{"id":20,"date":"2016-07-12T17:27:39","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T17:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/alainaboyle\/?p=20"},"modified":"2016-07-12T17:27:39","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T17:27:39","slug":"the-first-of-many-field-journeys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/alainaboyle\/2016\/07\/12\/the-first-of-many-field-journeys\/","title":{"rendered":"The First of Many Field Journeys"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, June 27th<\/sup>, our work really began. As we drove from our now-familiar tourist-town home in Arusha and watched the houses slowly get further and further apart as they were replaced by trees, crops, and cattle, I could tell that this week would be very different from the last. The air got warmer and clearer and the scenery got more lush and more beautiful. After about 3 hours of driving, we arrived at our first village, beautifully perched amongst the mountains with a view that Americans would hike hours to see. Yet, here, people were just going about their daily lives. I felt privileged to be a part of it.<\/p>\n

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Arusha<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"IMG_7209\"
On the road to Babati<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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When we arrived, there was already a group of Solar Sister Entrepreneurs and customers waiting for us, thanks to Solar Sister\u2019s great organizing. So, we got right to work: introducing ourselves using the proper respectful greetings, obtaining informed consent from our participants, and administering our four-page surveys regarding use and impact of solar lanterns (with help from our translators\/research assistants to go from English to Swahili and back).<\/p>\n

\"IMG_7216\"
One of my early interviewees<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The rest of the week proceeded with this pattern and it was amazing to watch our methodology and translation glide into ease over time. While the initial surveys took us over an hour each, by the end of the week, they were about 30 minutes a piece. We ended up collecting 63 surveys from 4 different villages over the course of the week, exceeding our optimistic goal of 50 surveys for the week. I felt myself enter a sort of flow every time I sat down to do a survey: the time would fly by as I felt myself get in sync with my translator and felt my pen naturally scribing every word spoken back to me. The questions we asked ranged from simple economic questions such as \u201cwhat are your main sources of income?\u201d to much more complex empowerment questions such as \u201cdo you feel more respected in your community because of your solar use?\u201d and it was beautiful to hear people\u2019s stories.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_7792\"
One of my later interviewees<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I found myself experiencing enormous excitement mixed with a twinge of sadness as I transferred these stories to notes on a page, and then later, numbers in an Excel spreadsheet. It feels great to be gathering lots of rich data and know that we will have so much to use for our finished product. With many diverse communities sampled and detailed data collected, our reports will hopefully contribute a lot to Solar Sister\u2019s understanding of and ability to serve their customers. I know that in the long run, this work is mutually beneficial as a unique hands-on learning experience for me and an important publication for Solar Sister and I am excited to be working towards it. Still, it feels strange to spend only 30 minutes with each person when I know I have so much to learn from each and every one of them and that they each have a unique story to share. I have never done research like this before, and it is difficult. I long for a deeper connection with every person I survey but constraints of language and time make it difficult. In the end, a balance that optimizes both efficiency and personalization must be struck.<\/p>\n

\"The
The research team<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Children, however, are easy to connect with on a personal level. Every day, without fail, we had a big group of children watching us by the time we finished our surveys. Sometimes, they would try to get me to smile or wave at them while I was administering a survey, and when I inevitably chose the children over my work and waved back, they would squeal with delight. As soon as we were done for the day, I would go to each child, shake their hand, and ask them what their name was (\u201cJina lako nani?\u201d). Then, we would proceed to play a game of catch or soccer, take selfies on my phone, or have a big hug\/lets-touch-Alaina\u2019s-hair fest. It is my favorite part of every day I spend in the field.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_7241\" \"IMG_7840\"<\/p>\n

As much as I enjoyed every moment I spent with those children, I couldn\u2019t help but have some mixed feelings about it. Here I am, this white person (\u201cMzungu\u201d), riding in a safari car, visiting a different village every day and never returning. Some of the key ideas I\u2019ve been taught and experienced firsthand about building community and living in solidarity with the people you are serving with seems to be missing in this setting. Multiple times, I had children call me a Mzungu and ask me for money or goodies, or even aggressively try to touch my hands and hair and tell me they loved me. While these situations proved awkward for me, I know that this behavior is only what has been taught and reinforced by white people coming in and out of villages so quickly without actually stopping to be with the people. The children clearly want to humanize and normalize foreigners\u2014when I taught the children my name, they immediately called me \u201cAlaina\u201d the next time I saw them\u2014they just rarely get the chance to with people coming in and out so quickly.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_7217\"<\/p>\n

This is just one of the many thought-provoking topics that have been brought up by this trip. For these reasons, impact assessment work is proving to be more difficult that I ever anticipated. Still, I get an incredible high every time I go into a village and also actually really enjoy data coding and entry, so I know that I am in the right place this summer. I very much enjoy this research and know that in the end, it will impact more lives by bringing about funding and awareness to Solar Sister and the incredible mission they are seeking. Still, no work is without complications and difficulties. This experience is teaching me so much about direct versus indirect impact work and I can already see it working in mysterious ways to discern my future vocation.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_7717\"<\/p>\n

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On Monday, June 27th, our work really began. As we drove from our now-familiar tourist-town home in Arusha and watched the houses slowly get further and further apart as they were replaced by trees, crops, and cattle, I could tell that this week would be very different from the last. The air got warmer and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1600,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","no-image","with-title"],"gutentor_comment":1,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"alainaboyle","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/alainaboyle\/author\/alainaboyle\/"},"qubely_comment":1,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"On Monday, June 27th, our work really began. As we drove from our now-familiar tourist-town home in Arusha and watched the houses slowly get further and further apart as they were replaced by trees, crops, and cattle, I could tell that this week would be very different from the last. The air got warmer and…","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/alainaboyle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/alainaboyle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/alainaboyle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/alainaboyle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1600"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/alainaboyle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/alainaboyle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/alainaboyle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/32"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/alainaboyle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/alainaboyle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/alainaboyle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}