Getting started with the research - questions, questions and more questions..

It has been a good 10 days, I had a lovely birthday, have been on loads of field visits doing interviews and group discussions complete with thunder storms, government meetings and burials delaying activities and a mini bus ride that I thought I would never survive!

My birthday was celebrated with Nik singing happy birthday at 7am, chocolate cake complete with candles from the SPW staff, a field visit and then roast goat and chips and a few beers sitting looking at the river Nile. A good start to being 34.

Since then Nik has returned to the UK and I have been settling into the daily life of doing my research. This has mainly been trips into the field to meet with the members of the co-operatives I am working with. At Kigayaza Youth Co-operative this has involved touring around member’s farms looking at an array of crops from coffee to pineapples to maize. Also looking at their livestock projects, they have some pigs whose offspring they give out to other members so that they can establish their own piggeries. I keep getting asked a lot of questions about farming in the UK – what crops do we grew there? When do we plant crops? What diseases do our crops experience? Needless to say I have to admit to my absolute lack of knowledge on British farms but can throw in a few comments on farming in Zambia! I am better at answering questions on when do people get married, am I married, how many children do people have, do I have any children, what is life like in the UK, does everyone live in a village, what jobs do people have, do people go to church….I feel responsible for representing the UK and I am not sure I am that representative!

In Kigayaza I have been doing interviews with individual members to hear about their lives and the role that the co-operative plays for them. In the main the co-operative is a way for them to improve the way they farm and become more successful at farming – increasing the size of their farm and improving the quality of their produce. This is done through sharing ideas a as a group, being able to access training from other organisations and perhaps most importantly through linking up with other farmers, especially those that are doing particularly well and learning from them. Two trips to this co-operative have been delayed/cancelled due to the rain. The road to the co-operative is a dirt road and when it rains it becomes impossible to get through with a car. The last time we had to stop short the activities as it began to rain and we had to get out quick before the road became too muddy to get home! It is also important to remember that they are kindly giving of their time for my research which really they get no benefit from – if they therefore need to tend to their crops rather than talk to me, this is what they should do and I need to fit in around them. That said they are a great group of young farmers, very motivated and keen to work through the research activities in the spirit of international co-operation and learn what they can along the way.

At Joy Ford the savings and credit co-operative I am working with, we have been visiting members of this rural bank to see what they been doing with the money that they have been saving at Joy Ford and also the money that they have been lending. A loan of 100 GBP can make a real difference for a small farmer or businessman. This money plus Joy Ford’s repayment terms such as monthly installments rather than weekly mean they can slowly but surely build their businesses. We met Nora who started off selling tomatoes in the market, gradually started selling charcoal and other goods and now has her own shop. They all say the biggest things they have learnt is a culture of saving their money and also planning for themselves and for their business – rather than living and running their businesses day to day they look to the future and make plans.

All the research has to be done in local language, so Tonny, my research assistant and I work through each interview with him translating as we go along. We have found people respond better to group interviews and discussions rather than individual interviews, they feel more at ease. They tend to see the interviews as formal and their answers are often short. We are often surrounded by people as well; even if we go and sit in a room in their house, there are children peeping through the windows and the doors. In the focus groups they feel free to elaborate and debate the issues that we are asking them about.

Overall I am enjoying the research – it is like doing a puzzle, finding something out from one person and trying to fit this together with what someone else. Also like a jig saw it takes time and patience, there are unexpected delays I can do nothing about, like the weather and burials in the village. I can also feel that doing research is a process, going in and out of the communities trying one research method and then another to try and find out what is happening overall. The jig saw continues!

I am reminded of my time as a volunteer in Nepal and enjoying doing more grass roots work rather than the work of a development practitioner which is these days so often in an office in the UK/Europe, or if you are lucky in the country where the programme is running. To be out and about and chatting to people to understand their situation is a great place to be and one that I feel I have been missing out on in my work, for some years now.

Research aside I have been fighting off the river flies that arrive en masse into my room between 7.30 – 8.30 pm each night, I don’t know how they get in but it is lights off for that hour and then they disappear. I now have one motorbike taxi driver who knows how slow I like to go and so I go with him everywhere, with my yellow hoodie and my newly acquired helmet! I have had some fun nights out with some of the SPW staff and been enjoying my radio 4 podcasts, I have to admit it I am an Archer’s junkie!