Sabbatical Finds Me in Maun

This year’s field school has already gone rushing by – three weeks of counting wildlife and discussions with community members and presentations by researchers.  And of course, some small incidents with the truck stuck in sand, and a disagreement over what constitutes a ‘souvenir’ at the border, but in each case no harm done.   One of our running jokes included keeping a virtual list of things that my students were not allowed to tell the university president on their return.  The last one I added after I dropped them off at the Zimbabwean border to catch a comby [shared minibus taxi] to Vic Falls for a few days after we finished up and before they went their separate ways; it was, uh, “Don’t tell Ron that the field school wound up beautifully with me dropping the students off at the…Zimbabwean border…so that they could catch a lift into Vic Falls…”


Now, with a year of sabbatical opening up in front of me, I’m settling in to Maun again – good friends, interesting research questions (mine and those of others), dust, power outages, new projects, inflated liquor taxes, Hilary’s pecan pie, rising river waters, strange looks at the white girl walking along the road instead of driving.  Not that I don’t have a car – I do.  But the view is different from the side of the road, and one thing I have always appreciated about living here is that, well, the view is different.


One of the things that I have been talking about with my current research student (who is doing an absolutely phenomenal job, by the way, and I say that not because he’s likely to read this but because I mean it most sincerely) is that most of doing research “somewhere else” is not about the questionnaires and surveys and interviews and formal processes known as data collection.  Most of it – if one truly wants to understand an unfamiliar place – is about relationships.  And building good relationships takes time.  A lot of time.  A lot of time doing things that seem, on the surface, unrelated to that research proposal that got you funded to get here in the first place.  Some excellent advice on this subject came from my dissertation advisor, who told me to be interested in everything – because one never knows what might become important later.  My own caveat to this is, be interested in the people around you – and what they are interested in, because while yes, it might help you with your research, most importantly – everyone is a human being and nobody wants to be treated like a patient at the dentist’s office [hold still while I yank what I want out of you!].


This philosophy has some funny consequences here.  In particular, when people ask me how the work is coming – like, how are the surveys, or interviews, or the data gathering they assume to a usual researcher’s task – I haven’t got much to say.   This is in part because, at some level, I’m not ‘doing’ a whole lot right now.  I’m spending a lot of time catching up with folks.  I’m reading.  I’ve been to a few meetings.  And I’ve initiated some discussions that are likely to evolve over the next year or more.  But with time and presence, in my experience, these are the kinds of things that mean much more – in human terms, as well as research parlance – than do quick ‘roadside surveys’ [a term used by a grad student I’ve worked with who is referring to the tendency of foreign researchers to cruise through rural areas interviewing whoever is closest to the road, rather than having to go into or, lord forbid, stay in villages].  There’s lots in the offing, I’d say.  But from the outside, it probably doesn't appear to be much right now.  As my best friend in high school used to joke, “People tell me I procrastinate too much.  And I say, just wait!!”


Admittedly, I am also taking some time to relax – to read things I want to read, watch some disappointing movies, see if I can sit in the sun long enough for my legs to take on the same tint as my arms, slow roast a pan of tomatoes and garlic and collect around town [which is actually possible now, craziness] the ingredients to make tiramisu for a party on Saturday.  This kind of space is also lovely for the settling in and out of ideas; with some love and deliberation, the itchy desire to write creeps back in – and here I am.


So among the many other things I’ve been thinking about lately, is nothing.  My Shambhalians will of course find that especially humorous.  But to quote Peter Gibbons, who did not get it right the first time but did well the second time around:  “I did nothing.  I did absolutely nothing.  And it was everything I thought it could be.”