Still kicking...

For any out there who may not know, while others are out in the proverbial "field," I stay closer to home, which is to say, I don't really go anywhere -- save the library, historical society, what-have-you. To my fellow cohorters, let's just say, the graveyard research has been proceeding as planned, i.e., lots of silence and alone-time to get my work done.

Here's a puzzle for the more materially inclined: any connection between these two images?

The first is a petroglyph of Native American origin (Western Abenaki?) from Vermont of unknown date. The second is a gravestone from Rowley, Massachusetts carved about 1690. The more I investigate the nature of intra-cultural exchange in seventeenth-century New England, the more I'm tending to think, yes. The problem is, there is little to no evidence to back up a connection.

On a more upbeat note, here is my ethnographic observation of the summer: I was driving through Cranston en route to Greene Farm one morning (I did a little work out there with Krysta, et al.), when what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a six?-year-old being walked by a pug. In this strange role-reversal, the child was running from side to side on the sidewalk while this little proud dog strutted along in front, tail up. While I can't necessarily get on board with the painful lack of parental oversight, I wholeheartedly approve of sending rambunctious children to be herded by more intelligent animals.

personal is political

It’s been hard for me to write a new post lately because many of the issues I’m wrestling with feel too…sensitive for such a public venue. The past two weeks of my research have been overshadowed at times with much more personal issues, specifically dealing with close female friends who are in abusive relationships. And dealing with violence in my own (temporary) home…

I’ve come to understand Bolivia’s compadrazgo system (establishing godparents for everything from baptism to the cake at a wedding to a graduating, high school class) as a powerful way for people to enganchar or hook others into permanent reciprocal relationships. I’ve been a madrina de bautizo (godmother of baptism) – which is one of the more powerful forms of compagrazgo -- for nearly 4 years now. And shortly after arriving, my host family made me a madrina de rutucha -- a godmother of the first haircut.

Accordingly, my compadres and I refer to each other as co-mother and co-father of my goddaughter and godson (and I’ll be a co-mother for a third time before I leave). Unfortunately, my co-mothers -- and many other women friends -- are in physically, emotionally and psychologically abusive relationships. One morning, I came into the kitchen to fix breakfast and my co-mother burst in, sobbing. She had just been beaten and told to get out, to leave. For the next couple of hours, she unloaded years of emotional abuse, betrayal and infidelity, her pregnancy at 16 and the loss of that baby, her deepening entrapment in a dependent and abusive relationship with her husband, my co-father.

My other co-mother was, at age six, sent to be a household servant (in a city nearly 17 hours away by bus) in exchange for the family providing her with an education. Ironically, the mother of that household convinced her to drop out before she graduated from high school. After feeling like she had escaped to a new life, she now finds herself back working as an empleada or household servant for the same family, from 8am to 8pm, 6 days a week. Her husband is controlling, monitors our phone calls, refuses to allow her to have friends. Her daughter once indicated to me that the abuse is physical as well…at least for the girls.

Family violence is extremely common in Bolivia and none of these stories are shocking. On an average night at my friends’ house, we sit and listen to the violent screams of brawling families. Spousal abuse is rampant. Yet this time around, it seems to be affecting me more than it did in my previous four years in Bolivia. I’ve been struck with how much I’m absorbing and replicating that violence -- in thought, if not in action.

While historically there is relatively little incidence of street violence or violent robberies, signs of violence and retribution increasingly abound. For example, I’m including here some photos of the warnings against possible thieves that are found on nearly every block of El Alto, often accompanied by a dummy hung in effigy, which communicates the warning “this could be you.” Spray-painted across adobe walls are inscriptions such as "Thief, You will be Lynched." Also common, "Thief, you will be burned alive."*

In an act of extraordinary mimesis (replicating the violence I supposedly reject), I have begun coming up with my own list for possible spray-paint jobs. E.g. "Abusive husband, you will be castrated.” The day I found my co-mother weeping in the kitchen, I was shaking with the urge to totally humiliate and dehumanize my co-father (who has been avoiding me for two weeks since he discovered me hugging her in the kitchen. One night, rather than be in the same room with me, he called his wife from the next room ask if there was more food. Now that's a whole 'nother issue. A north-south power issue...). Supposedly I’m a big believer in strategic nonviolence, but I feel so much anger and a desire for retribution against the men in my friends’ lives (and, because they’re my co-fathers, in my own).

