Passing Through

I’m in my last 30 or so hours here, and my sadness is increasing by the moment. Though it’s nice to head homeward before feeling “finished” with this place, I know I leave many a stone unturned. I’m also a bit haunted by an offhand comment made by a researcher during a presentation I attended here. She presented material from a project she is doing on black lesbians with HIV, the vast majority of whom contracted it as the result of rape. She discussed some of the challenges of doing “insider” research, particularly on such a heavy topic, becoming embedded in communities where there is such great need (emotional/psychological, but also material), forging bonds and friendships with women only to watch some of them die. She described the psychic toll such work took on her, her need to stop doing the interviews for six months at one point, to heal from what she’d already experienced.

Despite the heaviness of her material, she also has a congenial nature and seemed at ease in the front of a room. As she was discussing these things, she motioned to the front row, where I was sitting, and joked, “When you’re Tey from New York, you just come, take get you want and leave.” There was nervous laughter in the room- by that point, many in attendance knew me and the work I’ve been doing here. My stomach dropped. I felt both embarrassed and sad. Because, on some level, though I know the comment was made without anger or even ill feeling, (I know the speaker, have spoken with her many times,) I also know she’s right.

This is not unconnected to my thoughts on poverty tourism. What does it mean that I can come here, interview activists and lawyers, collect my “data” and escape to my comfortable liberal urban life in New York? How does that fact feel for the people I’ve met here? I admit to reassuring more than one person of my imminent return, as it has become increasingly clear that some of the resistance to my presence (or mild “hazing”) I endured toward the beginning of my time here, was a direct result of individual people’s experiences of western researchers coming here, extracting people’s stories and leaving, often to publish work in which people feel used or misrepresented, often never to return.

There are a few ways I’ve confronted some of these questions in my time here. For now, all of my interview subjects hold positions at regarded NGOs, and though they did speak autobiographically with me, they did so, for the most part, in their “official” capacities. I stayed clear of questions that seek to elicit traumatic personal memories, though I received such information in small bits through the stories I heard. In everything I’ve done here, I’ve tried to be open to forging relationships with whomever I can, but also constantly cognizant of my status as “outsider,” and outsider with rapidly emptying hourglass…

And so, in my last day and a half here, I’m really wishing I knew when I could return. Not just because my “work” remains very unfinished, but because, as I’ve interrogated my place here, as I’ve talked to dozens of people, and forged nascent friendships with a few, I’ve come to realize that I don’t want to be a “researcher” who visits this place, leaves, writes, moves on and never returns. Something about this place, its fragility, the people I’ve met, leaves a deep imprint on me- and I’m in no way finished engaging with it or them- or with these issues of who I am in this place and best I can negotiate that.

I’m unsure what to do with the blog once I return home. I may use it to help me formulate thoughts or observations on my experiences over the past six weeks. I may just save it for my next journey here, whenever that may be. Any suggestions?