Ever been inside a dataset?
Our little project is coming to a close as we sit down with our exit interviews to enter the data, and switch from data collection to data analysis mode. So what's my take so far on experimental field work? Well, it's a lot of work for very uncertain payoffs. Subject recruitment in the slums of Kampala entails hours of walking under a hostile sun, losing your way and finding it again a few dozen times, going through the entire spectrum of human emotions within a two-hour timespan - the heat, the dust, the smells and the smog only exacerbate the unpleasant interactions with suspicious locals and inflate the heart-warming ones with starry-eyed children. The response from the subjects so far has been encouraging, especially considering the fact that I literally went to their door to ask them to participate in a "game" in a language they do not speak. I kept marvelling at their willingness to indulge me and not simply turn their backs on me. I couldn't help but think that I wouldn't get a fraction of that kind of attention and respect if I were to do this in the U.S. Grant it, I got the occasional local who splurged all her money on alcohol and then came back to the exit interview claiming I had promised to help her out with her business; I also got the young teen-age moms who wanted my phone number in order to become friends; but then I also got the really enthusiastic part of the sample who simply wanted to play the game.
I've spent a lot of time with Deo, Geoffrey, Brenda and Susan - a different interpreter each day, somewhat of a testament to how the management part of this project is going - hanging around at the local shacks, waiting for the subjects to show up for their exit interviews. We’ve chatted about a heap of various issues, from born-again Christian music to Toni Braxton (whose music is making a killing here), from Museveni’s dubious political ambitions to AIDS and Malaria, from the locals’ fascination with bazungu to the bazungu’s inability to digest matoke, from the Indians to Idi Amin. I started to become a staple at these various interview locations, the shop-owners offering me a bench to sit on and some shade to sit under, the boda-boda drivers stationing next to me to show off their Ludo skills, a gambling game that will keep them busy for the better part of the afternoon. I am a real creature of habit, and even more so in unfamiliar places where improvised traditions can bring some center to the chaos of traveling: the 11a.m. Fanta that I buy my interpreter, the 12 o’clock text message to Jeremy to check in on their side of field work madness, the 2p.m. "cake" that I buy my interpreter friends to make sure they actually eat something at some point during the day.
My first boda-boda ride took place on Sunday with Alex on our way to the Speke Resort swimming pool. It was hot, it was Sunday, we were tired of walking. I was well aware of some of the warnings I had gotten from a variety of people, and Brenda’s advice, a Lugandan saying that a lake can kill a fisherman too, reminded me that just because those guys know the Kampalan road doesn’t mean they’re immune to it. But I also learned another important thing from traveling in Latin America a couple summers ago, which is that hard-and-fast rules don’t work too well when traveling. There are simply too many unforeseen contingencies to be able to claim never to ride a boda-boda, or never to enter into a green taxi in Mexico City. When the options are few and far between, it sometimes boils down to a judgment call. In any event, we had our boda-boda ride on an empty Sunday road, we made it to the resort safe and sound, and even enjoyed one of the most pleasant views of the Lake on our way there. After being so adamant against boda-boda use, Alex and I looked at each other a little sheepishly as we payed our boda boda driver with a strange giddiness from the beautiful ride, and then laughed at ourselves and each other.
There is no way to blend in here. There is absolutely no way to dodge the stares; they never tire of calling me mzungu as soon as I step out of the house; and the children just keep on chanting. It's become a buzzing sound that I hear as I run by the shopowners in the morning or walk by the taxi drivers during the day. It’s really an amazing – and truthfully quite frustrating – experience for someone who’s always lived in, let’s face it, predominantly white countries. I found it funny for the first couple days, then incredibly irritating; Deo and I have had some really interesting exchanges about it. I suppose we really do look quite strange and out of place here; Deo pointed to the veins on my wrists and scoffed that our blood turns blue in the sun. He claims it’s all innocuous, he claims they’re all simply wondering how did God make this one? Laughing about it with him helps, yet all these conflicting emotions have led me to realize that as open-minded as I’d like to think I am, I have very little patience for the scrutiny and the questioning I receive on my race and my religion. Does open-mindedness include tolerating close-mindedness?
But when I’m not busy being frustrated with and weighed down by these issues, I marvel over and over again at the way that things operate here. In a place where the most basic infrastructure, the everyday stuff we take for granted, is missing, it is truly wondrous that anything gets done at all. Seen in this light, this is also a place where small miracles abound: like how we manage to get to work safely and on time every morning when the roads are sand and rock and the drivers are insanity personified; or how we manage to get this dataset built with 6 computers, 5 stabilizers, and power that goes out for about 3 hours in the afternoon and 4 to 5 hours in the late evening. Last night, sitting in the office with the et al's, giving them a rundown of our findings from our pilot experiment, the power went out. It was 8pm and pitch black; we still had a few subjects running the experiments in the other room. We all immediately pulled out our phones and turned on our little flashlight setting, which enabled the experimental games to go on while we sat in the darkness of the bazungu managers' office.
