Ad Hoc Interviewing

This is a write up of the things I learnt from the spontaneous interview I had with Bandula Sir yesterday.

These are some notes I was able to take down from the informal, unrecorded, spontaneous interview with HR manager Bandula Sir. He told me, contrary to what Gihan Sir had told me earlier, that there are 1640 employees, of whom 350 are Muslim, 127 Tamil and the rest are Sinhalese. This is because the Ampara District is a predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese District, with just a few Tamil and Muslim settlements closer to the coast. Some of the production lines are more mixed than others, as they try to arrange production lines around location, so that everyone on the same line can come on the same bus. I had been starting to get a little worried about holding participatory mapping sessions, as employees come from such a large catchment that I could have been dealing with just several employees, but so far spread out that I wouldn’t have been able to get much meaningful data. As it is, I should just be able to hold participatory mapping sessions with members of just one line, in the knowledge that they will all be from the same vicinity.

I asked again about relations between Tamil and Sinhalese employees, and just like everyone else I asked, I was told there are no problems between employees caused by ethnicity. I’ll touch more on this point in a later post, because it’s forced me to do a lot of thinking recently.

Ampara itself is about 95% Sinhalese, with only 3% Muslim and 2% Tamil. During the civil war, the town itself had very few problems – it tended to be coastal areas that were more affected, but only by ‘small, small’ incidents – conditions were much worse in the North. The East was used mainly as a base for the LTTE, where they could store supplies and from where they could attack Colombo. Some of the workers are from those areas, but they didn’t have any problems apparently. Although, this said, apparently on some days Tamil workers couldn’t come to work, but Sinhala and Muslim workers could. There were many checkpoints that buses would have to drive through, and Tamils were wary at first of working in Ampara, until they were guaranteed security when travelling. Mrs G has told me previously that in fact, many employees were affected by the war, losing husbands, brothers, fathers. Many mixed messages, so it’s difficult to extract reliable information, and Baba G tells me this is the sort of thing that I’ll never read about online or in a newspaper – the only record of these events is that held in people’s memories and reproduced verbally.

The LTTE is still present, but everything is peaceful. Nobody knows who the LTTE are now – they are living life just the same as everyone else, working in offices or wherever. I decided to ask if any of the employees had any relations to the LTTE, and he threw up his hands as if to say ‘how on Earth would I know?’ If people are in any way related to the LTTE, he told me, they will not say. If they say, they will immediately be taken by the police or the army. But none of our girls are.

Despite telling me that Ampara had not had many problems during the civil war, Bandula Sir mentioned a couple of events. One was a small motorbike bomb, and the other was a large bomb at the bus stand. He told me nobody died, just small injuries, and limbs lost. He did keep repeating the word small, even when telling me that people had lost legs. ‘You know, small, small things’. Mrs G had previously told me that 3 employees lost their lives in a bombing in Ampara. He also told me about a bus that blown up after it had left the bus stand, as it was driving past an army camp outside Ampara. Apparently nobody knows whether it was the government or the LTTE who were responsible for that one, and Bandula Sir said that in this one, 9 or 10 workers lost both legs, but again, nobody died.

I probed further about problems between Tamil and Sinhalese people, and again, he was telling me no problems. There were some tensions further south in the fishing industry, because Sinhalese people were allowed to fish in Tamil waters, but Tamil people weren’t allowed to fish in Sinhalese waters. This leads onto the issue that Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim areas are very separate to one another. Only now are Sinhalese people starting to move into Tamil areas, in order to buy land and build houses. Whilst there are small amounts of movements between the three religions, with some Muslims and Tamils filtering into Sinhalese areas, most areas are still predominantly if not exclusively Sinhalese, Tamil or Muslim, with Sinhalese making up the vast majority. These areas may be close to  one another, a matter of a couple of hundred metres even, but they are separate nevertheless.

