Day 3 (Jan. 31) – Storytelling

For the past three years, Uday and I, along with a handful of other engineers at the University of Iowa, have been developing a solar cooker with thermal storage. Our thinking: by coming up with the best solar cooker possible, we could provide a sustainable cooking alternative to save the trees. We have been motivated based on our hypothesis that harvesting wood for cooking is the cause of deforestation in Karech.

After yesterday’s meetings with FES, I’m not sure our hypothesis is completely correct. Cutting trees for cooking and heating may only be part of a much more complex and systemic story. If this is the case, then nothing is more important than getting a better handle on the whole story. It does no one any good to cling steadfast to a scheduled research plan if the very core of the study (our hypothesis) is a matter of reproof. For if we charge ahead right now, I fear whatever proposed solution we end up with (solar cooker or otherwise) will likely be of no match to solve the actual problem we set out to address in the first place.

For this reason, the research plan Uday and I developed this fall is currently on hold (and could very well change based on what we find out next). What is next? My suggestion for the day was to do some visual resource mapping. Pictures can capture stories sometimes far better than words themselves can tell. Right now, we could really benefit from the story of the trees…just how much wood is being collected, and from where and for what purposes?

And so our day began. We left base camp in Udaipur and headed out to the forests in Karech. It’s about a two and a half hour bus ride from the city to the village. Then, another hour or so walk to one of the protected forests in the village.

Over the farmland and to the woods... 

As we were making our way to the forest, I became very quiet and deeply lost in thought. Uday came alongside me and confessed, “I’m so confused, overwhelmed my all of this information! I don’t know what to think right now.”

“Allison,” he said. “Confusion is the precursor to clarity.” Indeed.

The more I learn—especially as I challenge myself to understand the social, cultural, and economic underpinnings of this story—the more I realize I have so much more to learn! But by broadening my perspective, things start to make more sense. Like the name of this blog. Wide lens. Clear focus. I was again confident, and still confused.

Woman collecting water at a well. 

She used a cheese cloth to filter the water.

 

Eventually we made our way to helicopter peak, the best vantage point to see the contrast between protected and unprotected forest lands. I was encouraged because the difference between the two areas was far more apparent than it was three years ago. The restoration efforts led by FES seemed to be working. The protected lands looked great, full of tress that were luscious and green! (As a side note, protected forests are regions governed by strictly enforced rules that regulate wood collection. While FES helps inform forestry management policies, the rules themselves are established, formalized, and policed by all the tribes within and surrounding the village.)

The Great Wall of Karech

A stone wall separates the unprotected forest (left) 

from the protected forest (right).

While resting for a bit, an interesting oral history began to unfold. One of the village leaders shared rich history about the forest. He said there was a severe, seven-year drought in the 1980’s that completely devastated their agriculture. In need of food, community members started cutting down massive amounts of trees. They burned with wood in kilns to form coal, and then sold it to Muslim contractors about 7 kilometers away. The money they made from this process was used to buy food from merchants who came by way of camels.

So what does this story mean for us? We do indeed need to revise our hypothesis. I think we have much to learn from the history books, especially reports on the rainfall and drought in Karech from 1950 to today.  

After the community leader concluded his story, we resumed our trek through the forest just in time for our meeting to construct a resource map. At least 25 women, children, and men showed up for the meeting. We congregated in the middle of a dirt road at the base of one of the wooded hills. It was one of the most scenic meeting locations I’d ever experienced. But more beautiful than the natural world around us was the resource map that began to take form across the width of the road.

 

Resource map being drawn out by community members

using vibrantly colored powders.

 

Women used vibrant powders to paint a picture of their community, including their homes, the protected forest lands, roads, water wells, farmlands, the wildlife sanctuary, managed forest lands, revenue wastelands, and the village boundary. It was fun to watch them draw the map, especially when others joined into to help mix vibrant powders to form additional colors.

 

Interpreting the map to understand resource flows.

 

Once completed, one women used the map and a pointing stick to show the flow of resources within, into, and out of the village. It was particularly interesting to learn where each of the three community groups (habitats) in Karech gathered their wood.

As beautiful as this all played out, I must say that it seemed a bit too routine, like they had drawn up this map for various groups many times before. I am also somewhat weary about the content of the message translated because one man tended to instruct how the women drew up the lines. Nevertheless, I gained a lot of valuable information from the process and learned that fieldwork is about keenly observing EVERYTHING.

I am so thankful and inspired by stories people shared with me today. Cheers to a great day, a great year! And as for my New Year’s resolution? In 2015, my resolution is to read and listen to more stories, share and cherish stories, be in many others’ stories, but above all, be a part of great things so that when it comes time to write my own story, I have a meaningful tale to tell.