How do you help?

How do you help?

What do you do?  How do you handle requests?  How do you say no when even the little you have as a PhD student seems like absolute wealth to those in your life?  How do you manage ethical guidelines with reality, morals, and the desire to be a human being who still has a heart?  These are questions I face daily and I want to just tell you about one woman in particular whose life story implores me to continue contemplating my place in this world as a researcher and human being.

Let us call her Christine.

 

Back in February, I met this woman named Christine.  I sensed something horribly sad in her demeanour even though she was very polite to me.  My language guide told me to take a picture of her granary even though it sadly was empty.  On that first visit she told me she couldn’t afford to send her children to school and asked if I knew anyone who could sponsor any of her children to go to school.  I apologized and told her no, explaining my role as a researcher but told her if I found a way, I would let her know.  I then encouraged her to seek support from some of the NGOs that sponsor children – I felt pathetic saying this because I know how these things work and her daughters weren’t going to get a sponsorship after the beginning of the school year.  I also knew she had no chance since some of the recipients had parents who were able to ‘manoeuvre’ their way into sponsorship, an ability I know Christine didn’t have.

Ever since meeting her, something compelled me to always return to her and visit.  People here ask for many things but Christine struck me differently – she never tells me she is hungry (which is so commonplace here that is now part of the greeting) or complains – but only enquired if I knew about sponsorships for school, which is how many kids here attend school. 

So last week I went back again to Christine as she agreed to do an interview for my research.  And I want to share some of her story with you.

The day I met Christine she was contemplating suicide; she told me life had become too difficult and she had no hope and nothing to give her children.  Christine had lived for seven years in that village before it was burnt down.  The previous night men quarrelled and disputed the land ownership which led to its firey demise.  Christine watched from a distance as her home compound burned to the ground – a home she built literally by hand and by walking long distances to cut and carry wood, mold and bake mud bricks and collect grass bundles to make the roof. The day we met she returned to this village because she was seeking some support from her sister-in-law Lucy (they married brothers) who lives next door.  She wanted to try to rebuild her old compound next door to Lucy.

Christine had struggled for years and things seemed to just get worse.  Her husband was murdered roughly 12 years ago in a cattle raid and all her cattle, and thus wealth, was gone. Two of her children have died and she has one boy and three girls left.  She has been farming to feed the family ever since.  She managed to scrape together some funds to send two of her daughters to school – Helga is in Primary 6 (second to last year of elementary) and Katerina is in Primary 1 (Kindergarten) walking several kilometres back and forth each day scholar because that’s all Christine could pay for.

Christine told me that just before her village was burnt, she had a dream in which two ladies came to her home and asked her to go with them.  She saw them as a blessing and followed them in the dream because she believed they would help her.  When she escaped the village fire the night before we met, she escaped by the route from her dream and felt blessed because the normal route had been taken by those who burnt the village and they beat the newly homeless villagers along the way.  

That is how I found Christine.  She has been wearing the same dirty shirt and skirt since the day we met so that she can use all she has for her children.  Like many here, she sniffs tobacco since it is cheaper than food and it curbs the hunger for longer.

Christine after receiving a skirt as a gift from a religious sister who moved away.

The problem here is that there are no easy or correct answers and yet all the answers you can imagine leave you unsatisfied, wishing for an easy way to handle dilemmas in life.  But I think maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be – difficult, a constant challenge to your heart, your intellect, your character.  How am I 'to be' with Christine?  Who can I be to her and with her?

There are no easy answers and it’s not just a problem here in Africa or Uganda.  How do you help and how do you know that what you are doing is actually helpful?  

Does it make you feel good?  Is it helpful to make yourself feel good?  If you feel good about helping does that mean that’s why you did it or you did it because the people you helped asked for it?  How do you look out for the well-being of others in a way that is not paternalistic and demeaning?  How do you help someone and treat them with dignity acknowledging their capabilities?

Christine told me in the interview that she had nothing to give her children.  Nothing.  She said she had nothing and it broke my heart.  Think about that.  Is it my place to try to show her that the sacrifice of her entire life and dedication to her children is worth everything?  Then again, who I am to say it is worth everything when it’s easy for me to think about feelings and emotions since I know I will eat today and tomorrow and the day after that.  It’s easy to think about feelings and values when you know you will be fed.  It's too easy to see her as heroic and it's too easy for Christine to see herself as a failure.  How do we meet?  How do encounter one another?  How do we 'be' with people?