These experiences have me thinking a lot about Begoña Aretxaga’s work on mimetic violence among Basque youth; I’m wondering if my own experience of absorbing and replicating such violence might give me an insight into some dimensions of Bolivia’s current political climate. Now I’m extremely hesitant to make such a leap between my own mimesis and an exceedingly complex, postcolonial setting. But I hear from friends “we’re worried that out of rage and a desire for retribution against the perpetrators of centuries of exclusion and oppression we are starting to take-on some of the characteristics of those we say we hate…” So it has me thinking…

Anyway, these are jumbled and very sketchy/preliminary thoughts and feelings…Sorry I keep posting about such, er…heavy topics….just trying to process things…and all my other stuff is too politically-sensitive to post!!! I promise to only post silly photos from now on…

Susanita

* For one interpretation of lynching in Bolivia as both a critique and result of neoliberal policies, see Daniel Goldstein's The Spectacular City: Violence and Performance in Urban Bolivia

Herman and Shermena.

When in Rome - do as the Romans?

Hello everyone!

My apologies for taking soo long to post. Well, it's been a whirlwind of a stay here in Rome. Let me begin by saying that Rome is HUGE, super hot and muggy - a veritable concrete jungle. I have had the good fortune of getting lost on the massive public transportation system a number of times, but have recovered in one piece ... my feet may say otherwise if asked. Yesterday, there was a national transportation strike, so moving the old fashioned way was rather useful. Since my arrival, I have been overwhelmed with people's (mostly migrants) willingness to talk about ageing, eldercare, and the migrant women who work as caregivers or badanti. Finding Italians - that is, children in their 50s-60s who have either opted to use the services of a badanti, or have chosen to care for their elderly parents, themselves, has been more of a challenge. To quote an Italian priest whose help I sought to try and find some of these Italians, "You want to speak to the children of the elderly? That's going to be very difficult - they are all very busy you know." Things are moving along, though. Through some family contacts here, I am inching in on this community. Not surprisingly, it is mostly women who coordinate the care of their elderly parents. I've asked about the role of Italian men, and the usual response is that Italian men don't think to be coordinators of care - not that they necessarily wouldn't do this job, it is just not something that they expect to do.

Growing older in Italy doesn't appear to be a well-received phenomenon. Most of the functional elderly (late 70s/80s) that I have interviewed have said that they would much rather be on the other side already. A typical response goes something like Really, what am I doing here, except taking up space and costing money. Among younger Italians (50s/60s), there is a hope that they will not live that long, although most expect that they will, given the current phenomenon. The 50s/60s Italians are a busy group with a number of extra-curricular activities that I cannot imagine keeping track of. There are book clubs, choir rehearsals, as well extra gatherings of such groups, just to "get together." Those that are grandparents among this age group like playing the part of grandparent, but also enjoy having their own time.

There is a senior social center near the apartment where I live that I try to frequent at least once a week in the evening when it is most active. A decent number of "seniors" that frequent the center aren't people that I would consider seniors at all, but rather early retirees by American standards. It is a challenge to think of somebody in their late 50s and early 60s as a senior citizen. Most Sunday mornings I frequent a Ukrainian congregation, and then a Latin American congregation in the afternoon. I've also frequented a Filipino congregation Thursdays. Nevertheless, I think that the strongest links that I have built among the migrant communities have been among the Ukrainians, which is fabulous, considering that most of the women who work as badanti are from the Ukraine. Contact with the Romanian community, which is the migrant community that I originally thought would be accessible, has been limited.

Highlights

• I "learned" how to dance the tango at the senior center;
• I've twice been offered jobs as a babysitter and as a badante; it is an interesting time to look ethnic in Italy, since most Latin American women work as caregivers or domestic workers;
• If I had more time, I might have given it a go, although I have to admit that the job of being with an elderly person 24 hours a day, almost seven days a week with only Thursday afternoons and and all of Sunday off seems quite daunting;
  
• Rome is full of migrants from all over the world it seems, and at times, the tension created by the need for migrants, especially caregivers, and the lack of regularization of such migrants, is palpable;
  
• Most migrant women that I spoke with have stated that although the Italians have told them that they are considered family, this is usually only the case until she does something that doesn't fit well with the expectations of the Italian family (i.e. finding a better paying job, and announcing that she is leaving the family);
• The Italians that I have spoken with are split regarding whether they would consider the badante as a member of the famliy; it depends on how family is defined - to paraphrase The line between being considered family is difficult because you are paying somebody to not only meet the physical needs of your parents, but to keep your parent company, which is a family expectation, no?
  

The increasing number of elderly and migration are topics that are frequently touched upon by the Italian media, so the timing for the topic is perfect. The first picture is a celebration held by the ACLI (roughly Association of Christian Labor Workers) to celebrate family and migrants. It was interesting to see the parade of nationalities with the Italian national anthem playing in the background. The second picture, of course, is the Colosseum - typically Roman, and Italian.

