chameleons

One of the things that happens as soon as I land here is that my manner of speaking changes. By this, I mean that the cadence of my voice shifts, the words chosen are different, my speech pattern sounds altered (even in my own head). This is something about which some friends from the US have commented, when hearing me on the phone with African friends or actually being here. It’s not necessarily conscious but certainly habitual, sprinkled with a few Shona words that have become usual, and recalibrated to sound and feel more like those around me.

The content, however, also changes. As in any space, there are thing you say and things you do not. Sometimes, when the subject is difficult, we use hypothetical situations about other people as a replacement for what is actually happening to us. The other day, for example, a friend of mine was trying to figure out how to talk to a house guest about her tendency to come, stay, ask for rides, and eat without ever contributing to the household. It’s a touchy subject, to talk about generosity and hospitality without offense – especially in a place where my own experience is one in which the women I visit would generally rather give a guest their last sweet potato than save it for their own dinner. In the end, my friend decided to tell the guest a story about another person who was struggling with the same problem, about those who were coming and going “without even bringing so much as a loaf of bread!” It was not as hidden a tactic as it seemed, I thought, but anyway, it didn’t work.

This brings up questions for me about how it is we ‘know’ something about those around us, perhaps especially as researchers. We make claims of expertise based on having ‘been there,’ talked to people, perhaps stayed in the village for some days. But after ten years of coming and going, there are still subtleties of communication to which I am adjusting, tiny-spoken tidbits slipping out in a moment in front of the evening fire that completely change my interpretation of something I thought I’d understood. There are secrets, of course – like the fact that it took a dear friend of mine who works with HIV+ youth nearly two years to tell me that her brother had actually died of AIDS – but it’s more than that.

I can say this not only about others, but myself. It’s not only my voice that changes, but the way in which I inhabit space here. I respond mostly to “mainini” when called by “maiguru” – the little wife obeying the head wife; I cook and dish and serve dinner to the man of the house first; I bow and hold my right elbow in my left hand when I offer a plate. I do these things largely without thinking about them. And at last weekend’s kitchen party, I held my tongue in a roomful of women talking about ways in which a wife should serve her husband and reading the Bible as a reminder that the husband is the head of the household as God is the head of the church. But even as they nodded agreement, many of these women personify strength, independence, humor, and will. The lines that get so clearly drawn by outsiders about who is empowered and not fail to recognise much of the daily complexity constituted and reconstituted by the process of living out these personal relationships.

One of the things I have promised myself is that what I will respect most in doing my research is the people I encounter and with whom I am fortunate enough to spend time and share stories. This means that most of my time here is spent sitting and talking with people – not in interview form, but just passing time and discussing anything and everything from the floods to the garden to the last election. It is becoming clear to me that this approach is, in the view of many other academics, costly in a professional sense. In a male-dominated field, I spend time on things that “don’t matter,” resulting in me being shut out of some discussions and not respected for, say, spending time with women talking about craft markets rather than taking GPS points. A few years ago, I was giving a talk and in the process of introducing me, an older male colleague referred to me as a “relationship builder.” It was code for “someone who likes people” rather than “a serious scholar like me.” It felt rather pejorative, especially when after my presentation, he proceeded to reverse my interpretation of my own research – gleaned from weeks sitting with women in the Kalahari dust talking about how they cope with the risks of HIV in their sex lives and in caring for their sick family members. It was all that much more problematic because he was not being particularly argumentative – but rather, what was clearest was that he simply had not heard (or perhaps, listened to) much of what I had said.

I suppose there are things to be said about covering miles in others’ shoes and so forth; we all may appear different depending on the context – as well as who is in front, behind, or beside us. Perhaps the challenge is, whatever the appearance, to be open and genuine in the midst of that difference.