Gender Consideration

I'm simply forcing myself to write today, as I will everyday until I leave for Tanzania. I'm not sure what to write about, but I need to square some time away every day to think of the participants. I haven't heard back from Kate yet about my data collection timeline. I'm not worried yet. But the timeline is intense and I am just praying and hoping that it will all come together. It is a bit nerve wracking to be thinking of this huge project and that I'll be doing most of it alone.

I've given only a cursory thought to the fact that all my kids are boys. I am not analyzing using a gender framework, but I can't ignore the fact that they are all boys. I'll have to talk about this in my introduction; the street child phenomenon, at least in Tanzaniza, is largely a boy issue. The girls are taken into homes to be house girls. But, presumably there would be some gender effect in my study as I have not taken into account gender diversity in the sample. I do wish I could compare the two...though that seems like a whole different study for a whole different time.

I am hoping to spend just a few days on the pilot test. And I am hoping that won't give me too many problems. The survey is translated, but who knows if it is understandable to the children; who knows if they will be answering the questions I would like them to answer. All of this seems like such a matter of interpretation; I'll have to trust that they are in fact answering me. But who knows what is actually going through people's minds when you ask them a question.

A concern I have, that has little to do with my actual study, is how I'm going to warp things in my mind about life in Boston. This happens every time, and when I return I am startled to see and feel how different things are to how I remembered them. How does the brain do that?