Accessing the field

Accessing the field

Daniela Waldburger and Carl-Philipp Bodenstein

 

Debates on how to do field research have been held for as long as there is field research.  Entering and accessing one’s own research site, however, is always a new experience and while it is possible and necessary to draw on past achievements and failures the contingency of the field is always an exciting new challenge. For his case study Carl went twice to Lusaka and Livingstone in the spring of 2017 and 2018 for three months each year. Daniela on the other hand went to Lubumbashi in the same years during August and September.
In this blog-post, we describe our different, yet similar approaches to gain access to the field, which later allowed us to conduct many interviews. We thus want to point to our personal experiences in getting into contact with people and establishing networks that serve as an important pillar to our research. A reflexion on conducting our interviews will be the focus of our next blog-post.

Entering the field
Daniela’s aim of her first research stay in Lubumbashi was to conduct biographical interviews with former workers of the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK) and its successor Gécamines. The goal was to gain insight into their lives and experiences as workers of a company that structured all domains of their lives from birth to death. The day after her arrival, she had an appointment with our project cooperation partner Prof. Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu from the University of Lubumbashi. And it was him who pointed her to the right person(s) on that day, the directors of the Centre d’Art Waza. Prof. Dibwe and the Centre d’Art Waza had collaborated earlier in a project on the lives of former employees of the UMHK and Gécamines. They provided Daniela with first contacts. Moreover, on that very same day another researcher who stayed in the same guesthouse as Daniela, introduced her to his local assistant¹, who turned out to know many workers, as well as the board of the collective of workers of the Operation Départs Volontaire, a group who later proved to become her focus group. On her third day in Lubumbashi, the local contact invited her to visit Cité Gécamines, and to introduce her to this collective of workers. That first meeting started unexpectedly. Having fought since 2003 to receive a compensation, the workers that day were expecting a person from the World Bank. As a result, people encircled Daniela, expressing in a displeased manner their opinion until the president of the workers’ collective stepped in the crowd. They voiced their anger over too low compensations², which they perceived as a deception. Others explained their precarious current living conditions, which include among others lack of access to medical care. Her local contact finally had the chance to introduce her to the president and the attendants. To ease the situation, the president listened carefully and invited her to join the board meeting some days later.  Daniela then had the chance to present her intention to get into contact with former workers to understand their former and today’s living conditions, and workers were interested in her ideas and her research. The board announced that they would agree to her idea to conduct these biographical interviews, since they also considered it as a chance to get a voice. From then onwards, everything moved very fast. The board stated that it would be too dangerous (Daniela did not agree on that but accepted that argument) to visit them in their homes. Instead, her local contact, who is a resident of the Cité Gécamines as well, offered his living room as the place to meet for the interviews, the first of which were scheduled for two days later. Four persons appeared. The president³ and the local contact decided that the local contact should serve as the mediator between workers and Daniela. Only these two had her phone number. The president wanted to make sure that the workers would not harass Daniela. After the first day of conducting interviews⁴, further interviews were planned, and every day more and more workers addressed the local contact, as they wanted to be part of the project.
For Carl the trips to Zambia had two objectives. The first one was to conduct research in the National Archives of Zambia in Lusaka. Necessary preparations and already established contacts, especially thanks to the head of the Geography department of the University of Zambia, Orleans Mfune, made the process of getting access to the archives as well as the research permit an unexpectedly straightforward process. While being in Lusaka during the first research trip Carl would therefore ponder a lot about how things would develop in Livingstone where no such contacts existed. The fact, however, that he stayed at a hostel where many people touring through southern and eastern Africa would stop by proved to be beneficial. An opportunity to gain access to Livingstone as a field arose already in Lusaka when Carl met a travelling photographer from South Africa named Yasser, who referred to himself in what he was doing as an “Afrikanist in Motion”⁵. In the course of having a long and existing conversation about their goals and objectives in their current projects, Yasser gave Carl the contact of Jonathan Katele, a Livingstone resident, whose assistance, in Yasser’s words, would make Carl’s work “much easier”. Yasser had met Jonathan by accident when the latter approached the former showing interest in his camera and experiences as a photographer. Jonathan had then gone on to show Yasser around town “off the beaten tracks”. Therefore, Carl contacted Jonathan while still being in Lusaka and explained to him the work he was going to do. They decided to meet in Livingstone.
When they finally met three weeks later it soon became clear to Carl that the work with Jonathan would be highly valuable and professional. It was important to Carl to also discuss during their first meeting the financial aspects involved in this relationship as well as a schedule that would not interfere with Jonathan’s main work as a chef. During the time the two worked together Jonathan not only established contacts and sometimes acted as a translator, but he himself grew more and more interested in the project which became evident  not only in long talks between the two after the interviews, but even more so in Jonathan’s own initiatives in asking questions  during the interviews.

