Saiha (Mizoram) ~ Images.

Rains beginning Saiha skies are visited repeatedly by teams of myriad colours at various times of the times, with our new Nikon I tried capturing a glimpse.

A Saiha morning.........

I got this view of the Blue Mountain in the background with the Circuit House in the foreground from the Helipad before the clouds changed forms.

Clouds invited the evening a trifle earlier the other day, some lights went up at the Camp and I was lucky to be then on way from the market to our office.

Stunning sunsets i ever associate only with Agraa (Madhya Pradesh); the Saiha (Mizoram) skies during the past week have however made my list longer. This is from the terrace of the building in New Saiha East that also houses our office.

Lightning continued for well over 15 minutes on a late cloudy evening while thunder was conspicious with its absence, i took the opportunity and rushed upstairs

How i love the monsoons here.......

Conservation Education ~ Buildling on existing platforms

In course of our conservation education ~ awareness programmes with Donbosco school we have nurtured an amiable rapport with concerned teachers. One fine day one of them came saying that an exhibition was planned at Saiha and the onus of representing the school fell on his shoulders; besides Donbosco being the host had to do well. This was the SCERT annual science exhibition and he asked me to suggest possible avenues of participating in an apt fashion. We read the document together and it immediately struck me that we could work under the theme “Conservation of Natural Resources”. This also would tantamount to taking our programme with Donbosco to the next stage. It also occurred to me was what while I have been talking of generating synergies with state agencies as also working in a reactive mode; this was a god sent opportunity.

a pair of Hoolock gibbons as depicted by the team

We discussed undertaking a survey focusing on Hoolock gibbons in Saiha involving a small group of students and sharing of the process ~ findings as the model we would display in the exhibition. The survey, which would reveal people’s awareness and perception of this rare primate, would have multiple choice questions (on lines of our earlier programme) and be undertaken within Saiha town. Few phone calls and a meeting later we had 50 copies of the questionnaire and an outline of the method lay in front of us. Time at disposal being short the survey began.

keeping Hoolock gibbons as pets is a big threat, a month before the exhibition the team had come across one freshly taken as pet in Saiha.

We then met at the school to collate the findings. Students had done a neat job, from writing the numbers on each questionnaire to getting the crux of the findings, and I rediscovered the virtue of non-interference. Since the questionnaires were filled using 2 languages depending on the respondent we took note of all the responses after translating the ones in Mizo to English. In course of this we discussed the experience of the students and I realized that while they were enthused none of them had seen a Hoolock gibbon. In the next preparatory meeting I screened the film “A Hunter’s Tale” to enable them to see the Hoolock gibbon, hear it and get a glimpse of where it lived. This would make it easier for them to talk of the primate. After this we set out to discuss how we would share the findings, the charts we would display and the design of posters. At this stage we realized that we had not coined a name for our project and subsequent scratching of our heads resulted in the project title being “Pride of Maraland”.

the exhibition in progress during 25th, 26th and 27th March 2009.

A day before the event when we were allotted space to showcase our project I went to the school to give my limited inputs in last minute fine tuning. We discussed the need to clean the space as also the height at which we would put up the posters. We also got some copies of the questionnaire and the “process” ready in case people attending wanted to know more. The team was busy with the ongoing registrations of the event; schools from all over the state were participating.

a graph depicting the survey findings, only 75% of the respondents were aware to the colour of the primate being black (3); the other options (1 and 2) were red and white.

While we were not selected for the national level exhibition we had achieved what we had set to do and had achieved well. We got students involved in an action of conservation education ~ awareness by way of doing surveys and collating the findings, this was a step ahead of our regular interactions with them where in most cases they received information. We got to know how people perceived Hoolock gibbons in a district which has troops in the primate in community owned lands and which is referred to as having the best remaining rainforests in north eastern India. And most importantly we spread two critical messages to students of almost all schools in Saiha who attended the exhibition; that Hoolock gibbons need to be conserved and there are efforts ongoing , towards this, in Saiha by way of conservation education ~ awareness.