How do you negotiate and navigate a relationship with Christine?  How can you help and continue to treat people with dignity?  

Who is the Christine in your life?

It's hard keeping up a blog.

It's hard keeping up a blog here.  I have days without power and even more without internet.  Life is busy; research and ethnographic studies are all encompassing but I'll try to at least share pictures with you and get back to blogging more words and stories as soon as I can.

I've added a twitter handle to the right to follow a pictorial view of life in my region of Uganda.

After three months, this is why I'm here - A personal manifesto

After three months, this is why I'm here - 

A personal manifesto

A break in Kampala.  I love Kampala.  After an excruciating 14 hour drive, I made it.  It’s been over three months since I’ve arrived in Uganda and I'm trying to write about what this time has meant to me, how I’ve changed and how I will move forward. 

I watched a documentary last night about James Baldwin (great internet in Kampala!) and one particular quote of his struck me deeply.

'I am saying that a journey is called that because you cannot know what you will discover on the journey, what you will do, what you will find, or what you find will do to you.'

Oh James.  Yes, James.  It’s not just about what you will find on the journey but what the journey will do to you.

Sunday, I had the privilege of meeting a phenomenal woman.  As much as I tried to remain the ‘professional researcher’ I am supposed to be, it was a serious challenge to hold back tears hearing her story.  I am constantly uneasy trying to balance my role as a researcher with that of an individual, a woman, who has deep care and concern for her ‘subjects’, ‘interlocutors’, ‘participants’ or whatever you want to call them.  Some feminist ethnographers go further stating the in order for the researcher to truly break down power barriers, the researcher must fully accept the subjects to become full collaborators.  This, too, makes me uneasy, not least because I am a control freak.

But as I sat uneasily balancing my role – knowing that I will at least ever so slightly cringe when I listen to the recorded interview later, I stand firm and confident in how Stacey describes the role of the feminist ethnographer:

The researcher herself is the primary medium, the ‘instrument’ of research, this method draws on those resources of empathy, connection, and concern that many feminists consider to be women’s special strengths (Stacey, 1988, p.22).

How else could I have reacted other than with tears in my eyes as this talented, ambitious, courageous, successful, and determined woman told me her life story?

How would you react to such a personal and eloquent account of loss, sadness, abandonment, and tragedy? 

How would you respond to hearing the harrowing story of a woman sitting in front of you – a woman featured in national newspapers for her business expertise, her professional success, a woman admired by so many – when she tells her story?  

How she was orphaned at three years, abandoned a world away from her childhood home before high school, brewed beer in an attempt to go to school, audaciously went to the high school of her dreams and asked for admission, made her way to university only to sleep in a secret place for three years because she had no money for accommodation at university, found a way to network to help pay university fees in the highest offices of the most prestigious university in East Africa?  And then, just when you think life has finally worked out – you know her current life – the life of a successful business woman, a happily married woman, a loving mother – you find out that an horrific car accident paralyzed her only a decade earlier and she had to learn how to walk, talk, and care for herself all over again.  How would you react to that?

At one point during the interview, when she herself teared up, she noticed me holding back tears in my eyes and said as a glimmer of love brightened up her face, ‘Don’t cry.  I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.  I am alive.’

Even with the tragedy I have experienced in my own life, it feels minute compared the obstacles she has had to drag off the road to her success.

The truth is, she is an exceptional human being by anyone’s standards.  I sat in this interview trying to find the ‘right’ way to respond as a researcher.  But I am not just a researcher.  I am a feminist, an ethnographer, and a woman who cares deeply about my research,  I have a belief and fire inside me, whether naïve or just plain empowering, that what I am doing WILL MAKE A POSITIVE DIFFERENCE in others’ lives.

This lovely woman, even with all her obstacles, is a rarity, an exception to the rule of what happens to girls like her, not just here in Uganda, but all over the world. 

I met girls in my own country, particularly strong in my memory are my Bronx girls who had big dreams, failing schools, and little to no resources to bring those dreams to fruition. 