“The return to normal is relatively easy in Africa, and can even be accomplished quite rapidly. Because so much here is makeshift, impermanent, light, and shabby, it is possible instantly to destroy a village, a field, or a road – and just as quickly to rebuild them” (Kapuscinsky)
When I first arrived here, I wondered at what point this life and place would start to feel and look familiar to me. Two weeks into my East African adventure, things are starting to become a little more comfortable: I pay the taxi fare a little more adamantly so as not to get ripped off; I know where to go for the best English coffee; I have figured out my running route in the mornings; I can guess when moody Mother Nature is merely threatening me with morning thunder and when a real downpour is about to greet my day... Sure, it's all little things; but little things tend to go a long way around here.
I've spent a lot of time with Deo, Geoffrey, Brenda and Susan - a different interpreter each day, somewhat of a testament to how the management part of this project is going - hanging around at the local shacks, waiting for the subjects to show up for their exit interviews. We’ve chatted about a heap of various issues, from born-again Christian music to Toni Braxton (whose music is making a killing here), from Museveni’s dubious political ambitions to AIDS and Malaria, from the locals’ fascination with bazungu to the bazungu’s inability to digest matoke, from the Indians to Idi Amin. I started to become a staple at these various interview locations, the shop-owners offering me a bench to sit on and some shade to sit under, the boda-boda drivers stationing next to me to show off their Ludo skills, a gambling game that will keep them busy for the better part of the afternoon. I am a real creature of habit, and even more so in unfamiliar places where improvised traditions can bring some center to the chaos of traveling: the 11a.m. Fanta that I buy my interpreter, the 12 o’clock text message to Jeremy to check in on their side of field work madness, the 2p.m. "cake" that I buy my interpreter friends to make sure they actually eat something at some point during the day.
My first boda-boda ride took place on Sunday with Alex on our way to the Speke Resort swimming pool. It was hot, it was Sunday, we were tired of walking. I was well aware of some of the warnings I had gotten from a variety of people, and Brenda’s advice, a Lugandan saying that a lake can kill a fisherman too, reminded me that just because those guys know the Kampalan road doesn’t mean they’re immune to it. But I also learned another important thing from traveling in Latin America a couple summers ago, which is that hard-and-fast rules don’t work too well when traveling. There are simply too many unforeseen contingencies to be able to claim never to ride a boda-boda, or never to enter into a green taxi in Mexico City. When the options are few and far between, it sometimes boils down to a judgment call. In any event, we had our boda-boda ride on an empty Sunday road, we made it to the resort safe and sound, and even enjoyed one of the most pleasant views of the Lake on our way there. After being so adamant against boda-boda use, Alex and I looked at each other a little sheepishly as we payed our boda boda driver with a strange giddiness from the beautiful ride, and then laughed at ourselves and each other.
There is no way to blend in here. There is absolutely no way to dodge the stares; they never tire of calling me mzungu as soon as I step out of the house; and the children just keep on chanting. It's become a buzzing sound that I hear as I run by the shopowners in the morning or walk by the taxi drivers during the day. It’s really an amazing – and truthfully quite frustrating – experience for someone who’s always lived in, let’s face it, predominantly white countries. I found it funny for the first couple days, then incredibly irritating; Deo and I have had some really interesting exchanges about it. I suppose we really do look quite strange and out of place here; Deo pointed to the veins on my wrists and scoffed that our blood turns blue in the sun. He claims it’s all innocuous, he claims they’re all simply wondering how did God make this one? Laughing about it with him helps, yet all these conflicting emotions have led me to realize that as open-minded as I’d like to think I am, I have very little patience for the scrutiny and the questioning I receive on my race and my religion. Does open-mindedness include tolerating close-mindedness?
But when I’m not busy being frustrated with and weighed down by these issues, I marvel over and over again at the way that things operate here. In a place where the most basic infrastructure, the everyday stuff we take for granted, is missing, it is truly wondrous that anything gets done at all. Seen in this light, this is also a place where small miracles abound: like how we manage to get to work safely and on time every morning when the roads are sand and rock and the drivers are insanity personified; or how we manage to get this dataset built with 6 computers, 5 stabilizers, and power that goes out for about 3 hours in the afternoon and 4 to 5 hours in the late evening. Last night, sitting in the office with the et al's, giving them a rundown of our findings from our pilot experiment, the power went out. It was 8pm and pitch black; we still had a few subjects running the experiments in the other room. We all immediately pulled out our phones and turned on our little flashlight setting, which enabled the experimental games to go on while we sat in the darkness of the bazungu managers' office.
“The return to normal is relatively easy in Africa, and can even be accomplished quite rapidly. Because so much here is makeshift, impermanent, light, and shabby, it is possible instantly to destroy a village, a field, or a road – and just as quickly to rebuild them” (Kapuscinsky)
When I first arrived here, I wondered at what point this life and place would start to feel and look familiar to me. Two weeks into my East African adventure, things are starting to become a little more comfortable: I pay the taxi fare a little more adamantly so as not to get ripped off; I know where to go for the best English coffee; I have figured out my running route in the mornings; I can guess when moody Mother Nature is merely threatening me with morning thunder and when a real downpour is about to greet my day... Sure, it's all little things; but little things tend to go a long way around here.
posted by cla at 6:03 PM
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