Tag Archives: fieldwork

I think I alluded to it in an earlier post, but the day before I was set to go for my two last days of fieldwork, things just turned upside down with Elli’s laboratory things and our payments and everything worked out in the end, but not without me being half a day late toContinue reading “the last two days of fieldwork (December 4th)”

It is kind of hard to avoid, really, when that’s what most of my questions have been about. Food. What do people eat to sustain themselves. They tell me: That wild bush has leaves that can be used to spice tô (millet porridge). And they pick the leaves and start nibbling on them, offering meContinue reading “eating wild things (December 4th)”

Finishing up the last transect walk in Sera. Meeting a flirting donkey foal, hanging out for a while with the animals and the boys and the men in the shade underneath the animal fodder storage sun shelter. Giving them rice and soap. Shaking everyone’s hand. Picking up Elli. Arriving in Ouaga, at Chez Tess, whereContinue reading “and now we’re there, the last transect: CHECK (November 29)”

Today was the toughest day I’ve had here. I simply didn’t want to walk. I was sick of waiting for people, sick of having to shake every single grown-up man’s hand, sick of introducing myself and my project, sick of all the millet fields and itchy pieces of dry vegetation that gets stuck in myContinue reading “almost the last transect (November 28)”

The mobile broadband modem that we bought in the beginning of our trip, but haven’t had to use until now, has turned out to be a joke. It only works in glimpses, enough for me to see that I’ve gotten e-mails, but I rarely manage to open them, and never answer. The only time itContinue reading “the mood swings of the internet (November 28)”

Nakombogo, the third village I walked through in the Kaya area, didn’t have mountains or watermelons, or anything else that made it stick out. But the CVD was an intensely happy man. He had four wives, four bulls and twenty-one children. Maybe those things are connected. The happiness and wives, bulls and children, I mean.

It’s my namnsdag today. A strange tradition, really, this Swedish one of making every day of the year the ”name’s day” for two names. Today, one of the names is Katja. I have met no Swedes today, though, who could wish me a good namnsdag. Instead, I’ve been to Tanlargo. The watermelon village. This villageContinue reading “the watermelon village (November 25)”

Before internet crashed again, I managed to see a photograph that Kate had uploaded on Facebook of her pale face and red nose, and some comment of her now returning to the winter (from Uruguay to New Zeeland, I presume), and no tan for her due to thesis work, or something like that. That gotContinue reading “the body of a fieldworking researcher (November 24)”

I’ve treated myself to a room of my own here in Kaya. I could have done like in Ouahigouya and gotten one big room for both me and Desiré to share, but no. With the intense work schedule I have here, I decided I needed the privacy at least a couple of hours a day.Continue reading “fieldwork luxury (November 24)”

I did the first transect walks in the Kaya area today in a village called Zanzi. It was a small village, situated in the valleys between a chain of small mountains that suddenly just appear in the otherwise quite flat landscape when driving along the Gourcy-Kaya road. Due to the mountains, this place was somethingContinue reading “back on track (November 24)”