Sure, there was a roadtrip and talks and a play, but most of my time I spent sitting in front of my two computer screens, searching for, cleaning, structuring and visualizing data on demographics, education, household economics and agricultural production in Burkina Faso and Ghana.
Visualizing data into maps is a pretty simple thing if you know how to use a GIS, and the downloaded data has been structured in an analysis-friendly way by the data provider. I was taught to do basic GIS visualizations years ago on data from Statistics Sweden. There, all data that you download is structured by the municipality codes, and these in turn can easily be connected to municipality boundary files in a GIS. A couple of clicks, and you’ve got a choropleth map showing basically anything you can imagine. That’s how good Statistics Sweden and the Swedish Land Survey are.
Now, this is not at all the case with the data that’s available for Burkina Faso and Ghana. If the data even exists, it’s in pdf format that needs to be digitized, or in an Excel sheet full of errors, and I’ve had to spend hours on cleaning and structuring the data, not to speak of trying to figure out what the data is actually measuring. Ghana has also had a number of district reforms, meaning that data from different years cannot be directly compared. I’ve had to play detective, trying to figure out which districts are the same, and which have been merged or split up.
It is not a particularly intellectually challenging job, but it needs to be done. I fell into the habit of listening to music while doing it, just to keep the energy up. I’ve needed something upbeat and catchy. Naturally,I became obsessed with Taylor Swift. Whenever possible, I’ve had her videos playing in the background. I must have looked deranged whenever a college walked by my desk, twitching by my office chair with spreadsheets and maps covering my two screens, with Taylor singing in my headphones for only me to hear.
One of her songs is called “22”. The lyrics go like this: It feels like a perfect night to dress up like hipsters and make fun of our exes. It feels like a perfect night for breakfast at midnight, to fall in love with strangers. Yeah, we’re happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time, it’s miserable and magical. Tonight’s the night when we forget about the deadlines, it’s time. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 22. Everything will be alright.
It made me think: Who was I at 22? Probably dressing kind of like a hipster. I still do. I didn’t really have any exes to make fun of. I don’t like breakfast. I did fall in love once that year, but not with a stranger. I was definitely happy, confused and miserable all at the same time. I don’t know how much of a 22-year-old that made me in Taylor’s eyes, but it is a catchy song and I liked to think I once was one of those 22-year-olds in heart-shaped sunglasses next to Taylor. Even if that would be to completely rewrite history.
But one thing is for sure, though: At 22, I did not expect to spend hours cleaning data, staring at uninspiring spreadsheets. And, in a backwards way, kind of enjoying it.
Me at 22, in Namibia doing fieldwork.
Katja Malmborg 