February 1, 2023

We Tried

This week, team Hasiru Dala started our first round of interviews in Dry Waste Collection Centers around the city. Our objective was to discover how the concept of placemaking could be applied to these centers and surrounding communities. My team and I developed a list of questions to ask the workers and operators of the centers about their lives, how they interact with their work space and living spaces, and how their experiences can be improved. By the end of the list, we had covered many aspects of their lives, including their livelihoods, access to sanitation, health issues, and much more.

When we arrived at our first center, we were all a bit nervous because we didn’t know what to expect. But, we strolled in with our translator, Prem, with as much confidence as we could muster. The grounds of the center were mostly underneath an overpass which curved around the main building. Cows, stray dogs, and trash were scattered all around the grounds, in between large compacting trucks, smaller trash collection vehicles, and the supports of the road above us. We met up with a representative from our organization, Randish, and the operator of the center, Krishna. The pair quickly led us into the main office of the center, which meant carefully treading over a thick layer of cardboard and other dry waste that was completely covering the floor of the building. With each step, dozens of flies would take flight and swarm around the group. Three women sitting on the floor opposite of the office were unbothered by our disruptions and barely looked up from their work to smile at us and then return to segregating the piles of waste. The office consisted of a single room cluttered with various items, fire extinguishers, and a small water tank that workers used for drinking water. Three broken chairs were placed opposite to the cluttered desk that Krishna sat behind.

Through a long and winding conversation, we heard about Krishna’s life, the app that he made to educate people about segregating waste, and the business that Krishna runs separately from the center. We learned all that he does as operator for the center, like how he uses his own money to buy eggs for the workers twice a week and even segregates waste with the workers when needed. We also learned that our approach to our interviews may not have been as polished as we had originally thought. Every question we asked set Prem, Randish, and Krishna shouting over each other as Prem tried to ask our question, Randish tried to reword our question, and Krishna tried to answer any question. After talking with one of the workers segregating waste outside of the office, we realized just how terribly we had approached this whole interview idea. One of the main issues was actually that the way we would word a question would not necessarily come across in translation. For example, we wanted to ask people what their typical workday looked like in order to understand any pain points in their schedule or working area. But it turns out that a “typical workday” is completely foreign to everyone we talked to, and after much trial and error, we discovered that the combination of questions like, “How do you get to work and how long does it take?”, “What are all the things you do in the center?”, and “How many breaks do you get and when do you eat lunch?” did the job.

Because these two interviews were quite time consuming, Krishna decided that they could not spare any extra time for interviewing more people, and we left the center with our heads low and our spirits even lower. The whole drive back, I thought about how we had gone so wrong and how we barely had any data to show for an entire afternoon of work. How were we supposed to identify problems within the centers to address in our projects, or determine how to use placemaking within the centers? These were big questions that I couldn’t figure out in one afternoon. Once my team and I got back to the hostel and reconvened, my teammates burst with laughter about our exasperation. Kayt shouted, “Ya know, at least we tried!” And in that moment, I could feel a weight lift off my chest. We really had tried, and if we hadn’t tried to go out in the field and ask these questions, we would have never progressed. We had tried, and that’s what was important. After a solid amount of laughing and ranting, we got down to business and revisited our questions to iterate on our process again. Now, I can look back on this day as a combination of failures that adds together to be a success. At least we tried.