Thanking the teachers, students in the team and Donbosco school Saiha.

Also thanking Kalyan Varma and Aparajita Datta for sharing the film and Zoo Outreach Organization for sharing material on Hoolock gibbon.

This post has also found space in Zoo Print Magazine and is available at http://www.zoosprint.org/ZooPrintMagazine/2009/July/21-25.pdf

Interactions on Conservation Education ~ Awareness

We had decided to conduct interactions on conservation education ~ awareness and communications for colleagues from Meghalaya field base; however with the increasing role that we saw of the informants of our elephant monitoring programme they too joined us as participants. This one day programme, held at Daribokre (near Nokrek National Park) during May 2009, was primarily towards helping us get the measure of where we stood on issues of communication and conservation education ~ awareness and determine how we could best advance forward. Nokrek as seen from Daribokre in the evening

A day prior to the programme we had walked from Daribokre to the watch tower in Nokrek National Park. The programme thus began with each of us sharing our experience of the walk. We took our time and used the language (English ~ Garo ~ Hindi) we were comfortable in to share our experience of the previous day. Few participants talked of how they missed seeing wild animals (and their pug ~ hoof marks) despite the forest being good; some said they were appalled at the sight of plastic litter they came across, while others were sad that they saw only ordinary and not special tree species and disappointed with the absence of orchids (this also led to a brief debate on local species!). There were others who were glad that they finally were able to visit the Nokrek peak (highest peak in their Garo land) and also the origin of Simsang (major river of Garo Hills). We then had a brief interaction on why they thought wild animals and birds were absent and how different was the situation in the forests near their villages. At this juncture we brought to close the discussion by putting forth that Conservation Education ~ Awareness was interaction on nature ~ wildlife; while these interactions could be with children or elders and we could use tools like film screenings or paintings, these walks in forests and subsequent sharing was also conservation education ~ awareness. The idea was to get participants actively involved in conserving nature by raising their sensitivity and awareness on these issues.

This done we had a break which was followed by a short session on why we were all talking of conservation education and awareness when all of us played varied roles in the office. Our discussions (that had taken place earlier) on how involving people was deemed critical for conservation of wildlife and the crucial role that conservation education and awareness would play in involving different segments of the society were brought forth. This done we stretched a bit and sipped tea. It was fun having the sessions outdoors.

sharing the experience of walking in Nokrek National Park

We then undertook an activity where one of the participants sat down as if having a meal and others were to provide forks ~ spoons to him from a bunch of forks ~ spoons lying on a table placed a little further from the dining person. A bunch of these forks ~ spoons lay on this table. Some of us went and placed a spoon or a fork on the table, some placed both, some slowly and some in a hurried fashion; some asked if the person wanted the spoon and or fork, some asked if he was still having food and how it tasted, one participant took the entire bunch of spoons ~ forks and put it in front of the person dining while one threw a spoon at the diner after asking if he needed. I stopped the action and asked the participants for reactions. One participant said that throwing of spoon was disrespectful while other mentioned it as being an informal and friendly act. One pointed out that we handed over spoons ~ forks without knowing if the person dining was in need and even gave them despite seeing other spoons ~ forks on his table. The dining person said he was fed up of the spoons ~ forks and one participant asked why we never asked why the dining person never stood up to take the spoon ~ fork he needed. We took time to discuss these and other actions ~ reactions stopping at one point to draw parallels between “communications” and the activity. The design was to facilitate a thought process on “communications” rather than push down a definition.