I am still broken hearted over a young woman I interviewed in Kenya who had so much potential, with the highest marks in the region, but with one mistake, one mistake that boys and girls alike make all over the world, a mistake that doesn’t ruin a life in many parts of the Western world, resulted in her losing everything.  I found her sleeping on the dirt floor of her grandmother’s shack in a Nairobi slum.  She slept on the dirt floor with her newborn baby boy so close to a kerosene lamp that for weeks I couldn’t sleep worrying that in this tiny shack in which she had to sleep diagonally, she might spill the lamp and accidentally burn down the place, end her life and the lives of her family members in their sleep.  Whilst there are many honourable men in the world, those who are not simply walk away, no harm to their potential, their ability to go to school.  But for her, all her studying, hard work, highest marks, meant nothing.  She is a slum girl who hopes to make a living braiding hair.  The girl who dreamed of traveling the world with Kenyan Airlines is now begging for food in a slum.

The incredible Ugandan woman sitting across from me at lunch is an anomaly, an exception to the rule.  But what happens to the rest of the girls?  What happens to girls when they spent literal blood, sweat, and tears to get an education?  What happens when the sponsors walk away, the funding dries up after primary or lower secondary or upper secondary?  What happens to the girls?  What happens to he girls who were taught to dream big in school but then realise that the door that has been opened to them has now slammed in their faces? 

This is why I do this research. Because their potential is wasted if we cannot bring them to the point where they can stand on their own and make use of their education and skills. While I care more about these young women’s well-being, it’s also bad financial investment if they cannot thrive.  An investment that might make the Westerner feel good for giving, but doesn’t follow through enough to change someone’s life for the better.

Had I not had a financially able and loving family, had I not been born with all the privileges that I have, those who know me know that I just may have become a drug addict, a dropout, a loss of talent to the world.  But I didn’t.  And I’d like to think that I’ve spent my adult life sharing my talents and gifts with the world and hope the world is better because of my being in it as a functioning adult and not a drop out depressed, drug addict.

I have never believed more in myself and my research than at that Sunday afternoon lunch.

I normally do not share information about my research in such detail on this blog but today I make an exception for the exceptional woman.  I make that exception because she herself is sharing her life story with the world with an upcoming memoir published and to be released later this year.  She has given me permission to share.

At the end of the preface of her book, she writes, ‘You don’t need to be opulent and rich to make a difference, you just need to care.’

It is in caring about individuals, about my research that makes me believe that I can make a difference.  And Baldwin was right.  It is because I care that I am finding out what this journey is doing to me.

Just so we're clear...

Just so we're clear, I've invited Michelle Obama (and her husband) to come check out my research while they are here in Uganda.  

You never know.  More to come soon!  

Thoughts on today's purchase

I found myself buying a knife I didn't need from an old man today.  

The vendor was a tall, thin but not fragile man wearing traditional clothing - a colorful textile wrapped around his midsection, clunky big sandals made out of old tires with the classic and colorful knitted hat with an ostrich feather poking out the side.  I didn't need the knife but it was a better option than the bow and arrow sets he was also showcasing.

Walking to the town centre with no intentions of buying a knife.

At first, I didn't want the knife or the bow and arrow.  But I looked closer.  The knife is a handcrafted piece with old, perhaps recycled metal on an old wooden handle.  Old in the way that it has character and a new life, not old as in finished.  It's in an elegant case made out of cow's skin.  It was simple yet beautiful.

He didn't leave me as I waited outside the food stall for my boda boda driver.  He just stayed and sat with me.  We made small talk; he laughed and was pleasantly amused that I could converse with him.  I can't get into any kind of deep conversation, but I am proficient enough to do extended greetings, ask him where he is going and tell him where I'm going.  I liked this guy.  He had a warm smile and worn skin from the strong sun and years of herding cattle in the outdoors.  Years likely filled with numerous nights sleeping in kraals out in the open air, protecting his herd in the bush.  Years dodging or engaging in the cattle raiding, road raids and flying bullets.  Years of surviving food shortages and famine.

Getting closer to the city centre.

I kept thinking about his history - he survived Amin's soldiers who came up here to kill those 'uncivilised' folk who didn't wear clothes.  Perhaps he knew some of the men who were buried alive or shot dead by Amin's murderous thugs, murders that are now memorialized a short drive from my home at the site of one such slaughter.  There are no names or lists for me to see - only the crosses and memorial set up by one Italian missionary who decided that the loss of life must not be forgotten.  Memories of those murdered are certainly in the hearts of those loved ones who survived but what about the rest of us?

Memorial to those in the region who died at the hands of Amin for being 'uncivilized'.