Re-entering the field
After her first research stay in Lubumbashi, Daniela kept contact with her network (mainly WhatsApp and email) and early announced her second stay. Therefore, when she came back to Lubumbashi in August 2018 she met all the persons of her network in the first couple of days after her arrival. Again, Daniela was invited to join their meeting and to present the goals of her second stay. Daniela explained that this time she would appreciate to get the chance to visit workers in their homes and to relate to the interviews from the last year. After a discussion on security aspects, the board agreed on her request to interview the women and men in their homes and - like the year before - it was her local contact who organised the meetings. The president and his secretary decided that the local contact and Daniela should always be accompanied by a board member living in the respective part of the Cité Gécamines. They argued that Daniela would be very recognizable and therefore a well-known person from the quarter would make things – as they argued “easier” for her but also for those to be visited. After two very inspiring visits and interviews Daniela got a phone call from the president. He asked her to come to the next day’s meeting of the board. He was very short-spoken, and Daniela immediately called her local contact, as she was afraid of having made a mistake. Her local contact had no clue either what could have happened. The plan was to attend the meeting and to apologize in case of any violations of norms or expectations. When Daniela and her local contact arrived the next day, they were warmly welcomed, not only by the board, but also by many of the workers who gathered. Daniela was offered a chair in the middle of the room. The president welcomed everybody and then addressed Daniela. He pointed out that she should receive any support. In addition, he thanked her for really coming back as she had promised before leaving in the previous year.
Before Carl left Zambia plans were already made with Jonathan about the second field trip. Between the two research stays there was, however, only sporadic contact between Carl and Jonathan via email. The experiences made and contacts established during the first research stay as well as the gained knowledge through working with the sources - both archival materials and interviews - during the period between the two field trips allowed Carl to continue the research in Livingstone straight away. The familiarity of the research site also gave an opportunity to try out new approaches, such as so-called go alongs within different parts of town, where old buildings like former beerhalls and housing areas were visited, discussed and photographed. For these go alongs to happen Jonathan organised meetings with Livingstone residents at specific places, such as the workers housing complex of the former railway compound, today known as Railways. Topics of conversation included among others the transformation of the Maramba beerhall after the end of colonialism into the Maramba community hall and its significance in post-colonial times.  Moreover, the good relationship with Jonathan, but also other people he knew from the first trip, like the hostel staff and taxi-drivers made it possible for Carl to gain additional insight in urban and housing issues of present-day Livingstone.
Even though our research stays differed in many senses, the importance of networks became apparent. Daniela felt very fortunate to have received the chance to tie on existing networks not only of individuals, but also of institutional entities from the beginning. Initiated by a lucky encounter, through Jonathan, but also other Livingstone residents, Carl could establish a personal network of different informants over time.

1) For security reasons, the person remains anonymous.

2) In 2003, within the context of the Opération Depart Volontaire (ODV), the deal of Gécamines with the World Bank resulted in more than 10.000 workers of the Gécamines losing their jobs.

3)  For security reasons, the person remains anonymous.

4) The interviews will be discussed in our next blog in March 2019. The interviews will be discussed in our next blog in March 2019.

5) In Yasser’s opinion writing “Afrikanist” with a k underlines the “Africaness” of his project, since many languages would use a k instead of a c, as he explained.

 

February, 2019