A Mile in Another’s Shoes

Quicksand’s approach is about human-centered research and design and Project Sammaan encapsulates this.

An ancillary goal in this project is to engage and inform a larger community about sanitation in India specifically and life in the slums here generally.

For some of us at Quicksand, Sammaan represented the first opportunity to visit a slum community. We decided to share that experience by embedding Ryan and I (both Americans) in one of the slums we’re working with for 24-hours. The objective being to share what living without adequate sanitation would be like, if only for a short time.

We have some pretty incredible partners working with these communities so there were few, if any, barriers to facilitate this. We asked our colleagues at CFAR to find a community that was a fair representation of the slums in this state. They did not disappoint.

The housing was far better than I expected, though challenges still abounded. Ryan documented my participation in all sorts of activities: chopping down a tree, fetching water from the community well, bathing in plain view of the neighbors, helping lay a concrete floor, checking out the cobra living next to where we were staying, preparing ingredients for a curry, and, the coup de grace, defecating with locals in the field-cum-toilet.

On that last point, the community lacked toilet facilities. And I don’t just mean in the houses; there were no toilets at all. There was a field for women, and another for men.

These fields also doubled as the garbage dump and disposal grounds for dead animals. The hazards faced simply to answer nature’s call reinforced the importance of the project’s end goal of providing safe and hygienic facilities.

The locals got a huge kick out of having us in their community, almost as much as we enjoyed being there. Their English and our Hindi is extremely limited. As such, the verbal communication was virtually nil, yet we were able to bond with them. We were even invited to participate in a cricket match with some of the local kids.

There were some awkward moments when we just sat and stared at each other, both sides trying their best to impart something to the other. Our host family’s three children helped matters immensely in this. They’re so cute and adventurous. They weren’t fazed in the least by our presence, playing with us and laughing every chance they could.

While the verbal communication was lacking, I really felt accepted by the community. It’s incredible how hospitable and welcoming everyone was to us. Our host family literally gave us their house for the night and prepared three of the most delicious meals I’ve had in India.

One thing to note, I did make the mistake of drinking a lot of water from the shared well. This led to a visit to the hospital and a battery of antibiotics. All in all, though, a hospital visit and upset stomach is a small price to pay for such an incredible experience.

We’re hoping to re-visit this community and our host family as the project progresses. I certainly hope so. It will be incredible to see how their lives change because of our work and how our relationship evolves along the way.

We filmed the experience and made a short documentary video out of it, affectionately titled ‘3 Pounds of Rice’, a reference to the amount of food we feasted on thanks to our hosts’ generosity.

3 Pounds of Rice from Quicksand on Vimeo.

This documentation is part of the larger strategy of building a library of rich media to give the project a human perspective on its’ context for not only our stakeholders but the general public as well.

We will continue sharing more of our experiences as the project progresses.