comings and goings

So I finally got the car back today, which is a damn good thing because I need to drive to Johannesburg -- again!!! -- tomorrow so that I can pick up my gentleman-friend from the airport Thursday morning. You can believe I will only be driving in good daylight this time...

That said, it's been anarchy around here as I trade one housemate for two others, one of whom is a recent arrival to Gabs. There are no real problems, just the usual discomfort of having to adjust one's life to new circumstances, which can be exacerbated by having the continuity of living space, if not of living companions. (No, I'm never set in my ways...)

These companions are only here for two months, and I need to find someone else to share the house with me come August. A lot of expat/student-types I know in Gabs are leaving as the 'field season' comes to the end over the North American summer. As many of you know, I have no real intention of leaving 'the field' until sometime in 2008, so I am looking for the arrival of the next wave of researchers (or my 'tribe', as one friend put it). In the meantime, though, it's not much fun being the one left behind.

At least one of my cohort-mates is packing up and leaving the field, too, which leaves me with a strange feeling. Why am I not done? What exactly have I got to show for my nine or so months in Botswana? Am I spinning my wheels? The things that reassure me are: 1) I'm not even halfway through the first of my grants; 2) I haven't looked at everything I want to look at; and 3) I'm not bored by the things I'm seeing. So I might as well hang out a bit if I can eat grant money while I do so.

thin lines

I am having a hell of a week.

First, the pig. Then, last night, my computer freaked out on me -- I know, I'm really showing off my technical savviness with that description -- and I spent this evening trying to de-bug it. (A big shout-out to my technical support in Russia... the spyware advisor who loves me?)

And I've been seriously oversleeping. I chalk part of this up to the pig. (Yes, all you luckless insomniacs out there, I suffer the reverse: trauma and stress make me sleep more, not less.) I chalk the rest of this up to the plummeting temperatures at night. (I don't quite understand how or why seasonal change also makes me sleep, but I'd guess that the urge to hibernate is not absent from the human constitution.)

I dodged work Monday and Tuesday, in part to sort out the car (which is a story unto itself), and in part to just give myself a break. But I had an appointment today to join the outreach team of the clinic to which I've attached myself these past few months, so at least there was a scheduled end to my semi-self-indulgent skyvving.

I had a wonderful time with the outreach team, but I did something that would make my IRB have kittens if they found out about it. (I feel nervous even posting this...) I don't think I did anything remotely harmful, but I did do something for which I am not technically qualified. (OK, arguably, it's not clear whether I am qualified to hold a child down while a bone marrow draw is done, but I did that, too.)

The thing is, I think it's probably almost impossible to do participant-observation in clinical settings and not find oneself called upon to complete various tasks for one reason or another. I'm not picking up scalpels or prescribing drugs... I'm only performing tasks that lay (e.g., lacking formal medical education) people in this context also perform.

This is one of those moments where the researcher is really supposed to be 'not there', but between today and the week at camp for HIV+ kids, I have been very much there, doing all sort of things that make any pretense of 'non-interference' a joke. And, frankly, some of the richest data comes from being handed a task and told -- whether because people are busy, or short of hands, or just curious -- 'OK, now do this thing...'

These lines are so much fuzzier than any IRB proposal ever allows them to be, which is, itself, interesting, especially in the here-and-now of Botswana. So much more grist for the anthropological mill...

PSA

A public service announcement from the Queen of Orange, which those in North American with big hearts, five minutes, and a spare first-class mail stamp should heed.

a contest!

In honour of having slaughtered a wild pig with my car this past Saturday night about 30km away from the border post dividing South Africa from Botswana, I invite you to exercise your poetic wits and celebrate this tremendous occasion in rhyme.

For example:

Come here, come here, myopic pig,
I'll smack you good with my big rig.

What's more, I invite you to submit your rhymes in the language of your choice (or the language of your field site for ye anthropology types).

To wit:

Приди, приди, глупая свинья, (Pridi, pridi, glupaya svin'ya)
Ударит тебя моя машина! (Udarit tebya moya mashina!)

(trans.: Come, come, stupid/silly pig / My car will strike you!)

Or:

Tla kwano, tla kwano, kolobe,
Ke tlaa go bolaya ka koloi ya me!

(trans.: Come here, come here, pig / I will kill you with my car!)

While it would be most appropriate to reward the best poem with some tasty wild pork -- both SA and Botswana police and customs officials kept asking me where the meat was -- I'm afraid that I'll have to come up with something else.

N.B.: Killing animals that are property can be very expensive: cows are not cheap to replace, even if you survive hitting them, and the fault lies with the motorist for hitting the cow, not with the cow for being dumb enough to walk into oncoming traffic. But according to a friend, in Botswana, when you kill even a wild animal, you have to pay damages to the government! I am very glad that my pig, however damaging to my car, was at least South African...

"There is nothing the Administration can do that is not ironic."

I love John Stewart.

And I love irony.

And I really, really love comeuppance -- especially when the subject of this comeuppance is getting kicked in the a** by conversative policies of his own design...

...even more so when those policies, in their moral smugness, promise wide-scale crappy effects on the lives of many, many people this man can't even begin imagine but whose sexual behaviour he nevertheless intends to regulate.

This is the sweetest thing since Tuesday night's cookie-fest...

http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/index.jhtml
Look for "Prostitution Gate" and then just keep going...