Thought processes warrant a break and so did I then. After the break we took a departure from the stretching exercises and instead decided to discuss in a standing position for the coming minutes. While we had been positioned in a circle since morning we decided we would stand such that none of our partners (colleagues on either side) would be same as those before the break. The next activity was film screening; I told the participants we would see a beautiful 10 minute film “A Hunter’s Tale” made and shared by Kalyan Verma and Aparajita Datta. The film was in both English and Hindi; to overcome the language barrier and help viewers soak the film better we had 2 screenings ~ 1 in each language. For this we used laptop computers instead of projectors (since the latter would have warranted using a generator and its sound would have been greater than that in the film). This steered us to lunch time and we munched on jackfruit curry, dry fish and rice.

film screeing in the bamboo hut on laptop computers

Post lunch the participants got into 3 sub-groups (inside the bamboo hut) to discuss our experiences of the film; including thoughts that occurred while we saw it. These sub-groups had 30 minutes to discuss and put the main points on chart paper before sharing them with the rest of the participants. By this time luckily the rains stopped, tea got ready and we moved out of the bamboo hut to share our experiences of the film. The focus of group-1 was on species they saw in the film stating that while the film depicted Arunachal Pradesh most of the species were also present in Garo Hills. Group-2’s experience was that the film talked of the need to stop hunting and that hunters could also be transformed to conservationists. They added that while they got to know of hornbills and camera traps they missed detailed information on some issues. Group-3 talked of wanting to see conservation action in Garo Hills and felt the need to cooperate with people for the purpose. They got the message that not only wildlife but flowering plants also need to be preserved. This sharing by the groups also led to interactions on hunting prevailing in Garo Hills and the need to curb it. One of the participants expressed desire to take pictures of Garo Hills’ wildlife and showcase them while other to screen such films in his village. The message emanating was that hunting needs to stop and forests protected if wildlife in Garo Hills is to be conserved.

sharing views on the film

We had consumed more time and energy on the film then I had envisaged and I put to rest my earlier plan of facilitating a debate on one of the issues germinating from the film screening. We took a break, some of us had tea while some brought out bed sheets to keep the cold at bay. We then had participants engaged in the activity of listening. We all got silent for 10 minutes and listed what we heard ~ any sound. When we sat to collate the list of sounds I saw the one of the participants had listed 3 and another 33 sounds; others lay between these 2 figures. These ranged from sounds of wind, rain, leaves, stream to coughing by colleagues and cleaning of utensils in the kitchen. I enlisted these various sounds on white-board and 2 participants then segregated the list into sounds of nature and human made sounds. We discovered that majority of the sounds were those of nature. I stated that nature was all around us and we need not go to a National Park to see and feel it; but we need to give it time and make efforts to first understand and then conserve it. Streams, birds, trees all occurred in and around our villages and we need to conserve them.

closure

This done we moved on to the closing (feedback) session. The reactions ranged from feeling cold and that the programme had a feel of being incomplete to the programme being interesting, different and invigorating. Later in the evening we decided to take this activity ahead by planning the dates for the next round of interactions.

Thanking all participants and Kamal for help with text and pictures.

Also thanking Kalyan Varma and Aparajita Datta for the film.

Communications on Samrakshan

We at Samrakshan have undertaken an Organizational Development process to help us function optimally. First round of interactions were held during January 09 and the second during April 09 at New Delhi with facilitation by personnel from Saharth. In course of this second round we had decided to share our experiences ~ learnings with colleagues who had not been a party to these interactions. It was this sharing that we were organizing at Daribokre (a village in Garo Hills that touches the Nokrek National Park).

A plan for the sharing had been prepared during second round when we had also held trial runs to fathom how we would organize what I understand would be the third round. While it was clear that the Meghalaya and Mizoram field bases were to organize this third round jointly; during deliberations that ensued ~ over phone and email ~ we fine tuned the plan, freezed the location (it had to be away from the office) and decided that besides all colleagues informants of our “elephant monitoring programme” from Meghalaya field base too would be a part of the exercise. They have been with us for a few years and involving them in the exercise would help raise their awareness of Samrakshan’s existence, its actions as also augment their ownership of the actions.