Hope everyone is doing well. : D

Sight-scapes

This is one of thousands of cloth vendors in Kano, the oldest city in West Africa and the biggest city in Northern Nigeria.

Kano is under sharia law and these little green signs line the streets with phrases from the Koran written in Arabic and English. Behind the sign you can see a Daidaita Sahu, which I've heard literally translated as "be orderly" and "prepare for prayer", but which is the common term for these little yellow tut-tuts reserved for women so they don't have to share cramped public transportation with men.

And here we are, in all our greasy glory, in a Daidaita Sahu (luckily not during a rainstorm, when that cardboard repair job wouldn't hold out for long).

This is the family compound where we stayed in Kano. Our house is the second to the right.

Finally, here is encouragement that my research interests really are relevant : )

Morales and food prices...

I wanted to respond to Sohini’s blog post about people attributing the hike in food prices to the rains (rather than the rise in oil prices, or other possible reasoning) because it’s on many people’s minds here, where people's views on rising food prices are tied to their critique of – or continued hope in – Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales.

When I first arrived in Bolivia, the steep rise in food prices – particularly bread – was one of the principle topics of conversation. Some blame those increases on the Bolivian elite or President Morales. But more frequently, people talk about the rise in food prices globally -- sometimes attributing it to oil, other times not able to account for the 'source' of the price hike, but aware that it's a global phenomenon. And India is often cited as an example that this problem that is not particularly Bolivian – even if the efficacy of the national response is hotly debated.

I spoke with my friends Luis and Lourdes while sitting in the comedor popular [popular or community soup kitchen] of their church, “Light and Truth.”

Lourdes explained that a quintenal of rice, once under 150 Bs. (about US$21), had risen to over 390Bs. (about US$55) in the past months. Luis said he couldn’t account for what was happening. The dollar was on the decline, yet their family was worse-off economically. “I don’t know how to make sense of it. I can only imagine three possibilities: that what’s happening is a matter of the prices going up world-wide, that the empresarios [business men] are doing something to undermine the government, or Evo is hiding something from us.” Lourdes added, “The people say it’s the business people who are making the prices go up. Others say, like Luis said, that it’s prices at an international level. Others say it’s because of the cost of oil is going up. Others say the United States is doing it. They say the United States is stocking its food reserves because they know the prices will keep going up. Before we received flour from the US, through, what is it? CARITAS? But now they send little food aid….” (the debate over "food security" vs. "food sovereignty," and the accusations that food aid programs for undermine local, small-scale producers is the stuff of another blog).

Luis expressed frustration for the lack of a clear culprit. “This isn’t like ALCA [the Free Trade Area of the Americas], where you could identify the enemy clearly. Now it’s difficult to identify who’s at fault.”

For Luis, Lourdes and others with whom I’ve spoken, the rise in food prices is viewed as a threat to the stability of the Morales Administration, especially as social and political conflicts are on the rise and the President faces a vote of (no)confidence on August 10^th. Morales supporters fear that food prices will cut-short the kinds of structural changes they hoped would come from Bolivia’s first indigenous presidency.

Luis explained, “Evo is making enormous changes, and one supposes that we will enjoy the fruits of those efforts in another 5-10 years. But the opposition doesn’t want to recognize that he’s doing. The observe [critique] the smallest mistake that Evo makes…” Nevertheless, Luis admits that it is becoming more and more difficult for his family to make ends meet by pooling their resources, as the majority of their expenditures go toward foodstuffs. “Sometimes, I think I’m going to have to leave for the United States – maybe I’ll move to the U.S. and sweep the floor of a church there. I ask the brothers [fellow American evangelicals], ‘Is there not work [in your church]?’ So we’ll see the results of the changes Evo is making in another 5-10 years. Excellent! But we are suffering right now.”

Luis, however, remains supportive of Morales even as others grow vocally disillusioned. “We have to give a hand to the government,” Luis explained. “People are asking why the people are not rising up [against the Morales Administration]. If it were a different government, the people would have gone into the streets with their empty pots [ollas] to protest. But if we can endure the needs of the belly, then this government can endure. And that’s why we have to search for a means to survive.”

-- Susanita

How You Dey?

Greetings from Nigeria! I suppose I'll begin with a poor excuse for my delay in blogging. Basically, if the blog is supposed to be about fieldwork, I didn't feel justified to start blogging without starting to do actual work, and although I've been here now for over two weeks, and it seems like much longer than that, my work is only now getting off the ground.

