Maladie

Hallo

Well, this week has beena bit of a weird one. I have been ill since monday eve, hardly eaten a thing and been spending whole days in the hotel at a time... Not done any volunteering but have managed to do some thinking!!! yaya for thinking. DB went to volunteering though and told me some things which have changed the research somewhat for the mo...

Basically the agency that i am volunteering for, now I am here, is very different to the one I thought I had signed up to volunteer with. This may sound strange because it is. I have no idea how this happened! I wonder if at home in england I have been accessing an old website from before they got all successful and mahousive - and now I am here I see a different website that explains very clearly what their org is all about and I tell you, if I had known, I would not have offered my (limited) services!! It is a purely educational agency and I have no knowledge of education materials or teaching skills which is what they do, and my research is a million miles away from this too. Sooooo. I will stay until I go to Goa in Jan and then if I like it etc go back, and if it isn't really happening then I shall make my excuses and leave having put in a month's worth of work. I came out wanting to volunteer for a small 'hands-on' org, by the coast, with a handful of staff and volunteers so I could talk to people easily, get to part of a wee aid family here and also have easy access to the people and communities who they work for and with. Instead I am part of a VERY busy aid-machine, with very paid employees, with very international meetings to go to, and a national agenda of change... which is great, but I am not that enthusiastic about being sin a back office somewhere labelling pictures!!!

HOWEVER,
Instead of crying about it I am working out how to work it to my advantage. I can use them to:

network with other large orgs here
use their brains about the aid industry in india
ask about their priorities (morally and philosophically)
See any aid villages they have worked with (hopefully, they did say something about that on email months back...)
ask about the makeshift huts I have seen up the road
find out about the aid-effort in Chennai
and use the time I am spending with them to also liaise and interview, even volunteer, with other peeps that I have just spend two hours rustling up on the tinternet.

Twill be fine I am sure. I am not going to worry about it for about a month or so and then shall see what the last few weeks have brought up (anything).

One thing I am learning is that when you are in the 'field' (UG! need a new word! anyone?!!) some days you find out loads and others you find out nothing. 'Tis the nature of the beast. And also, something that may been unexpected and therefore a challenge makes you look around it and question it - ' why is it 'wrong' - could it be useful?' and this too adds a rigorousness to what you 'know' and use in your research, and what you leave out/don't follow up. It also allows the research to progress a little on its own without having to be activley working on it all the time because these little challenges can be blessings in disguise.

Arg though, being ill this week has made me feel really lame. I sit there in bed thinking of all my friends and their intrepid, intellectual brilliance and think 'they wouldn't sit in bed for days, no sir! They would do the job they came to do!!' Then I think I am lazy and before you know it I am convinced I am a big, embarrassing research jokette. Pity poor me.

Then I go to sleep.

Oh oh OH though! I haven't said but I did some more research on my theoretical ideas and from my post the other day the answer was that indeed I was being ignorant and hadn't read enough - I put in very unlikely words into google and WHOOP! There it was! A lovely lovely article saying how my ideas were spankingly fine-a-doodle-do. So , finally, finally, my theoretical direction is all set, i love it, and I am sure that the rest will fall into place soon enough! SUCH an enormous weight off my mind, you just don't know what you are looking at when you don't have your theory pinned down. 'Can I write as a po-mo?! Or should I write as a realist? How would this affect how I go about and write-up and analyse my interviews? How does this affect my interpretations/transcripts of my observations?' bla bla blaaaaa.

But I know now. Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot!!

Now I just need to work out what my research structure will be like here. I think I sall have to wait until I have settled in for a month, do a lot of reading and asking around my vol place, and then reassess and start doing interviews.

I am tired!! we are flat hunting later... I would love my own place! I am sick of eating out - I am craving just a meal of bread, cheese (any cheese, plastic cheese will do) and some coco pops (I don't eat these sugar pops normally but they seem so normal and plain here!!). Or some lentils I have cooked myself in my own way. I just cannot face curry!! I cannot! What I shall do instead is beyond me - but then so is hunger so... I am getting a bit skinny malinny though and ought to start eating soon. My mind is not on my side though. If it sees dirt in a restaurant it goes 'Uch! I shall not eat!' And makes my tummy churn. If I smell curry it does the same. And so all is not good!!! I just feel sick!

Bah.

My word, I ought to get some chrimbo pressies! Oh dear lord WHAT shall I buy?! To the John Lewis website pronto...

x J