We reached the place late afternoon through Tura (West Garo Hills) and I drove the bike after what felt like ages. Some of us had been to the villages enroute Chandigre and Sasatgre but not Daribokgre. The place was beautiful ~ peaceful and besides the majestic Nokrek ridge that looked down on the village I attributed it to the absence of mobile network and electricity. We were to stay in a bamboo hut at the edge of a hill. After tea and bath we got on to discussing threadbare the actions of the coming days. We began with the logistics and moved on to programme issues. Here we decided to revisit and revise the plan. An activity for which we had earlier budgeted more than an hour “Value auction” we decided to exclude and settled down with Garo as the principal language for the sharing. We also added a session on why we all were here and this we organized during the evening. Our apprehensions were shot down by the questions and comments that flowed in our direction. This came to closure with discussions on menu and session timings.
a session in progress
Later during the evening I read Kenneth Anderson for the first time ~ Jungles Long Ago. The short stories created forests with tigers and their pugmarks in front of my eyes, also present were the paths being used by buffalo driven carts and villages with prominent caste biases. They took me back to the days when I read Chandamama and Amar Chitra Katha and I turned pages with childlike inquisitiveness. The cold night that followed was broken by songs of the Hoolock gibbons at about 5.30 am. We heard them intermittently from 2 directions till it was almost 10.00 am.

We began at 8.20 am, ten minutes before we had decided to begin, with introductions after a brief discussion on whether we (facilitators) should participate in the activities. The introductions were done using paper and pen and while initially I thought they spoke a bit too slowly I realized that this was perhaps the first time all of us were together. “Stated Values” came next. This was fun as we even discussed how the paper was to be folded and all but one participant wrote their values. When this was realized there ensued a deliberation on whether and how much time was to be given to him to work further on his unfinished task. Language was the crux and only one of us had the familiarity to the extent that it could be put to use to share learning with other participants.

Next came the group activity of noting values (my, ours and theirs). 11 participants meant one group had 5 and the other 6 members; both the framing of groups and subsequent actions went fine. This of course was fuelled by presence of gui (arecanut). One question I found particularly interesting “why being short tempered found place in the list of values?” the reason stated was that one wanted to be short tempered with people at times to get work done. At times people simply did not act in a manner that would enable to get the work done in an apt fashion.
facilitators deliberating between sessions
Charts were then put up stating the values and discussed. As this progressed I noticed that the silent and vocal segments within the participants were shaping up. While language was a hindrance to my understanding the proceedings I was thoroughly enjoying their simplicity. As a team we had also begun working in a reactive mode, we had decided to conduct sessions at the school tea onwards but seeing things go fine continued at our bamboo hut. What also struck at this point was that all the facilitators as also the participants were males; the gender bias!

Post lunch session despite being preceded by tea and stretching exercises was quiet compared to the morning session. I also felt that a couple of participants were getting disconnected and realized that facilitation involves a lot of actions to be undertaken in a reactive mode. During the process however we were clear of two issues that this was a sharing workshop and not training where participants would be taught and while we wanted to be on time we in no case wanted to curb the enthusiasm that the participants’ body language expressed. We also decided to do away with computers ~ associated peripherals and in the process discovered the numerous merits of doing so.

During the evening we sat down to fine tune the programme for the coming days, the avenues for improvement over today’s actions and more. Later, after a brief walk, we sat to work on how we would approach the next day, specially the session on values. I read the notes ~ material on vision and mission that I carried with me and was intrigued when I felt some pages to be familiar and some otherwise.
working in sub-groups
The next day began with interaction on values. We asked the participants to fill in another round of their values, not on the A4 page that we used last noon but on a fresh page from the writing pad. This went on for 10 minutes. Some of them had added a value while some had changed their set of values. We had a short sharing session and discussed how we by way of thinking and interacting had formed our set of values ~ final values. A set of values, the organizational values, was then shared with them taking help of examples. These had been arrived at during the first round. We then tried to establish a connection between personal values and organizational values; and more importantly between values that we had been discussing since yesterday and our conservation actions.

