Learning the meaning of "urgency"

This week, the women of Kodagahalli learned the meaning of “urgency,” a term almost as foreign as “privacy” in rural Karnataka. The members of the Kodagahalli workspace are efficient, hard workers. However, village life often runs at a leisurely pace. While the women have developed an orderly system to screen print the bags, they are able to work flexible hours. Many women sew bags in their own homes, and the workday starts shortly after ten, so that they can prepare for the day, and see their children off to school and husbands off to work. In a traditional, patriarchal village, Ubuntu at Work offers many women an invaluable opportunity- to work reasonable and flexible hours that don’t contradict with their household duties, to be paid fair wages, and to be given unique skills and an outlet for using them to earn an income. 

This week we received an urgent order of 100 cotton bags. The style of bag was of a more complex design, and as the order came from a new customer, the screen printed logo was also new. While the fabric arrived in Kodagahalli on Wednesday morning, we needed them to cut the fabric in a new pattern with new dimensions, sew 100 bags in a style with which they were not familiar, make new screens and mix new paint, screen print all 100 bags, and iron them by Thursday afternoon, for the interns to take back to Bangalore. Usually, the women of Kodagahalli spend several days cutting the entire supply of fabric for all the villages where stitching and sewing occur. Then, they spend several days sewing and screen printing. Such a division of labor would not be possible with this order.  

And as it was the first order of its kind, just about every complication possible occurred.  

The fabric was cut on Wednesday afternoon, and 16 women were commissioned to stitch bags in their home that evening and the following morning. Thursday morning came, and the bags came in slowly- the first batch arriving shortly after 10, the last around 4. However, about half the bags were stitched improperly. The errors were not fundamental, but each bag took about 10 minutes to adjust. Fortunately, we have some seriously determined members. With Latha in the lead, several women sewed like maniacs to correct the bags, as others began screen printing the finished bags.  

And the screens. God forbid anything go right the first time. The printer was malfunctioning, and would not properly connect to any of the four laptops we hooked it up to. Eventually field worker Harish took a bus into the town of Bannur to print out the logos, which were needed to make the screens. 

Thursday was a classic hurry-up-and-wait kind of day. The screen printing members raced to finish the screens, but then found they only had 7 bags to print upon. As each new batch of bags rolled in, the women mobilized, rushing only to find themselves waiting once again for the next batch. 

I’m sure the next order will be seamless, as we worked out just about every kink possible on Thursday. When Vibha first told us her expectations and the deadline for the new order, I thought the idea was highly preposterous. I must say, I was thoroughly impressed with the speed and tenacity with which the members worked, and their unwavering dedication to Ubuntu at Work.