I asked Bandula Sir how the Tamil employees could speak Sinhalese if everything was kept to separate like this, and he shrugged and just said that it was through experience in the factory: practical experience gives Tamils knowledge of Sinhalese. I also asked why the three ethnicities remain so separate. He said that Tamils just live in certain places only, and Muslims are the same. Sinhalese are everywhere. And it’s been like this for maybe, three or four hundred years. It took me a little while to latch on to what he was saying, but then it clicked that of course, these Tamil and Muslim settlements would have sprung up when the British imported workers from the Empire to the then almost exclusively Sinhalese country, and it just hasn’t changed since. They would have been like pockets of another culture embedded in a Sinhalese landscape, and by what Bandula Sir was saying, it doesn’t sound like it’s changed terribly.

I went on to ask why even Ampara still has such a concentrated population of Sinhalese – I would have thought that naturally through rural-urban migration the numbers of Tamils and Muslims would have increased. The answer I got was a real surprise. When the British built the Inginiyagala Dam, 50 or 60 years ago, they brought workers into the area. They gave construction jobs to Sinhalese, driving jobs to Muslims, and office jobs to Tamils. From what I gather, the Sinhalese and local government were less than impressed with this distribution of jobs, and since then, ‘new people’ are not allowed to settle in the town unless they are Sinhalese. The only Tamil and Muslim people in the town are ‘old people’, who were there before these regulations were introduced. There are only two Muslim shops in the town – all the rest are Sinhalese. There are ten Buddhist temples, three churches, but only one Hindu temple and one mosque. I can’t understand why these rules haven’t changed, but it would be interesting to find out.

I asked again about problems that the workers faced, and about any underlying tensions between Tamils and Sinhalese. Bandula Sir simply said that relations are all okay now. 5 years ago, perhaps, there were some problems, but everything is okay now. This confused me again, because despite his insistence that none of the workers had any problems with each other, he managed to hint that maybe there had been problems after all. Perhaps he just meant generally in the area though.

To summarise, there has been no previous conflict between workers, but the ethnic groups in the District are very separate. There are laws preventing non-Sinhalese from settling or setting up businesses in Ampara, and only now are the ethnicities starting to blur the borders a little, as limited migration has commenced in their respective areas. Whether there is or was conflict between the workers is hard to tell for certain, but it’s looking like there hasn’t ever been. What is conflicting is the information I’m receiving. Much work to be done!

Day 9 Observations

One of the managers of the factory, Lahiru Sir, gave me a detailed tour of the factory today, and showed me the nearby washing plant. Although Baba G has also given me a tour of the factory, I decided it would be good to get a tour from Lahiru Sir too, so I could ask him questions as we walked around in a walking tour style interview. Lahiru Sir was very keen to show his knowledge of the factory though, having only been employed for a week or so, so much of the tour was taken up by him explaining operational functions of the various parts of the factory.

I managed to ask a few questions as we were going around. He says about 95% of the workforce are women, and that men are generally employed to do the jobs involving heavy machinery, which are higher risk. Women employees are mostly young, although a few are older. A lot of the women are wearing fine gold jewellery, and most have long hair, tied back in braids or pony tails. In the washing plant, as it’s much more heavy duty machinery, the vast majority of the 200-strong workforce are men. Some of the employees come from Colombo, but these tend to be those in management, who will live in Ampara for work but commute back to Colombo once or twice a month to see their families. I later asked Bandula Sir why their families didn’t move to Ampara too, and he explained the education system was better in Colombo, so it was better for his family to be there. The factory has 25 production lines, with roughly 45 employees to each production line, including 35 machine operators, 3 helpers, 2 checkers, and then a leader, time checkers and a supervisor.

