Let the rains begin!

It has been quite some time since I last posted . . . I have found myself to be quite busy lately – work has been hectic and I’ve been out of town a lot recently on field visits. A few other unexpected things have also come up, all of which have conspired to keep me from writing. So, I shall fix this situation with just a quick post today, and the promise of a more substantial one soon!

My most recently field trip had me visiting Blantyre district, in the south of Malawi. It seems that the rainy season has hit there in full force, adding a new, fun, and muddy dimension to field work!

The problems we encountered made me realize the challenges that the rainy season poses to conducting field work, and reminded me of one of the 6 biases that Robert Chambers (1983) describes as impeding outsiders’ contact with rural poverty, particularly the more extreme cases.

1. Spatial biases: urban, tarmac and roadside (attention focused on communities with better roads leading from major cities
2. Project bias: attention and funds beome ever more foccussed on increasingly atypical pet communities
3. Person bias: views of a few key informants (the most articulate and therefore atypical) become recorded as representing the entire community
4. Dry Season bias: visitors typically schedule visits during most clement weather; many of the more severe problems go unobserved
5. Diplomatic biases: prevent real problems from being exposed and confronted
6. Professional biases: specialization of interest resulting in tunnel vision, discourages an understanding of linkages

I find myself thinking about how these biases apply to the work that I do, and what steps we can take to minimize them as much as possible. As one example, we use random sampling techniques to select the sample of clubs we visit during our surveys, so we don’t choose villages based on ease of access, distance, etc. However, this becomes more difficult to stick to during the rainy season, when many routes become impassable…Indeed, getting heavily stuck in deep mud not once but twice in less than 18 hours, I could see that bias number 4 will undoubtedly play a role in the field work I participate in for the next few months, over the course of the rainy season period.

On our first afternoon of work, we started down one fine looking road before the field coordinator we were with informed us it had just been newly constructed. Normally it would be fine, but it rained for a couple hours earlier in the day . . . Before we knew it, the tires were bogged down with mud and we weren’t going anywhere in a hurry. The nice new road was a mess!

Photo 1: new road

We tried turning around and heading back the way we came, but ended up quickly sliding into a ditch, requiring the help of people from the neighbouring villages to get us out.

Photo 2: push!!!

We attracted quite the crowd!

Photo 3: Our crowd of onlookers

No sooner had we made it out of the ditch and we ended up in the ditch on the other side of the road . . .whoops!

Photo 4: ...and again!

Back on a solid road, we managed to get to a few more sites . . . along the way we passed this group of gentlemen at a dam washing their bikes clean of mud.

Photo 5: bicyclists cleaning mud off their bikes

The very next day we set out bright and early in the hopes of a productive day! However, just as we rolled up to the first village we were to visit, rain came pouring down in sheets. Due to the nature of work we were there to conduct it wasn’t practical to head out in the rain. So, we sat in the vehicle, and waited it out. Nearly an hour passed with no end in sight, so we decided to revise our plans and return later in the day. We couldn’t go back the way we came because of flooding, so we were directed up a path we were assured was a much better road. . .

Photo 6: The awesome "much better" road, or so we were told

Sure enough, we got very stuck.

It was pouring rain out, and we had no one else around to help us out. We sat and waited for the rain to let up for a few hours – we needed help from people from the surrounding villages, but no one was out and about in the pouring rain! After a few failed attempts we were just about ready to give up and make the 10+km trek in the rain back to town on foot, with the hopes of somehow getting the vehicle out the next day, when a group of people showed up, ready to help!

I didn’t end up getting any photos which truly captured how ridiculously stuck we were, I was shocked that we actually got ourselves out – in involved the help of several farmers, and some creative use of rocks and planks to get ourselves out of a gully.

Photo 7: another audience!

Photo 8 : final shove!

We gave up on our workplan for the day, and returned to the village a couple days later to conduct our surveys.

Yes, I have little doubt that this whole rainy season thing is going to present some complications in the work we want to achieve…should be interesting!