We foreigners here today are forced, demanded by ourselves and our humanity to know the locals, their lives and engage with the past.  Because of this memorial and our interactions, both big and small with elders like the knife selling man, we learn the story of this land in which we live.  This small interaction today doesn't is a far cry from the deep 'engagement' I speak about above.  But my consideration of his life makes him more human in a world where so many people's dignity and humanity are lost, forgotten or denied. 

Pigs roam the fields where elephants once grazed before Ethiopian traders captured their tusks and destroyed their population.

I don't know much about this man; my language skills aren't that good.  But I do know that he appreciated it when I told the boys who took his bow and started playing with it to stop and give it back to the man.  Boys out of school and draped in western clothing.  I know they may have just been playing around but I also know that it was disrespectful for them to take what he likely made and is trying to sell and play around with it - play around with his livelihood.  

I do know his name.  His name was Lokul and he wore clothes - traditional wear - but wear nonetheless.  Maybe is some way Amin won.  Maybe I'm romanticizing his life.  I don't know.  

The Knife.

But what I did learn is that I wanted the knife.  For about $0.80, I bought the knife - no price negotiation.  It was worth it and will probably be worth a lot more to me later as a small token of my life here.  

Another view of the knife in question.

And for the bow and arrow set.  I don't know how I would bring ten arrows and a bow back home.  But just in case, I asked the shopkeeper to help me translate and told the man that if I'm ever in the market for a bow and arrow...and can find a way to bring it home...I will spend about $3 and buy that bow and arrow set.

On being an ethnographer

On being an ethnographer

View of a hut outside my office

I’m writing in the arid, breezy shade outside my £10 a night hotel in northeastern Uganda. This weekend I’m taking a break from PhD life. Not really. I’m actually here to interview alumnae from the secondary school where my research is based.

Being an ethnographer, everyday and every moment can be a research moment.  There is taking a break, but not turning off. Mills and Morton describe on the first page of their book that ethnography is ‘being, seeing, writing.  Simple participles that belie the complexity of their meanings.’ (Mills & Morton, 2013). They write about education in the broadest sense of the word, including formal and informal education settings.

Highly recommended for ethnographers in the making.

My research brought me to the north of Uganda for the year studying how secondary school girls are preparing to exit school and embark on a life beyond their all-girls boarding school. I am writing this post for students considering, preparing for, or interested in ethnography in education. 

So, why I am staying in a hygienically challenged hotel only thirty minutes from my home site? I’m here because life is blurred. I am not from this land and although adopted by local community members, I am not one of them. If ethnography requires seeing, being and writing, then I am embracing it entirely.

This hotel conference area hasn't seen a
conference in a long time:(

This year I am working at a school for girls in this region as a teacher and also researching there. This school is in the heart of an historically war-torn region that today is ‘peaceful’ so long as ‘peaceful’ only means that tribal cattle raiding with AK-47s and roadside ambushes are a thing of the past. Today, severe food insecurity, chronic poverty, forced marriage, and the highest gender-based violence statistics in the nation plague the region still (Irish Aid, 2010). Only 2% of girls here have completed lower secondary school and a mere 1% have completed upper secondary school (UNESCO, 2011).

Two illiterate sisters, part of the 99% of girls
who do not step into a secondary school,
rest after they've completed a sowing job for me.

If I am to study how prepared these girls will be for life after secondary school, then I must know more than just who they are and how they feel now. Ethnography demands context and genuine immersion into others’ lives.  I need to move beyond just their school environment. Immersion is mandatory into the whole of their situation. This means meeting school alumnae, parents, learning their language, and getting to know the women who came before and those among them who lead challenging lives without having had formal education.

During preparation for this and my previous ethnographic study, well-intentioned people inquired about my ability to cope with the basics of moving abroad. But this isn’t just moving abroad, this is research. And this isn’t a personally removed form of research. This is immersive, full-on ethnography which is full of vulnerability, risk, complication drowned in enduring questions:  Is this moment ‘research’ or just my life right now? Does this new knowledge belong in a travel journal or my research journal? Perhaps the most difficult…are we becoming friends or am I still a researching?

There are no easy answers as your ontological and epistemological underpinnings and the context of everything matter. The best answer I can give is to advise budding ethnographers that the research ‘hat’ is always on. I like this metaphor, albeit cliché, because Ugandan President Museveni loves wearing big cowboy hats with a string around his neck – this signature style is plastered on worn, bright campaign shirts throughout the region. It is the same for the ethnographer; the hat is always on. You might complement the hat with a decorative feather like Karamojong men or take it off your head to have small moments to yourself, but the hat is at least around your neck if not fully on your head.  

