Faridpur 3

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Thursday July 19, 2007 Faridpur

Today we went to look for an appropriate village to conduct my survey in. We plan to interview the male and female heads of 20 households, therefore we want to find a village that has between 50 and 60 households. From the road and walking around the roosts, I had the impression that these villages were tiny, maybe 20 households. It turns out they are much much bigger than I realized, and 100 households or more is the norm.

My team consists of an anthropologist, Rasheda, who has been helping me all along and is the local PI (principal investigator) on the project as for as the center is concerned. She has been the one giving me great input into my questionnaire. She has assigned two field officers to conduct the surveys for me. A man, Dawlat, who is also trained as an anthropologist, and a woman, Jesmin (sounds like Jasmeen - like the flower). They are both around my age, and have a lot of experience doing surveys like these. Again, it’s overwhelming and amazingly gratifying to have my own team!!

Our driver, Kamrul, took us to the general area of John’s bat roost. We then started asking the people on the side of the road about how big their villages were. By we, of course I mean Rasheda, Dawlat, and Jesmin. I do a lot of sitting and listening, but very little comprehending. And a 5 minute conversation is translated to me in about 3 sentences. So, I quickly realized I was of no help and I’d better just trust them to pick the right place! At first everyone told us we would find no village that size. After several tries, we then found two villages the exact right size that were right next to each other! One, it turned out, was mostly Hindu. We decided that was an inaccurate representation of Bangladesh, and therefore chose the other. There was a woman living nearby who worked as a nutrition coordinator, she brought us into her house to talk to us because she had information about the inhabitants of that village. We decided that one would be perfect!

We then chose to field test our survey in the other village, the mostly Hindu one. Before coming here, I was feeling shy and nervous about asking to interview people. In fact, it is just about the greatest thing to do! It means I get to meet and talk with people in these villages, and experience that I would think not so many people get. I think it’s really amazing. As I think I’ve already said, these people live very simple lives. However, they are so happy and seem to really want for nothing. I am so gratified to be able to see it so closely.

I am, again, a celebrity wherever I go. Everyone comes out to see me, and wants to know who I am, where I come from, am I married, and do I have children. The next questions are “what do I think of Bangladesh”? People are so proud of their country and their lives, and luckily I can say that I love it and think it’s really beautiful. These villages are in the forest, not real forest, I’m sure that was cut down years ago. But they are surrounded with trees, mostly fruit trees (good for my study!) and palm trees. Their livestock live right with them, and everywhere in the village is jute in various stages of being made into fiber. The houses are generally one or two room buildings, with corrugated iron walls and roofs, and built on a mud based platform. This village had several shrines to Hindu gods and goddesses in their yards. I found them completely unexpected, and a striking juxtaposition of color and sculpure next to functional agricultural life.

We interviewed 6 household, each interview drew a crowd, so obviously confidentiality isn’t really going to play into this study! My two interviewers were very good at telling people to not shout out answers. I smiled and waved to kids, and tried to communicate through smiles to the women. Again, everyone was much more interested in me than anything else. It really is an experience unlike anything I’ve ever known. I worry that we’re imposing, are they are angry to have me there or something, but I’m told through translation that what they are saying is they are so happy to see me and so happy to have me there. It’s really amazing. And overwhelming. I take lots of pictures of people, they really really love to see the picture on my camera.

Field testing revealed several problems. That night we discussed it for several hours, and then I worked on reformatting until 3 am! I heard Jon and his team leaving (they head out at 3am) to catch bats! I’m glad I decided to skip that night of bat hunting! (I was going to go the night before, but there was torrential rain and lightning and John called it off).

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