Wednesday, January 18, 2012

A funny thing happened while doing research...

Quite a few things, in fact. 

One of the main things that kept catching me off guard while hiking through the bush was tripping over bones in the sand. There would be a leg bone here, a jaw bone there.. clearly animal bones, but considering how hearty Pokot's goats and cows are compared to us white weaklings, that wasn't as comforting as I'd hoped..

In one of my first interviews, a dozen women of various ages surrounded me to answer questions. Kids were running all over, boobs were hanging out, plenty of horking was going on, but everyone was listening and answering.  5 minutes in, a very old grandma came out of a nearby hut, dressed in traditional Pokot clothing, with stretched out earlobes and huge beaded necklaces. She strolled over to me, we shook hands, and she proceeded to stand over me and shout something loudly in Pokot. The women looked at me awkwardly and laughed, and my translator buried her head in her hands. I asked her what the woman had said and she mumbled bashfully, "she is wondering if you're a boy or a girl." Nice. Thanks, grandma. 

In the same interview, a man wandered over and sat down with us. Our class had discussed the difficulties of interviewing tribes like the Pokot, where it's often unacceptable to speak with a woman without her husband present, and he can often dominate the interview or affect the way she answers. I started asking the women some detailed questions about what happens to their circumcision scars after giving birth. They chuckled and looked restlessly at each other, and gave a few harsh exclamations. To my surprise, my translator said, "they are refusing to answer this question with a man present, and are telling him to go away!" The man shyly picked up his stool and walked off, and the women happily proceeded to give me the gorey details. Out in the boonies, some issues are are more easily resolved than expected. Thank goodness for that.  
Aaaand some things are harder. I came across a household with a husband and his two wives. After speaking with the wives for 20 minutes, the husband took over, informing me that as soon as her husband leaves to go work in the fields, an uncircumcised woman will go find another man to sleep with, whereas a circumcised woman will stay faithful to her man. I couldn't help myself. "Okay, tell me how this works then," I said. "I have a boyfriend. He is in America. I am here in Kenya, far, FAR away from him. I am not circumcised, yet I am not looking for any other men here, nor do I have any desire to be with anyone but him. So maybe... it's possible?" My translator said all of this to him as he and his wives' eyes widened. Then he started laughing and said, "You need to give us some of this medicine you are taking!" We briefly discussed the idea of self-control vs. medicine before he grew bored and left. 

The focus of my studies the past 5 months has been on women's health issues, but the theme that keeps emerging is the huge role men play in every single one of those issues. Female circumcision is no exception. While the decision to circumcise is made by the mother or daughter herself and performed by women in the community, it is ultimately the man who chooses to marry only circumcised women, meaning uncircumcised women are shunned from the community -- no marriage means no children, no money, no land, no livelihood, no family, nothing to exist for. 

I have to add this photo of the coolest interviewees ever. A Mum and her daughter, who were hiking through the bush with their machetes.We sat under a tree and talked. The Mum was deaf, and the daughter had a unique lip-reading/signing system to communicate with her. The daughter was just 20 and married, with her own daughter, but was insistent that she would not be circumcised. When I asked her why not, she was the first interviewee to tell me, very firmly and decidedly, that she saw absolutely no benefit in circumcision. 

This was a critical point I'd wondered if I needed to communicate to them, but this young woman made it quite clear that she and her tribe are acknowledging those effects, and are ready to change ancient, inherited traditions for the sake of the following generation. 
Another funny thing about doing research in the bush is that you're drinking huge amounts of water, but there are no toilets. Nobody even has pit latrines because the Pokot believe a parent's and child's feces should never mix. Fair enough, but that means doing it in a bush, which leaves your back open to wild animals, or, more gravely, traumatizing some innocent young child wandering around collecting firewood. This concern became bigger and bigger as we walked through the most desolate stretches of land and still kept bumping into surprised groups of kids. Eventually it became easier to hold it than to try finding a semi-private bush somewhere. I think my next research project will be on the prevalence of urinary tract infections among researchers in remote areas.

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