Youth Voices: In the Field - Greetings and Lessons from Anantapur

To kick off July, I spent the past week conducting interviews in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh. After five weeks of research, packing, and questionnaire designing, my preparation culminated into four days of focus group discussions and keynote interviews. If there is one lesson that I learned this week it is that research is unpredictable. Oftentimes, interviews were scheduled hours in advance, and we had to patiently wait all afternoon to find customers to speak with. Even if I had generated a thousand questions, there were still moments that caught me off guard. From getting to speak with the president of AFEC to blessing a car outside of the FPO offices, I enjoyed stepping outside of my comfort zone and taking each day one at a time. With that, I decided to organize this blog chronologically. From Tuesday until Friday, each hour was action packed and filled with new surprises. I tried to document a holistic reflection of my trip below. Hope to see you again, Anantapur!

Tuesday July 2nd, 2024

Travel day! After arriving to work at 8 am, I made a few final adjustments, printed out documents, and loaded gifts into the car before heading out onto the highway. I am always in awe at the vastness of India. We could spend two hours driving and still be in Hyderabad city. This trip, however, took a grand total of eight hours from Hyderabad into the city center of Anantapur. Comparatively, eight hours of driving in the United States could get me from Durham, NC to New York City, NY. I enjoyed peacefully looking out the window at the dry landscape stretching for miles on each side of the car. Occasionally, large hills jutted out of the flat planes, contrasting the green fauna with red, dry stone. Anantapur is known for being one of the driest districts, and we quickly learned that it hadn't rained in a few days (despite being monsoon season). If rain did not arrive soon, many of the farmers might have to resow their groundnut seeds and other crops...[CONTINUE READING]