Post-Interviews

This week we finished taking the pictures, and after getting them developed, it was time for the post-interviews. When I went in this week, the two male participants were out of town, and thus could not be a part of the post-interview process. The rest of us went upstairs in the school where there is a large empty space looking over Rasoolpura. I hadn’t looked at the pictures myself, so I was just as excited as the children when I opened the big bag of photos. I gave everyone their respective photos, and asked them if they could write a few sentences on the back of the ones they thought were meaningful. The main questions discussed were:

1. What do you SEE here?
2. What is REALLY happening?
3. How does this RELATE to your life in Rasoolpura?
4. WHY does this problem exist?
5. What can we DO about it?
   

They didn’t have to answer every question, but rather they served to open up our minds to the various factors that I would like to show through this project. The older kids had no problem with this task, but the younger ones seemed to have some difficulty translating their words into writing. When I asked them, however, all of them had wonderful insight into each and every picture they took, so instead of writing it out, we decided that it would be easier to videotape participants as they spoke. I was shocked at the quality and depth with which some of these pictures were taken. One of the interviews I remember most was when we were looking at a picture of boys playing marbles outside. I asked Sandhya why she took that particular picture, and she said, “They don’t have an interest in going to school, so they skip and play silly games.” I then asked her, “Well, why don’t you think they are interested?” She said, “I don’t know I mean school is free, and the government is even giving everyone free lunch, but I guess if teachers, instead of hitting students for not studying, taught in more interesting ways, like with games, they would go.” I became an interviewer without even knowing it. It wasn’t as though I was prodding them for a certain answer, but they were questions that came to me as they were speaking. After each video, I played them back on my laptop, and the kids had a blast laughing at what each other had to say. I also interviewed the teachers, Ms. Lalitha and Mr. Shankar, about their view on the problems facing Rasoolpura and ways to remedy the situation. The girls also wanted me to tape them dancing and singing, and they were actually pretty good. All the videos are in Telugu, so I’m dreading having to add captions to all of them.