A worn out but still worn campaign shirt of President Museveni in his signature cowboy hat.

I imagine this is easier for me as I am researching in a country where I do not have previous work experience nor did I grow up here. I offer this metaphor because keeping the hat on, I imagine, would be especially challenging if performing research in an environment that was previously known to you. Caution is advised!

So today, when I was invited to the mud home of a promising alumnus whom I interviewed a few weeks ago, I was challenged asking myself if the hat was still on or were we becoming friends? This kind, talented woman is helping me connect with other school alumnae and will serve as my interpreter for interviewing parents. Hat on – snowball selection. But how firmly placed and solitary is this hat? 

Classic Museveni

I choose to think of this budding relationship as professional and perhaps the start of genuine friendship. When she and her mother invited me to visit her sick brother in the local missionary hospital, I believe I was invited as a friend. But just as President Museveni wouldn’t take off his hat in the blistering sun, I did not take mine off either because the hospital visit is an opportunity to learn about life’s challenges here. I think of this visit as wearing my hat but putting a decorative friendship feather on the side.

Typical man of the region with his knitted hat
and signature stick of the pastoralists.
Men sow their own hats here and decorate them
with ostrich feathers.

I encourage others to consider this hat metaphor because you may think you already know how to handle this immersive and holistic methodology just as I thought I knew when I arrived in Kenya for the first time. However, looking back at field notes from my Master’s study, I am still shocked at how isolated I felt during deep immersion. My isolation and despair is exemplified from this troubling field note:

I am never alone. I…take walks into the valley and hide under bushes or trees to have a moment of silence. This doesn’t work. Before long…a Maasai herder will spot me across the valley and come to show me his cattle – after a short session in pantomime, we sit in silence but together. I must accept I will have no time to myself and make the most of my time outside the home, albeit never alone, at the Maasai church on Sundays or with market women who teach me beading. I am a spectacle anywhere I go with curious and sometimes suspicious stares my way, being shouted at by passers-by, or politely exchanging pleasantries with curious, friendly Kenyans when all I want to be is invisible.

When all I want to be is invisible. I can see now that I did not yet know how to wear the ethnographer’s hat. It was new, awkward and not fitted to my head. Now, I am learning how to decorate my hat whilst keeping it on. In the rare instances where my internet is strong enough, I will watch a little American TV to relax. I don’t take my hat off entirely but keep the string around my neck because even these moments of relaxation, moments of home, help me learn about myself as a researcher and what I need so that I may never desire to be invisible again. 

How will you wear your hat? Take the hat cliché to heart my dear ethnographers; it will save you from isolation, loneliness, and becoming too comfortable.

The last thing to mention here is that whilst writing this post from the shade behind my palace of a hotel, a goat jumped out from behind the building less than a meter away with a big BAAAAH! I jumped in surprise almost throwing my computer into the dirt beyond my blanket. I saved the computer and remind you to be ready for the unexpected and keep your hat on a string!

References:

Irish Aid. (2010). Country Strategy Paper 2010 - 2014 Summary Uganda.

Mills, D., & Morton, M. (2013). Ethnography in education. London: Sage.

UNESCO. (2011). Global Education Monitoring Report. Retrieved from http://www.education-inequalities.org/

Suggested Reading for budding ethnographers:

Abu‐Lughod, L. (1990). Can There Be A Feminist Ethnography? Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 5(1), 7–27. http://doi.org/10.1080/07407709008571138

Abu-Lughod, L. (1991). Writing Against Culture. In R. Fox (Ed.), Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present (pp. 137 – 162). Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.

Burke, J. F. (1989). Becoming an ‘inside-outsider’. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 20(3), 219 – 227.

Burke, J. F. (1992). Research in a post-missionary situation: among Zairean sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 23(2), 157–68.

Geertz, C. (1975). The interpretation of cultures: selected essays. London: Hutchinson.

Ong, A. (1988). Colonialism and Modernity: Feminist Re- presentations of Women in Non-Western Societies. Inscriptions, 3(4), 79–93.

Stambach, A. (2010). Faith in schools: religion, education, and American evangelicals in East Africa. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.

Walford, G. (2008b). The nature of educational ethnography. In G. Walford (Ed.), How to do educational ethnography (pp. 1 – 15). London: Tufnell.