Week 3 Pt 1: I Nuh it, I Nuh you

I agree, starting my blog with a Toy Story 5 reference is quite the choice. However, I have always found that I enjoy my work much more when I incorporate a little play and imagination into my research.

It is my third or so week researching in India, and I was finally going to the field to meet with the village women and collect data!

I would be traversing to a tiny village in the Nuh district (get the reference?), and I would be conducting interviews with women to assess how the nutrition and WASH training has been implemented into their daily lives and how it is being received.

While putting together my interview questions, I experimented with ways that I could make the assessment less like a boring multiple-choice quiz and more like an engaging activity.

My entire life, I hated written tests. As a kid who struggled with school and had to navigate the frustrating effects of ADHD and poor math skills, each assessment gave me a sense of doom and despair. I didn’t have the proper resources to learn from a place of genuine curiosity or interest. It was always about keeping up with my peers and staying late after class to clarify something that just didn’t come as easily to me as the other kids.

However, when I was training to be an EMT, I thrived during the practical tests and hands-on exams. The knowledge I was applying and performing felt real and tangible. I knew the content like the back of my hand, and after going through the motions and picking up on context clues around a medical case or an emergency, I could perform any assessment with my eyes closed.

In general, I believe that it is much easier to work with others when there is an aspect of “fun”. I was curious if this would apply to a focus group discussion with women who have been trained on nutritional and WASH practices by the Sehgal Foundation.

Maybe I could create a similar practicum for these women? Not like a test where there are right or wrong answers, but perhaps like a game? I love playing board games with my mom and with my friends; maybe I could do the same here?

After snacking on some namak para my coworkers gave me and traversing the internet for ideas, I remembered a toy I used to have as a child.

There were these plastic fruits that you could cut with a plastic knife. Almost everyone I proposed the idea to said they either played with them as kids or had them for their children today.

For kids, it is a way to learn about fruits and vegetables. For me, it was going to be the conduit of communication between me and the women who speak a language so different from my own.

When I conducted nutrition research with family friends in my hometown, there was already an established relationship between us. They felt comfortable telling me their story and how their relationship with food has changed. To the women of this village, I am a stranger. Honestly, I would be slightly jarred if a strange pale girl with goofy glasses came into my village and started interrogating me on nutritional practices.

I wanted to simulate an environment where information was shared, where curiosity was encouraged, and where there was an understanding that we are here together to learn, not to be assessed. Plenty of people have come here from big corporations to do baseline assessments for simplistic reports. I wanted to create an opportunity to understand their relationship with food rather than just their knowledge of nutrition.

And so, I spent the remainder of my day happily galavanting around the office collecting knick-knacks and snacks to simulate the same environment of a pantry in a village. Blinket came in incredibly handy for this activity, and I found a vast assortment of toy foods that I could use to represent different fruits and vegetables.

Although I was assessing someone else's relationship with food, I was learning so much about my own as well. Some of the fruits and vegetables represented in the collection of toys were food items I’ve never had. My interpretation of how to keep myself nourished was based on portions of food, rather than diversity. I would pretty consistently stick to broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots when eating vegetables and strawberries, apples, and melons when eating fruits. Travel has allowed me to diversify my palate, and through this activity I had so many new foods to add to my bucket list.

I learned of the cashew apple, the starfruit, bitter gourd…

There were so many different fruits and vegetables I never knew about!

As I formatted the questions directly from the nutrition and sanitation training book, I found there were limitations for some items on my list.

But I was in luck. Richa recommended that I seek out Ram for the dry ingredients that could be stored in a small Ziploc bag. These would be pulses, chickpeas, wheat, rice, dates, and even peanuts.

At first, Ram was very confused. After my friend helped translate, he understood a bit more, but the requests were strange to say the least.

One of the requests was a hollowed-out egg. I was adamant about doing it myself, but Ram insisted he wanted to try. It was a fun technique I always used to do for easter so we could paint the eggs without much mess, and it was a great substitute considering there was no plastic egg included in the box of toys I ordered.

To my surprise, my coworkers supported my endeavors by donating some roasted chickpeas and an empty bottle. I was sure they thought I was mad at first for bringing so many toys into the office, but over time they were quite amused at my idea and even provided their own suggestions.

I wanted to make it clear to the participants of my activity that there wasn’t a correct answer or a preferred response. This was a way to strengthen relationships and to keep traditions surrounding food alive.

Although I was very excited for this activity, I wanted to approach it with sensitivity. How would I feel if a strange person approached me with a bag of toy food? How do I appropriately go about this activity without being belittling and instead supportive?

In order to incorporate triangulation to broaden my understanding of how my qualitative methodology might be received, I shared my idea with my colleagues who have both local and international experience conducting research in a wide variety of situations.

I was advised to not speak down to the women, to sit with them at eye level while being concise with my words as well as gentle with my tone.

I had my superiors assess the project as well. After a busy week, I would finally test out this activity on that Friday. But would it work out?

To be continued…