Anyone who has ever dabbled in field research knows that while persistence is mandatory, a fair amount of luck and chance can make a huge difference in the ease, speed, and quality of one's research. One tries to make strategic choices, but as in life there are unanticipated twists and turns that exert a tremendous influence on short and long term outcomes.
From the first moments of conceptualizing this project I thought I would need at least one research assistant. I've had a young woman in mind for a while now, a very savvy university student who showed an intuitive knack for research and focus group facilitation when she worked for me last summer.
After e-mailing her to see if she was interested in a long-term research stint, I discovered that she is in Egypt doing a Master's in International Health. When I asked if there was anyone else she might recommend, I received the name of a potential assistant who was a former sociology student and had a "lot of field work experience."
Last Thursday I went to meet the prospective assistant at a trendy bar/restaurant near the university. She was typical of most Senegalese 27 year-olds, impeccably dressed, very poised, and best of all punctual. We chatted about her past research on garbage pickers who live at the Dakar dump and a WHO-sponsored study on female circumcision.
When I explained my research project to her, her eyes lit up and she immediately made the connection with her own peers and experiences. "I have the perfect circle of friends to start with" she said. "They are all twenty-something, working, living on their own, and using boyfriends and sex to get all kinds of things." Game on. In the course of this first conversation I learned that many of her friends are involved in all kinds of transactional sex, that she is an avid internet chatter/dater with a French boyfriend she met online, and that she can easily recruit at least half of the women I hope to include in my study.
At our second meeting she had already recruited nearly a dozen young women who are willing to talk with us over the next eight months above love, relationships, sex, and marriage. We will start with her inner circle of friends, who she says are already eager to explain to me what skilled seductresses they are. "So perhaps we should pick an evening or weekend for me to meet them," I suggested, "since they all have jobs and are busy during the day."
"Actually" she said, "mornings are better because Fatou goes to work at 3pm." When I concluded she must work in a bar or restaurant,she replied, "Well actually she works for an underground phone sex company. You know, they post photos of nude white women online in France and the calls are directed to the call center here. The guys think they are calling French women but it is really Senegalese girls working the phones." I'll be damned.
So while her first draft of interview questions needed some revision, and she isn't quite clear yet on what it means to keep field notes, I think we are going to be fine. Perhaps even better than fine. Let the data collection begin!
Nice work!
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