After the Fieldtrip

Ahmedabad – Presidency Group Hotel -Sunday 6 November

We have been absent for a couple of days from the blog. Field trip went better than expected, JD is totally adapted to the group rhythm and up to date with what the group has done before his arrival. We left Friday 28 at night to Rajula (State of Gujarat) in a sleeping bus. Sleeping bus is another of the new experiences we are having in India. Bus is divided in compartments for one or two people and height is not enough to go sitting; no one could accomplish sleeping during the whole trip. We arrived in the morning and went to sleep for a couple of hours before going to the farmers in the field.

Purpose of the trip was doing some users tests with the windmill and get to know deeply the context of the farmers. As we told in the last posts this is one of the most important stages when work is done in other cultures and specially in the BOP context. We don’t only try to understand how they live, our main goal is be able to get to know their dreams. We have to not only leave aside our personal assumptions, we try not to be biased by the papers read about this context, and try not to think in the final product. Again, we were the attraction of the village; JD says Nick looks like a Hollywood actor, and Nick says JD is the first Colombian they have seen in their life.

Highlights of the the trip were the sleepover JD and Emma had in one of the farmers house and a night organized specially for us by Bhanabhai of singing and playing instruments.

At our return Casper, Nick and Emma got ill. We are all fortunately out of danger, although Emma took a little bit longer to bet totally OK. We are now working in the report and preparing for the arrival of the team coach, Annemiek van Boeijen. After the delivery of the report we are planning to travel and get to know a little bit more of India, we will keep you posted.