Then we moved to the “Proud and Sorry” activity. This basically is listing what makes you happy and what makes you sad about the organization. This brought forth a range of interesting issues coming out from lack of staff at Samrakshan office to daily providing of only samosa for snacks at the office as sorries and opportunities to travel and attend trainings as the prouds. The collation was an interesting process with the participants exhibiting high level of involvement with the exercise.

The next step was the “Dream Exercise” or determining what the participants saw Samrakshan doing 5 years from now. 3 groups were formed and given time to come up with their versions of their dream. The notion was to bring together dreams and not to deliberate on them (at this juncture). By this time the participants had developed connect with the pace, language and the body language of the facilitators. This session nurtured enthusiasm in the participants and eliminated to a large extent the need for our intervention. Dreams ranged from setting up a big rescue centre (for wild animals) to creating an environment such that animals not visible today in the landscape are easily visible.

As this exercise was on we realized that the prouds – sorries – dreams all pertained only to Meghalaya field office and debated if it made sense to then also bring in the Meghalaya field office vision and mission as opposed to the organization vision and mission. We finally decided against doing so. The dreams were then collated and the cheerful banter that accompanied this collation had us invigorated for the next session on Samrakshan’s vision and mission. This had us bring all the elements ~ values, dreams, sorries, prouds arrived from yesterday as also the values arrived at during the first round that had colleagues from all the units that constitute Samrakshan. This was an interesting experience and the flow was smooth; particularly of breaking the vision and mission statements into parts and translating them.

We then, as decided midway during the noon session, put forth a proposal to the participants to constitute a committee from themselves and this was accepted with great rigour. The committee was to work the next day towards drafting the vision and mission of the Meghalaya field base. This done, the day ended on a very positive note and we did not have a separate closure (check out).

The following day despite communication by the committee that they would be working on the statements there did exist confusion in the morning session. After tea and breakfast when we thought it made sense to have a check in session considering that there was no sharing of the feelings the previous evening as also to draw a clear programme of action for the day. When this was shared with the participants they said we should have the said session immediately and we began, it was 7.30 am. One of the participants coordinated the check in (feelings); these ranged from being confused on connection of these interactions to our day to day actions to feeling happy about being aware of Samrakshan’s vision. The first half of the day i.e. up to lunch the committee was to frame the vision and mission statements for Meghalaya field office.
stretching
During this time we got ready at a leisurely pace, looked after our clothes and more importantly discussed the noon session. We decided to discuss the statements threadbare and undertake action with the group to bring out the components of the 5 year plan i.e. broad actions that we will undertake in the coming period.

The statements were presented by the respective groups, one working on vision and other mission. These were very nicely done statements. While the discussion on these was interesting we did sense losing some of the content in translating them from Garo to English. After discussions second drafts of these were formulated. These we read out and all of us agreed to them. At this juncture we realized the need for stretching ourselves and while I thought we were getting monotonous in this context I also realized that this was an all male group not acquainted to sitting for long sessions but acquainted to a physically stressing lifestyle. I joined in the stretching ~ shouting and enjoyed.

The next session was determining the primary action components for the coming 5 years. This we divided into 2 parts. The first part had the participants listing the hindrances to achieving the mission that they had set out and the second part were the broad actions that had to be undertaken to overcome those hindrances. In course of this exercise we had interesting questions and discussions that brought to fore the need to conserve the wildlife and also the major role that conservation education and awareness would have in achieving our mission. The crux was wildlife conservation without involving various segments of society would be ineffective and to get them involved it was pertinent to augment their awareness and sensitivity on wildlife conservation.

The entire sharing experience thus ended on an energizing note.

Thanking all colleagues (participants and facilitators) for a wonderful experience and Kamal for pictures ~ camera.