Instead I've spent most of my time just getting used to operating around here, ie following around Katie (the advanced grad student from Brown who has opened up her life, contact book, and everything else to share with me, for those readers beyond the cohort, if you are out there). We spent our first week in Abuja at the home of a top dog from the American Embassy, so, needless to stay, living conditions were far beyond those than my home in Providence, with wireless internet (like I said, my excuse for the delay is poor), a swimming pool, a chef and live-in masseuse /housekeeper. Since then, it's been a gradual shift to life something more like that of most Nigerians, culminating in a week in Kano, where we stayed in the family compound of Katie's good friends/research assistants/everything else.

Like so many other places around Nigeria, the house was clearly a very nice one when it was built during the oil boom in the 1970s, but has since become only a shell--wired for electricity that comes for only a few minutes a day and piped for water that hasn't come in years. So I learned how to most efficiently "flush" toilets with buckets of water kept in barrels throughout the house, and to bathe with buckets as well, appreciating the cool water in the heat of the north. Of course I didn't learn much Hausa at all, but the family was always amused when I could manage a greeting or two, and I did pick up at least Katie's interpretation of Nigerian English, with rhthmic intonations and a few words of pidgin thrown in. Katie also didn't hesitate to introduce me to all her favorite local foods, which most foreigners (and even many Nigerians) balk at, from slimy okra soups eaten by scooping up bland sticky starches like pounded yams with your fingers, to spicy and delicious beef kabobs ("suya") made on make-shift barbecues the side of the road. (As I type I'm having a typical meal of a big pile of carbs, this time the ubiquitous Nigerian version of Ramen, IndoMie, which is virtually identical except for some extra kick common to most Nigerian foods.) Unfortunately my stomach hasn't learned to love these as quickly as my taste buds have, and that can be complicated in a country without public toilets, but this, I like to tell myself, is a rite of passage of its own, and I'll leave that at that.

On the actual fieldwork front, my expat connections through Katie had me well connected at the American Embassy and I'll begin pursuing all those phone numbers and introductions now that we are back in Abuja. I did manage one intense day of work before we left Kano, after a local professor hooked me up with a super determined and well-conntected Nigerian PhD student. Unfortunately, after waiting for hours for his good friend who could probably write my MA paper for me, he turned out to be out of town, making us take the formal bureaucratic route to talk to anyone. This eventually led to a spontaneous "interview" (that felt more like an inquisition) with the big men of the traders' association in the middle of the market as a crowd grew around us. I was completely overwhelmed and had no idea how difficult it would be to try to talk meaningfully at any length through an interpreter, especially one not trained or inclined to give more thorough translations beyond the immediate and summarized answer to my question. I don't know if any of you are having to figure this out (Láura maybe?), but even once I start recording everything to get the details later, it totally hinders any anthropological ideal of interviewing as conversational when you can't catch the interesting details of responses as they arise. But even though they all seemed totally suspicious and unhappy about my interests there, I am assured that I will be welcomed to talk to more people in the future, even on-one-one and with tape recorders, so I have that to look forward to when I return to Kano.

In the meantime, I am back in Abuja for at least a week or two, staying in another palatial expat house with too many rooms to spare. Katie is off to South Africa on Saturday so I will officially be on my own starting then. While I look forward to some more independence, I know even small things will will turn into adventures, from trying to negotiate taxi fares to knowing where to go for different necessities (ie chocolate, internet, and suya). These adventures, of course, should provide good fodder for blogging, which will also be easier here in Abuja given the more reliable electricity that is readily supplemented with the steady hum of generators. That said, I won't let this turn into a one-woman show, so hopefully I'll see some more activity on here soon or I'll even withhold my contributions in protest. I'm sure that threat is stinging, so get to it. I hope all is well out in your respective worlds, and I look forward to hearing about them soon!

PS The wireless connection at this "cafe" is too slow for me to upload my photos, but hopefully I'll find a place to do that soon.

Monsoons, Mangoes and Markets

The day before I was flying into Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta) parts of the city was flooded from three days of continuous rainfall. Despite the initial fears of whether I would be able to fly in, things have been pretty smooth since getting here and rains have been frequent enough to keep the temperatures down, without causing too much havoc! In the picture, monsoon clouds are gathering over the city. It had been a hot and sunny morning, so when it started raining, steam rose from the pavement as the water evaporated upon hitting the ground.

Monsoons have been making occasional appearances in my interviews in the marketplaces too, where people have cited the rains as reasons for price fluctuations rather than oil prices, etc. that the newspapers have focused on. So rain is good to think with right now...

In other news, mangoes are delicious as ever and I'm discovering that it takes a lot longer to transcribe interviews in Bengali than I had imagined.