages but had to take permission from Nokma (village headman) before we began our intervention. Nokma is the head of the clan that owns the village (Aking).

It took a while to figure out how best to meet people. Unlike what little experience we had people here preferred to meet around 6 in the morning. Also tea-stalls were places where people socialized as also pick-up and drop points for public-transport; this had us invest a lot of time at these stalls often gulping 8 – 10 sweet cups a day.

A forest department officer had said people come, do research and then go away (earn fame and money) without even sharing a report which is why even the line-departments are weary of sharing information. People initially took time to open up but as we stayed in the villages, moving and eating with them they opened up. We also made it a time (in the coming months and years) to regularly share our reports (in Garo) with them!

My office