All three religions are employed in the factory: Tamil, Muslim and Sinhala. At one point Lahiru Sir called over a Muslim girl from one of the production lines. She must have wondered what on earth was going on as she stood next to us whilst Lahiru Sir spoke to me about the communications between the workers. He told me they can’t speak English very well, and that I could ask simple questions to them but they might not understand. He said some words to her too in Sinhalese, although I’m not sure what, and then let her go back to her machine. All I could do really was smile reassuringly at her, and she did smile back, but I mentally kicked myself afterwards for not even attempting to introduce myself to her in Sinhalese. I know how to say ‘My name is Lucy’ now, thanks to Baba G – I’ll make sure to put it to practice tomorrow in the packing line! Despite this girl’s apparent lack of understanding of English, Lahiru Sir said the girls could speak English well enough to understand factory commands, especially seeing as there are minimum qualification entry levels required for employment in the factory. I noticed that many of the women would take umbrellas with them if they ventured outside, to keep the sun off them.

Once the tour was finished, Lahiru Sir introduced me to Gihan Sir, a manager in the HR department. He provided me, verbally, with a few statistics regarding employees. There are 1572 employed in the factory, of which 321 are male (although later I was given different figures). They recruit people aged between 17 and 35, although most of them are at the younger end of the age scale because many join straight after they leave school. They will allow new recruits who are older than 35 if they have certain skills, but will not recruit unskilled workers above this age. Gihan Sir told me that of the workers, 350 are Muslim and 300 are Tamil (although again, I was told different figures later). The factory is structured so that there are 23 managers and deputy-heads, 8 assistant managers, 24 supervisors, 20 leaders and 200 sub-leaders. Working hours are 7am until 5:30pm 6 days a week, with regular tea breaks and a lunch break. Work doesn’t actually start at 7am though – I’m to experience the morning routine tomorrow… A few hundred employees live in Ampara, and the rest are collected on company owned buses, of which there are 15 in total.

I glanced through some employee files too, and asked Gihan Sir if he had a map of the bus routes, which he said he did:

Lucy: “Do you have a map of the bus routes? Where the buses go?”

Gihan Sir: “You want math?”

L: “No, map.”

G: “Math, yes?”

L: “No, map.”

G: [Head waggle and smile]

L: “…A map…? Bus routes…?”

G: “Oh! M. A. P. Map! Yes, yes, we have.”

He asked one of the women who work in the HR department something, and we waited for about 15 minutes, although I’m not entirely sure what for, and then he changed his answer and said they didn’t have a map. Aiyooo, language problems!

I noted, whilst walking up and down the production lines, watching the workers watching me, that they would only smile at me if I smiled at them, but when I did smile at them I got huge smiles in return. A reminder that smiles can go such a long way, and the phrase ‘Smile, and the world smiles back’ is often very true.

I recognised one man from yesterday: a checker at the end of one of the lines. I only just glimpsed him out of the corner of my eye, but then made sure to pause and smile and nod at him. He looked genuinely pleased when I recognised and acknowledged him, which made me think how important it is, in a factory so large, to be noticed and remembered. I think that because of the way the production lines are arranged, with a team set-up, employees are less likely to feel like faceless production units, but I think it’s still important that I try to remember and acknowledge as many workers as I can.

The production lines are set up in a long line, with pairs of workers in the long chain. Each worker has a specific role, be it ironing pockets flat, or sewing belt loops on, to make the process as efficient as possible. It also means that there won’t be much if any rotation of position, so communication is limited to the four people closest to you during operative hours, and even then communication must be a little difficult as their heads are often bowed over their machines in concentration. This said, I wandered back through at around 10:30 and workers from four of the production lines had vanished, lights were off, and machines deserted. I asked where they all were, and it was one of their tea-breaks. Tea breaks really do seem frequent.

I was shattered today; couldn’t get to sleep last night, and woke up itching because mosquitoes have decided to attack my feet. I quite literally have two bites per toe. I thought I’d be asleep by 9pm tonight, and I lay down trying to sleep for a good hour, feeling very tired, but my mind was buzzing still. This is one aspect of social research that I hadn’t really considered or expected; the research very quickly takes over so that you’re always thinking about it, making it very hard to actually shut down. It’s now midnight and I’m really not looking forward to a 6am start tomorrow.

