Reccying away

I am still not ill! And I am working! A miracle...

And I have found an internet cafe opposite my hotel which is really fast and swish. Excellent. And my hotel room is LOVELY. So lovely I slept for a solid 9.5 hours last night... Well, that may be more down to my own laziness than the hotel but it is so quiet and clean!

We have moved on up the coast to a new hotspot, having reccy-ed rather successfully in the nagapattinam area. We got a bus up which was an experience as always. We tried to get the first connecting bus from our town but WOW the buses were full - us and our backpacks were never going to get on! So we got an exorbitantly priced rickshaw instead which was actually a blessing in disguise because I could take lots of photies again - I would never have been able to do that on the bus. But the bus we got up the coast was lovely! Big and blue with wide open windows - and what a view! This region is all countryside, small towns and cows. So peaceful. And sadly knackered from the tsunami. So much aid but so little that is visible! Why are peple still living in teeny manky huts on the edge of town? I shall investigate!

I have done a lot of analysis from my photos and experiences so feel like a good worker. I also have developed more of an understanding of the region- even just the transport links and the amount of Tamil/English that is spoken is really important. It isn't as dramatically non-English as I was told, and our Tamil seems to go down well. Well, DB's Tamil - I have to say that I am not really spoken to very much! Is fine though, am happy to watch and listen. UG I have a mossie bite that has swollen up on my thigh to be about an inch across. As you can imagine, it itches. A LOT. I was very proud of my lack of mossie bites until yesterday we were eating in this lovely side-of-the-road canteen and I looked at my arm to see a mosquito feeding away that was almost the size of a cat. It obviously didn't just stop on my arms. Poor me :0(

Yes, so work. Work is going WELL. I have developed a better focus too - I did loads of brilliant reading from notes that I brought out with me about case study design (yay!), and realised that the way my reserch is working out is pretty typical - including the slowness and unpredictability - and also realised that I need to focus it down so much more. This pleases me greatly - thinking of how to anotate the lives of a whole town was pretty daunting! I also always wondered how people know how many interviews they are going to do. How do people arrive at a number? I didn't know. Well, I do now! I have worked out that I need to speak to between five and nine groups of people - how these groups are constituted and of whom, I do not know yet, but I do know I need groups of people to talk with me and then I can compare these groups' experiences to others' I talk to, and start to get the semblence of a research project. This stuff is always so obvious when you know it and so obvious when you read other people's projects, but all I can say is - 'best laid plans...'!! It has been sooooo unpredictable! Being here is completely different to being at home and saying, 'Right! I am going to talk to women's coopperatives! 10 of them in each town!' Oh yes. Much different. And also, I have to bear in mind that I have never, ever done anything like this before in my life I am making it up as I go along, and learning sooooo much, next time it shan't be as bad - at least I would know that it needs to be so small etc and will take so long - and soon it will be good, and I would enjoy it. I am enthused by the fact that as I hone in on my focus of the project, my enthusiasm and interest in my topic grows again - I am so looking forward to interviewing and contacting people to find out information in a way that I really shied from before - because, and I really believe this, because I just wasn't ready. I did not really know what I wanted to talk about with anyone - when I have my focus in the next couple of weeks, I will know - I can ring contacts and ask for interviews because I will be confident in my reasons for wanting them to take time out of their day to talk to me. And I can contact people to start to arrange site no. 2 when I know more what I want from it - and that side of the research should be quicker to get underway...

Well, I say that but knowing this research it will not work out like that! But then again, that is something else that is interesting about doing research - you learn that plans you make, and ideas you have are good but are always only for now - and you have to just deal with the transitory nature of confidence. You have it, you don't, you think again and the cycle starts agian - but as it continues so you get closer to you goal.

Fieldwork is crazy! But, I have to say, I am finally starting to relax into it and, I suppose, live it. For so long I have been apologetic (to whom?!) for not being fast with the results, or working all day every day - but with fieldwork it is so much harder than that. You are always working in some capacity - a walk is not just a 'walk' for example - you are scanning and watching and learning about people, environment, the use of 'space', culture... on and on. It is actually hard work! But good, interesting and fun work. Then you go back to your hotel and write write write and think think think... then you watch tennis or animal planet if you have a tele. Yaya!

Tomorrow we had a date to move on again, straight up to site one, but am going to stay here another night. Today started quite slowly (is Indian Republic Day today so all very quiet and peaceful) but spent this afternoon reccying and then tomorrow will head to a neighbouring town - and on Weds will head up to site1 and start work! My aim over the next few days is to obviously analyse the day's findings, but also to work out what kind of focus I think I can get in site1, and how I may go about doing that. I am keeping in mind that I can't know this without being there so will just have a preliminary think more in regards to what to say I want to my vol places - I have two lined up and am dreading making the same mistake as with my last vol place in Chennai!

Another silly but vital thing that has happened to me on this recce is being open about what I am here to do. People may ask DB (of course, he speaks for both of us!!! arg) what we are doing in TN - particularly when we bit off the normal tourist track - and he says that we are here for my work and I always feel so embarrassed, like they are going to laugh at me or put me on the spot - because they live this life that I want to 'study' - what do I know, and who am I to know it? But the past week I have been open about it myself and have not been met with hatred or derision, but in fact with interest and even happiness - that someone wanted to pay attention to their plight, people who are ignored now the aid-effort has left. This makes me most pleased, and has also bumped up my confidence immeasurably. If people are pleased I am here working that makes my job so much better - the last thing I want is for people to think I am here to exploit anyone or to make people 'objects' of 'study'. I hope we can work together (but feel that this is some kind of hippy pipe dream sometimes) yet people seem to be encouraging and forthcoming. Yay!

x J