Starting the interviews

Wow, this field study is turning out to be the most enriching learning experience of my life. I started the interviews last week, which has been an incredible experience. Ray is a local who has been working with Jaron ever since he's been here and he knows where all the women live and speaks english really well. The women all know him and like him, which is awesome because it makes them all that more comfortable telling their life stories to us. We started out on Tuesday in a village called Laliya, where some of the women live, including the chairperson of the group. So we recorded the stories of four women on Tuesday and four more on Wednesday, when we went to Kanyagoga. Each day I came home feeling a little overwhelmed emotionally with all that I heard from the women telling me about their lives and the situations they are still currently living in. Each one has suffered so much throughout their lives and continue today struggling to support their children, most of them on their own. They all desire for their children to have better lives than they had and so they are doing everything they can to make enough money to pay for school fees so their children can gain an education, which many of the women didn't get very much of growing up.

Interviewing the women has made me realize how incredible important this paper bead business is to them. Many of them rely solely on making paper beads to support their families because they have no other source of income. Jaron is working so hard to find more orders for beads from the U.S. to at least keep the women working and earning money in the meantime while also trying to figure out something that would provide a more steady income for the women. Many of the women have no other resources to turn to and are thus relying on us and our connections to the states to help them out. After hearing their stories first hand and knowing how important this work is to them, I want to do everything I can to give back to them what they are in need of. They have been giving me so much by teaching me so many important life lessons and values that will bless me for my whole life. Hopefully I can use their stories for some good, so that this project will come back to bless them as well.

After conducting these first interviews, I realized some changes I need to make in my approach to recoding the stories. Ray is going to help me with being better about giving the women appropriate warning and time in advance to us coming so that they can prepare and think about what they want to say. I am also coming up with more and better questions to ask the women to get them really thinking and talking. It's definitely a learning process as I really didn't know what to expect at first. I think I will be able to make some changes that will help make the interviews more in-depth because the first few were not nearly as long as I had hoped. I also think I need to keep the interviews spaced out a little bit and have Ray help me convey to the women that I'm not in a rush to get all of the interviews done, but that they can really take their time. I love this project and I'm so grateful to be here and among such incredible people!

Exciting progress

Yesterday was market day, so we met with all of the women and they laid out all of their jewelry. We went around to each group, because we tried out a new system of dividing them up into 4 groups for this order, and picked out all of the jewelry to fulfill the order for African Promise Foundation. After gathering all the jewelry, we paid each woman the same amount. Then we had a meeting with all of them to discuss this transition period from working for Voices for Global Change to finding new and more work for them. At the end of the meeting, we told them about my project! Jaron and I decided this was a good time to introduce my project to the women and see their response and if I could get started. Fortunately, the women responded super well and all 21 of them are going to let me come to their home and record them telling me about their life. We have a really good friend who is going to translate for me and another friend who said she would take pictures of the women with her super nice camera. We told them that I would put a book together with all of their stories to give to them and they really like that idea. I'm super excited to get started on my project and I'm so glad that things are moving forward! It will be so much fun to visit each lady individually and get to know them all so much better this way. I will hopefully start with the interviews next week because I have 21 women's stories to record in less than 2 months!