I had an ad-hoc interview with Bandula Sir, another HR manager, later on in the afternoon, after I’d taken a trip into town to see if I could find a map of the Eastern Province (no luck). It was a really helpful, interesting interview, which I shall endeavour to tell you about in the next couple of days. I had thought it would be a negative thing, to hold a spontaneous, unrecorded interview, and was initially reluctant to get into any long discussions with him. I wasn’t able to write down everything Bandula Sir said, but I was able to get most of it. He seemed in no hurry to get anything done, and we were sitting in his office. He’s a long serving manager in the factory, and is quite senior now and very sweet. He didn’t rush me to think of questions, and I didn’t rush him for answers, so there were lots of long silences as I thought about things and wrote down notes. This didn’t seem to matter in the slightest. The long but unawkward silences actually seemed to prompt Bandula Sir to think more about his answers and my research topic, so after long pauses, he would add in extra bits of information. We were also waiting for some print outs of employee statistics, and once we’d both had a cup of tea and had been chatting for well over an hour, I really couldn’t come up with any more questions.

If you have any questions for me, please do fire away! For now though, it’s attempt 2 at getting to sleep. Important day tomorrow!

Day 7: Heading out East

At long last! I have been nagging and nagging Family G (poor family) to let me go out to Ampara as soon as possible, and urgency doesn’t really seem to register in Sri Lanka. I’ve been trying to explain to them the importance of time in social research, and through sheer repetition I think it is starting to sink in. At least the past week has given me time to prepare, and I actually managed to conduct an interview with Mrs G this evening which I felt was definite progress. They almost tried to delay Ampara by another few days, to which I quietly but firmly protested, explaining that I really want and need as much time in Ampara as is possible. I’ve spoken to Mrs G again about actually working in the factory, and she thankfully still seems in favour of this idea. It’ll be something blissfully simple, like stickering, or folding, which should give me plenty of opportunity to get to know factory and workers.

The interview was interesting – I learnt a little more about the factory and its employees – I’ll try to post up the outline of the findings soon. Mrs G was having a pedicure done at the time; I wasn’t putting too much pressure on Family G regarding interviews because I know they’re busy, but I told them I’d like to conduct an interview before heading out to Ampara. Baba G reminded her mother I wanted to ask her some questions, so Mrs G suggested I come to ask her the questions whilst she was having a home pedicure done, as part of a monthly salon home-visit. I wasn’t given much warning for this, so I scrambled together all of my things, cleared my camera memory as I don’t yet have a Dictaphone sorted, and ran upstairs to the covered rooftop where Mrs G was relaxing with her feet in a bubbling footbath, whilst the beautician clipped and painted away. It seems like a very obscure situation in which to hold an interview, but in retrospect, Mrs G was relaxed, she was in her own familiar home environment, and she wasn’t preoccupied with other things so I had her full attention. There were some disruptions as maids came and went, and she would often just stop talking to pick up phone to make a phone call to goodness knows who, but she always came straight back to the point, so I don’t think the interruptions were actually too disruptive. One downside was that, being in open air, there was a lot of background noise, and even with audio editing software on my computer, I couldn’t quite remove all the birdcalls and occasional gusts of wind, so some bits of the playback were a little unclear. Also, perhaps because she was relaxing, Mrs G was speaking quite quietly, making some things hard to hear. I transcribed almost as soon as the interview was finished. I say almost. I procrastinated for as long as I reasonably could, and then fiddled with the audio for a silly amount of time. Transcription is so dull, and it’s important to note everything about a conversation, from a slight pause here, to a few ‘ums’ there, to that chuckle at the end of that sentence. It took a while, but it’s done at last. Next time, I know I need to put the Dictaphone closer to the respondent, and hope for a location with less background noise and fewer interruptions.

Right now I should head downstairs to get my things packed up for Ampara, and get a few hours of sleep before a very very early start. We’re going to drive over via Kandy – apparently there’s a nice temple there. Then I get the afternoon to explore Ampara and see the factory! If you’re lucky, I may even post up some photos at some point, as I’m very well aware of the slightly unfavourable word to image ratio on here.