Three steps forward...

I knew that when I took a few days off work to entertain our guest I would lose a little bit of momentum on the research front. Nonetheless I have plenty to keep myself busy to fill in the lulls: article revisions, conference abstracts to submit, and piles and piles of reading relevant to this new project that I need to plow through during the eight months here.

In spite of no shortage of things to do, this week I can't help feeling a bit done in by the slow, slow, slow forward motion that seems to characterize most of life here, or at least my life at the moment.

On the three steps foward front:
Caught up with an old colleague who has a fascinating relationship history and I should be able to interview her soon. She also has juicy divorce gossip on another of our colleagues. Good stuff.

Had a great interview with a lawyer yesterday who gave me a comprehensive overview of the legal and illegal aspects of prostitution here. Whenever I'm ready to publish something on sex work I'll have all of the legal issues nailed down. Score.

Continue to plod along with the girls' education group, and they actually gave me their entire calendar for the year (provisional of course, but still).

On the two steps back front:
My right-hand man, the only scholar in Senegal whose research is even remotely close to mine, continues to elude me. Last week it was UNDP trainings, this week he is out sick. I have been here for six weeks and have spent exactly 10 minutes with this man. Ten minutes.

The director of the sex worker organization that I hope to embed myself in is leaving on Friday for France for six weeks. Yes, she passed my research application on to the NGO's board, but now I have to chase down a doc at the STD clinic and talk myself into his good graces. That means at least another week or two of power-building before I can even imagine getting something that resembles data.

The very savvy graduate student who we used as a research assistant last summer, the one who actually had a more intuitive sense of how to do qualitative research than some of her superiors, has gone abroad to do a Master's in International Health. I'm hoping she can point me to a stand-in who is half as good as she is.

And so it goes on the research front. Here's to hoping that next week the trickle turns into a stream.