My credit scoring project is at a point now where we've decided on a likely location, and we want to go to that location to get a sense of what the farmer financial situation is like (i.e., how much they spend on their crops, when they plant and harvest, what kind of loans are available to them, etc). So, to get some hard fact statistics (and I say that with all sarcasm intended, because you know by the title of this post that everything that can go wrong here will), I went out in the field to conduct a "mini-survey," or formalized questionnaire, designed to ask farmers these types of questions.
So, if someone gave you the instructions, "conduct a mini-survey," what would you do? I had to figure this out: Write survey. Revise survey. Format survey into perfect tables. Translate survey into Kannada (the language they speak in the state of Karnataka) and merge it with the English version. Print out a lot of copies of the survey. Go to Bangalore. Find and train a survey team. Find and train a translator. Decide where to go. Rent a van. Look over the surveyors shoulders every second and make sure they are filling out that survey correctly or else you are wasting an entire week and over $1,000 on meaningless data. Guard the surveys with your life and bring them back to Chennai intact and ready to be entered into neat little Excel columns.
First challenge: translation of survey. Who knew that my translator's computer would get attacked by a virus and she would be unable to send me the translation the next day? Also, who knew that this strange occurrence would happen the day before a Hindu religious holiday when there was a pooja (blessing) on her computer and she wasn't allowed to use it? I survived this only because she was extremely helpful and offered to print out the copies of the survey for me herself and give them to me when I arrived in Bangalore Monday morning. Unfortunately, she was so stressed that she messed up the translation in a pretty bad way. Lesson #1: Translate well in advance. Translate back into English. Retranslate. Make sure you have a really really good translation. THEN print out 150 copies.
Second challenge: surveyors. I should have been warned by the fact that it only took me two hours to go over the entire survey with them and that no one had any real questions. They messed it up the first day. I told them what they did wrong. I retrained, they continued to mess up. I told them how I wanted them to ask the questions, they asked them how they wanted to. They started to hate me, I threatened to fire one of them. They united against me, I united against them with my translator and tried to divide and conquer. None of these things really worked spectacularly, but Lesson #2 was: Hire your own surveyors who are at your mercy and yours only, and do not rely on a survey company that hires low quality people at the last minute.
Third challenge: accommodation. The day before I leave for Gulbarga, an overnight bus ride away, the hotel I'm staying at says my reservation is not confirmed (of course...a reservation that someone else was mistakenly relied on to make for me!). I call said person. He calls hotel. They say they are full. He tells me they are full. Hotel calls him, they say they actually have a reservation for me, but they can't confirm it unless they know what I'm doing there. An employment visa? Not sufficient. A letter from my company? Not sufficient either. A letter from the manager of the Gulbarga branch of ICICI bank, who I had never in my life met nor who had any clue who I was? Somehow, that was necessary and sufficient to book me a room in this hotel in the middle of nowhere, India. Lesson #3: Always carry every form of documentation about your origins, purpose, and identity with you while traveling. It will come in handy, and probably won't be enough. Also, Lesson #4: Don't apply logic to anything that doesn't make sense. You will fail.
Fourth challenge: sickness. I finally get on the bus to Gulbarga, an overnight sleeper bus in which I'm on a lurching top bunk, cuddled up next to my huge backpack and lying on top of my laptop and precious hard copies of my survey, when I start to feel ill. I start wondering if I can keep the nausea at bay for the next 13 hours. I start panicking. Will I do it out of the window? In front of the driver? Into my Nalgene? Luckily, we got off at a rest stop. I asked my translator what to do, he smiled and said he would buy me a fresh lime soda and a banana, and voila! my stomach was normal again. Lesson #5: Don't panic. Someone kind may take care of you. Also, India is literally like a rollercoaster, dipping you down until you feel like you're going to crash headfirst into the pavement, then miraculously lifting you up unharmed!
I finished the survey. It wasn't the most quality thing I've ever done, but I survived. I almost, but didn't, kick anyone off the island. I formed an alliance with my translator. I spent long nights with the surveys, carefully going over their inaccuracies and trying to fix them. I carried around 150 hard copies of the survey like precious gems for over a week, on and off buses and trains and autorickshaws. I fought for those surveys and I won! Please applaud now.
First challenge: translation of survey. Who knew that my translator's computer would get attacked by a virus and she would be unable to send me the translation the next day? Also, who knew that this strange occurrence would happen the day before a Hindu religious holiday when there was a pooja (blessing) on her computer and she wasn't allowed to use it? I survived this only because she was extremely helpful and offered to print out the copies of the survey for me herself and give them to me when I arrived in Bangalore Monday morning. Unfortunately, she was so stressed that she messed up the translation in a pretty bad way. Lesson #1: Translate well in advance. Translate back into English. Retranslate. Make sure you have a really really good translation. THEN print out 150 copies.
Second challenge: surveyors. I should have been warned by the fact that it only took me two hours to go over the entire survey with them and that no one had any real questions. They messed it up the first day. I told them what they did wrong. I retrained, they continued to mess up. I told them how I wanted them to ask the questions, they asked them how they wanted to. They started to hate me, I threatened to fire one of them. They united against me, I united against them with my translator and tried to divide and conquer. None of these things really worked spectacularly, but Lesson #2 was: Hire your own surveyors who are at your mercy and yours only, and do not rely on a survey company that hires low quality people at the last minute.
Third challenge: accommodation. The day before I leave for Gulbarga, an overnight bus ride away, the hotel I'm staying at says my reservation is not confirmed (of course...a reservation that someone else was mistakenly relied on to make for me!). I call said person. He calls hotel. They say they are full. He tells me they are full. Hotel calls him, they say they actually have a reservation for me, but they can't confirm it unless they know what I'm doing there. An employment visa? Not sufficient. A letter from my company? Not sufficient either. A letter from the manager of the Gulbarga branch of ICICI bank, who I had never in my life met nor who had any clue who I was? Somehow, that was necessary and sufficient to book me a room in this hotel in the middle of nowhere, India. Lesson #3: Always carry every form of documentation about your origins, purpose, and identity with you while traveling. It will come in handy, and probably won't be enough. Also, Lesson #4: Don't apply logic to anything that doesn't make sense. You will fail.
Fourth challenge: sickness. I finally get on the bus to Gulbarga, an overnight sleeper bus in which I'm on a lurching top bunk, cuddled up next to my huge backpack and lying on top of my laptop and precious hard copies of my survey, when I start to feel ill. I start wondering if I can keep the nausea at bay for the next 13 hours. I start panicking. Will I do it out of the window? In front of the driver? Into my Nalgene? Luckily, we got off at a rest stop. I asked my translator what to do, he smiled and said he would buy me a fresh lime soda and a banana, and voila! my stomach was normal again. Lesson #5: Don't panic. Someone kind may take care of you. Also, India is literally like a rollercoaster, dipping you down until you feel like you're going to crash headfirst into the pavement, then miraculously lifting you up unharmed!
I finished the survey. It wasn't the most quality thing I've ever done, but I survived. I almost, but didn't, kick anyone off the island. I formed an alliance with my translator. I spent long nights with the surveys, carefully going over their inaccuracies and trying to fix them. I carried around 150 hard copies of the survey like precious gems for over a week, on and off buses and trains and autorickshaws. I fought for those surveys and I won! Please applaud now.
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