Sweaty

On Tuesday I had a really frustrating day of fieldwork in Bhadohi, the other district that RangSutra works in. I was supposed to interview 10 women, but I only got 6 interviews that I thought were complete/of decent quality. At the first village, I was supposed to interview 5 women. Midway through my fourth interview, the woman whose house we're at's husband rolls up on his motorcycle and situates himself right behind us. Great. The women immediately ceased to be chatty and open like they had been. The woman who I began to interview next was really quiet and it was a struggle to even get her to talk. When I got to the question about what she thought could be done to improve business practices, she refused to answer, and the husband (not her's) got up, walked over, and yelled something at her. The other intern, who was translating for me, said that he said regular orders would be how to improve business practices. I went on to the next question, but instead of translating Saurauv said, "it's probably better if we go." Great. So we left, and went on to the next village.

I got to interview one woman here before they had to leave, and this interview was also really frustrating. I was immediately discouraged by the presence of a woman's husband, but he didn't seem to be disturbing the interview at all. However, all the women in the group would answer the questions for the woman I was interviewing. I felt really helpless because I don't speak the language, so I didn't feel like I could tell them that I only wanted to talk to the woman I was interviewing right then. After the first interview, they all started to stand up and started pressing to leave. I got about 4 questions in to my next interview when they said they needed to leave.

The day progressed like that. Dipti was in the village we did the stencils workshop in, paying the women for their participation and evaluating their work. We were supposed to pick her up on our way back to Varanasi, and Saurauv and I told the taxi driver this when we dropped Priyanka, the field supervisor who was with us for the day, off. But he forgot or didn't listen, and we were almost back in Varanasi when we realized this. After we backtracked (after getting lost) and picked Dipti and her husband up, it took us two hours to get back in to Varanasi.

Last night, it took me two hours to get back to my guesthouse from the office, normally a 20 minute journey, because there was such bad traffic. I felt so nauseated from all the exhaust fumes. And the power's been going off and on for the past day, and it's been incredibly hot and humid. Also I started to organize my things last night and found a ton of ants hanging out in my suitcase/clothes. Yuck.

I'm sorry that this is pretty whine-y but so it goes.