A Field Worker’s Diary _ Part 48
“Grace had not told me all those things. She just did her work. I observed her and understood whatever I could. Above all, I understood that adaptability is the hallmark of a field worker.”
In my last post, I had written about Village Immersion, which was a part of my recruitment process in Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project (Velugu). After joining the project, there was also an induction program in my training. Long before the project was even started in our Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh, it was implemented in 6 districts as a pilot project called District Poverty Initiatives Projects (DPIP).
In 2002, it was expanded to 16 other districts. Even in those districts only a few mandals were included in the project. Only 22 mandals (out of a total of 58 mandals) in Guntur district are under the project.
Two or three community coordinators were selected for each mandal. Though we were all postgraduates, none of us had any training in social work. Therefore, giving us adequate training was very critical for us to work properly.
That is why we were sent to DPIP districts for induction. The program aimed to help us understand the scope, limitations and rules and regulations of the work through spending some days with the community coordinator already working there. We were divided into different groups and sent to different districts. Our team was to go to Srikakulam district.
I had to go and meet Grace, the Kaviti mandal coordinator. I had written about this very same Grace once before. She was a very active girl. Upon reaching Kaviti mandal on a bus, Grace received me and took me to a village. Like I had already mentioned, there will be two or three coordinators for each mandal. The mandals are divided into clusters and some villages are assigned to each coordinator. Grace and I traveled by bus from Kaviti and got down in a village somewhere. When she told me that “Look, all the villages from here are part of my cluster”, I felt as though some queen was stating that “Look, here is my empire”. Later, when we were allotted clusters, we also used to say that the 10 villages from here are ours as though they were part of our kingdom. I don’t exactly remember the names of the villages that we visited, but I do remember that we had to walk quite far from the village we got down in. We walked through the coconut groves as the distance was shorter from the coconut groves. Grace walked briskly but I struggled so hard to walk on that sandy ground with my luggage. While holding my shoes in one hand (it was difficult to walk with shoes on) and the luggage in the other, I lamented all through the tough walk as to why I left my peaceful lecturer job and chose this difficult path. That was one of the few instances that I regretted choosing this field. I never regretted it ever again in these 18 years. On my first evening in the village, Grace took me to a Self Help Group (SHG) meeting.
It was my first time around seeing women coming and sitting nicely on the mats in the middle of the road after finishing their dinners. The sight of the streetlight, the moonlight competing with it, the women sitting in that moon-shape during the meeting, was a beautiful setting that is imprinted in my mind forever. My work was only observation. During the next two weeks, my work was to attend many such SHG meetings, village level federation or village organisation meetings, mandal (block) level federation or mandal samakhya meetings, observe what they were doing, what they were discussing, how Grace was facilitating those discussions and meetings.
That was our training. Learning by observation. Though a lot of things that we have learnt since childhood have been through observing them, after getting used to the methods of a person teaching us and us learning from them, it was refreshing to see this observation being used as a training tool. Leaving the learning aside, for a person like me who like Jamuna in the Old Telugu movie Gundamma Katha was used to calling ‘Amma, coffee’ and drinking bed coffee, it was an experience being in villages without coffee or tea. Milk was used very sparingly there. When I asked for tea, they gave me black tea in some places. This was another instance when I regretted taking this job.
One even more troublesome issue I found there was having no toilets for taking a bath. No matter how poor they are I have known of poor families which have created a room with wattles or cloth if they don’t have bathrooms. The situation there, however, was completely different. The women there applied turmeric, wore clothes and bathed in the open. It might seem like a very small thing, but it was an instance when I felt very troubled. Grace had a bike. No matter how late it got in the field, she told me that she always went back to her home in Kaviti. But when I went there, she did not bring her bike. We both stayed in the villages for many days. I vividly remember how the woman accompanying us laughed at us for our midnight baths as Grace and I took one bucket each of water with us to the coconut groves during the nights after everybody fell asleep and took baths there.
I do not remember the names of all the villages we went to but I remember going to Bejjiputtuga village and a fishing village named Iddivanipalem. I especially remember visiting a school that was just beside the sea. After spending a few days in the villages, we came to Kaviti and participated in the mandal level federation meetings. All through my stay in Kaviti, I stayed only at Grace’s home. Grace and her younger brother had been staying in a room there. She was rearing rabbits in her house. It was nice to roam all around the villages during the day and play with them in the evenings.
By going with Grace for those two weeks, I learnt a variety of things, such as, how to form self help groups, how to conduct meetings, how to do bookkeeping, how to form village organisations and Mandal Samakhyas, their workings; how groups have to be facilitated loans through Bank linkage, what sort of relationships should be maintained with banks and line departments, etc.,.
Along with all of this, I was able to understand what values and qualities should be adhered to as a field worker. Grace had not told me all those things. She just did her work. I observed her and understood whatever I could. Above all, I understood that adaptability is the hallmark of a field worker.
@ Bharathi Kode