Working on interviews

The days started as usual with a delicious breakfast. After that, in order to get more awake, we did funny energizers and suddently we were ready to start our tasks. We went back to our teams and we started to work on our interviews.

Firstly, we started replaying our recordings and wrote them all down so as not to lose any important details of our interviews with the people that were exiled to Siberia. Everyone had a certain amount of time of recording, so that being 6 in a team really helped us out. Each of us typed his or her part of the interview which ranged from 10 minutes to 35 minutes depending on how long the witness to history wanted to share. But that was just the easy part. After that, it was us who had to write the questions and answers and make it more presentable.

Because so many decades passed since the events happened, let’s just say that putting the interviews in a chronological order proved a bit problematic. Nevertheless, because the information that we found out during our trip was so precious, everything worked out in the end.

Since the brochures had to be distributed in schools and libraries in Poland, we needed to have them translated by our Polish colleagues whom we thank for their patience and hard work. After all was comitted to paper, the finishing touches were made: proofreading, finding quotes, finding pictures, the appropriate introductions, page fitting and so on.

As we wanted to raise awareness in the town of Zamość about our project and our interwees, we tried to devise an interesting few paragraphs and had them printed aut on leaflets. We also established together that we would make a banner on which one talented colleague would draw and several others would add powerful quotes or phrases. Mass media also paid us a visit and our wonderful colleague from Cyprus, Cistina and another colleague from the Czech Republic, Dali, appeared on national television.

Because all work and no play makes things dull, we had a very funny debate about whether our Romanian leader should cut his hair or not. The proposition team was voting for the haircut and the opposition team against it. The public was actively participating and was even taking sides, the atmosphere was more lively than in our national Parliaments, the enthusiasm was almost tangible in the air. The arguments of the proposition team were hilarious: a change of look is needed as we always change our clothes, girls might appreciate a new look and success may be an outcome, things may be on a more positive side in case of a job interview and having the same look is boring. The living example of the impact a haircut can have in getting more popular,were two peers that cut their hair during our time here in Motycz and their popularity with girls on facebook went up.

The opposition supported the idea that consent is mandatory and these type of things should not be established arbitrary, also, on a funny side, winter is coming and a short haircut is not an ideal one in these circumstances.

We then voted for the best team and best speaker, voting which was contested and accusations of rigged elections flew up in the air. In the end, hands were shaken and peace was made.