this week...

Blog #4:

Week four; what I did.

It is a cliché but time is flying by here, particularly compared to my trip here last year. I remember things seemingly taking forever to happen, days just dragged by. I was doing stuff but I didn’t have precise research project and I wasn’t especially busy. Now, I feel like I have no time at all; that I won’t have enough time to get what I want to get done. I’m not panicking, I know this is just a perception issue. I’m putting probably undue pressure on myself. It’s not as if I’m not being productive, not giving this my best shot. It’s more about the challenge of doing ethnographic fieldwork. 

This is an almost an unlimited amount of work I could do here. Literally. I could spend years here doing research, collecting data, and I may not (still) come up with a satisfactory argument. This is the world of social science, it’s a world of grey and uncertainty. I struggle with uncertainty, and how am I supposed to write a thesis based on research in such an ambiguous environment? 

I’m trying to be realistic about what I can actually really do here. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy meeting friends and contacts here, and have also began extending my network to meet new potential interviews subjects. Sometimes I hit dead ends, sometimes things don’t work out to plan, but that’s fieldwork. I had one interview, and one group discussion this week, and I’m meeting another person today that could be useful. My list of contacts keeps expanding; some will work out, and some won’t. It’s a real snow ball effect.

The language issue is a challenge: I have questions prepared in Tetum, sometimes I can get away with Indonesian or English sometimes. I had a translator for the group discussion on Wednesday which worked pretty well. I’m recording everything so I’ll have to work out the best way to get transcriptions done. I know one person who I should be able to employ to do the Transcriptions. I feel that my Tetum is good enough to get the gist of what people say when they answer my questions, and I think I’ll be able to follow the essence of what I’ll read in the transcriptions. I may well need help to get the precise detail drawn from the responses though.

Just got a phone call from a contact of mine (breaking news!). He might be able to help me out when I go out for a district trip. I’m planning to go East to visit three districts to do interviews. I would love to have a research assistant to be there to help out with language issues and more generally to have someone there to support me. I’ll write about this more soon. Anyway, I better head off for lunch. Ate logo