Postcards Collected: Comments on Distrobution and Meetings

You remember that in a previous entry, I talked about all the postcard booklets getting distributed by the efforts of the community without prompting from either me or the NGO. Each hamlet has received the booklets differently, and I expect different kinds of responses on the postcards as a result.

We had great participation from the hamlets where booklets quickly reached individual houses and a prominent member of that community is invested in the project. In some cases, this positive reception was reinforced by a group meetings about the project. For some hamlets, a member of the community picked booklets up form the office but didn’t distributed it to the community until I prompted them to. In other cases, the booklets were distributed without much investment, usually because the distributor did not read the booklets before handing them out. The ideal situation was when even distribution from an invested insider was later reinforced by input from outsiders trusted by the community. When information came twice from sources that are familiar with communicating with the community but employ different style for doing so, the information sticks on various levels for different people. While distribution has been imperfect, the process has been interesting and illustrative. We could not manage an even distribution system because the community took that over themselves and because the people at the NGO are overworked and only available for certain meetings. Working in translation leaves me out of control of much of the process. This differs from the method in Guatemala, I personally communicated with each family involved in the project at least three times in the course of distributing and collecting postcards.

In the village of Yankoo, the local community animator was enthusiastic and invested. Navin from the NGO who is skilled at giving energetic presentations facilitated a discussion. More and more people arrived as Navin read postcards allowed and expounded on the history of Guatemala.

The community animator asked question after question until eventually the rest of the community joined in with their own questions. “Here, the women work beside the men. Do they do the same there?” “How do they spend their Fair Trade premium?” “What is the education system like?” “How do they make their organic fertilizer?” “A lot of people have a habit of drinking here. Do they get drunk there too?” I answered their questions as best as I could and encouraged them to ask themselves in the postcards they write. After the meeting, descending the steep valley back down to the road, I asked Navin how he thought the meeting went. He thought it went very well. He said one of the farmers commented to him that he had read every single postcards, and by the end he had tears rolling down his cheeks.

In another village, 11 Number (named after the old plantation demarcation for that area), I was on my own and depended on a few young people who had studied English in Darjeeling to translate. Luckily, one person had attended the meeting the previous day in Yankoo. Before I could even start, he began explaining all sorts of things to his neighbors. One person showed me slips of paper where he had meticulously gone through all the questions that the people in Santa Anita asked and answered every one of them. In this cases, the meeting was driven by the ideas that had already been circulating about the project, thanks both to the booklet itself and second hand information. Several informal conversations happened at once and enthusiasm built with the banter.

One girl in this meeting was very quiet, but gradually spoke more and more, revealing her enthusiasm and her good English. “Aren’t you going to have a meeting in the next village?” I told her that none was planned, but I could certainly have a meeting. She offered to take me to the village and run the meeting, which surprised me given the shy start. I eagerly accepted her offer and we were off to Godandora.

In Godandora, people had not received booklets. There were several with one family, but they had not distributed them. It was difficult to gather people together because they had no prior knowledge of the project or of a meeting. Of the people we did gather, interest was minimal expect for two women. They took extra copies of everything and suggested the houses they would take the booklets and postcards to.

As for Harsing, the community animator and pre-school teacher ran the meeting. You could tell he was experience in teaching little kids. He got a sizable group of people together, everyone read the postcards together, and wrote responses on the spot.

I can’t wait to see what they wrote. I will be making copies and coordinating with translator this week. Hopefully I can post a few postcards here soon.