Why Tanzania?

This dissertation is the most exciting phase of my doctoral student career, and perhaps for that reason, I am really nervous about it. There's a lot at stake in this study - up and leaving for Tanzania for a few months, leaving my life in Cambridge behind for a life among homeless and orphaned children with whom I have little in common. Yes I have friends in Tanzania, but it is nothing like my life here where I am comfortable, independent, secure, and more or less worry-free. While I worry about how smoothly my data collection will go, my biggest fear that follows me to Tanzania is that of being lonely. Field work is simultaneously exciting and lonesome. Without my typical commodoties in Tanzania, I am never quite sure what to do with myself in the evenings. And by that I mean my friends.

I love the children with whom I get to hang to collect my data. But I always miss my friends so much. It's not so much that I miss the presence of my friends; right now, my three or four favorite people to "be" with don't even live in Cambridge. I suspect it is more about availability, accessibility. It is more that "this world" works on a very different schedule than "that world." And as one world moves on, so does the other. It is different to say you are moving to DC to collect data for 4 months than to say you are moving to Africa to collect data for 4 months. With DC there's a possibility of a phonecall, a quick visit, a fleeting image of what life is like. But with Tanzania, though I am loath to magnify its foreigness, many of my friends cannot even picture where, what, how, and with whom I'm doing anything; images and visions are so fantastical they are almost unreal, unaccessible. That physical distance scares people, leaves us worlds apart, if only temporarily.

And because these worlds are so far apart, I wonder too how I will position myself as I collect my data. Will I watch attentively, be a part of the daily process, conduct, lead, participate, passively accept? Naturally, social norms will dictate much of this process, but I need to maintain a stance that allows me to collect "clean" data, see and learn new things, and maybe even contribute in ways I don't expect to right now.

As for the friends' accessibility issue, I want to scream out to just one or two people that I love them and need them to the point that I would bring them over there to see what I am doing, visit Meru and Zanzibar, and meet the children, all with my own money. But then even that seems somewhat intrusive to the whole adventure. I want to immerse myself, but I also want to maintain myself. This complication I'm sure is one we deal with frequently in cross-cultural studies. It is interesting, fresh, and new, but also scary, difficult, and real.

I suspect though that in truth, these worlds are less different and unique than I might think they are right now. There isn't a completely foreign quality to human nature that requires me to travel to Tanzania to discover. There is personal, intuitive, and deeply intrinsic knowledge to be gained though. And so Tanzania, India, Cambridge, or Ottawa, this study could have very well been done anywhere there are kids who are resilient and simultaneously "vulnerable." And this thought keeps me sane as long as I hope to pursue this line of inquiry.