Digital Storytelling – Fieldnotes
Writing by kosala on Monday, 19 of March , 2007 at 4:45 pm
Today I thought of visiting the Kanapathiwata tea estate line houses to test some of the Digital stories. Pavi had made a Digital story from our last visit to Riverside line houses. We thought of showing the Digital story to the kanapathiwatta people and see how the feedback is.
We left the station at around 3.00 p.m in the etuktuk. We did not carry the usual etuktuk equipment in it because we were not going on a usual recording trip. We go the lap top and pavi got the cassette recorder. From the station to mawathura town it takes about 5 minutes to get there. Its straight down hill. One of the line house colony is also situated in mawathura too which I did my research earlier.
This time we were visiting the upper parts of the Kanapathiwatta estate. From Mawathura we had to take the galath road , a narrow road up hill. After travelling 10 minutes up hill I the main road we took the dusty narrow road which lead to the kanapathiwata tea estate line house community. The road condition was very bad. After few minutes bumpy ride I the tuktuk we could see the houses. There were about 20 line houses situated from the top of the hill to bottom. These line houses were different from the riverside line houses. The river side line houses had 4 houses in a single line and the space for each house was very limited. But here only two houses are there in a single line. And the houses seem to have more space. The houses looked very neat and clean from the outside. Electric cable can be seen going I to the houses which meant that they got electricity too. Water taps were seen in some of the houses. Some houses had nice small gardens too.
The people seem to be living a better off life than the riverside community here. The children here wore comparatively good clothing. And they looked clean. On our way to the line houses we met a group of girls and we asked them where they studied and one of the older girls replied that she was going to school in Nawalapitiya. Nawala pitiya is a one of the near by towns and there is a well reputed tamil school there. She said that she was going there since grade 01. which gave me another indicator some of the families here are well off.
Pavi and I got the laptop and camera from the tuktuk and started climbing towards one of the houses. Two older people were looking at us from the houses wondering who we are. And Pavi started talking to tem while walking up hill. They were very please to here that we were from Kothmale radio.
Every time I visit these estate communities I feel some what uncomfortable because of the language barrier. I don’t have the full capacity of communicating with these people so I have to depend on Pavi.
Our Intention of this visit was to show them the digital story about the rivierside line house community and gather some content to make another story about these communities using their own voice.
One old person welcomed us in to his house to do the programme. We asked him if it is a trouble for him and he said he is more than happy to help. We walked pass couple of houses and went in to his house.
The house was in a good condition roofs were in good condition. Even this house had a ceiling. Each of these houses had thee rooms and a kitchen. Rooms are comparatively larger than the riverside houses. In the living room they had a sawing machine and few plastic chairs. I one of the rooms we could see a wooden sofa and a cabinet with glasses and plates. On the top of the cabinet I could see some suitcases and bags, the kind which people use when going abroad. SO I assumed that one of the family member might have gone abroad.
When we walked I to the house there was a middle aged lady and an old lady with a young girl in the living room. The old person(XXXX) introduced us to them and invited us to sit. We talked with them about the family for some time. Mean while we told the little girl to gather few of her friends to the house. so She ran off.
They had 8 members in this house. old person and his wife and the daughter who has five children. The middle aged women was their daugeter and she was devorced 15 years back and she already has five daughters. 4 of them have finished school and stays home. One goes to school. Xxx is retired from the estate and now he is working in a shop in colombo. he has come to do some repairs in the house this time. His wife had a cancer in her mouth.
After some discussion about our visit we took our laptop and played Pavis digital story on Riverside line house community. Before playing the Story he explained a bit about how he made this story. It was a really interesting story because the people were talking about there problems in there own voices. When the story was playing chidren I the room started mumbling about the faces they see in the story. Most of them are their class mates in school. Even the older women told that they know some of the people in the story which meant that they had some relationship with the riverside line houses. They were very happy to see this kind of a story about their neighbouring community.
One girl in the group slowly said that she felt very sad about her friends in the riverside line houses because she didn’t know there life before. Everybody was very impressed with the story. After the story Pavi played the radio program he had produced about the problems of the riverside community. It was a 25 minute programme and they listened to it very eagerly. Then we asked the family if they would like to participate in a similar digital story. And they were more than happy to participate in a story.
Pavi and I was thinking of making a success story as a digital story so we could show it to the riverside community. The daughters story seem to be an inspiring story for other women in the community and pavi asked her if it is okay to make a story about her. She was happy with that and pavi asked some questions about her life story and she replied as pavi recorded them. We took some photos of the house and every member of the family.
As pavi was doing the voice recording I took the opportunity to show the photos to the children. They were very happy to see there photos on the laptop. After that I took a photo of the old couple. They were so happy to see the photo and they said that they never took a photo after their marriage.
I took some time to interview the old person while pavi finished recording the voice.
Finally we took group family photo of them and left the house at around 5.p.m.
Pavi was very interested in making the digital story about the women. He told that he’d make this story in one day and show it to me. I asked him whether this content would be inough to make a radio program also but he said that it will not be possible because this story is somewhat personal.
On our way back we planned to have a DST and film screaning on Wednesday evening at the riverside line houses using the etuktuk. After having some tea at the Mawathura tea shop I took the last bus to Gampola at 5.30pm so I could get home after 3 days in Kothmale.
I was feeling a bit bad because I couldn’t spend the week end at home with my family. But on the other hand I was very happy because I ad finished up most of my transcribing work in the weekend.
The story above was contributed by Kosala Keerthiratne who is the research coordinator at the etuktuk project and is supported by staff from the Adelaide University and Queensland University of Technology as part of the Finding a Voice Research Project.
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