TITLE: Waiting for permits
DATE: 2020-03-04
AUTHOR: John L. Godlee
====================================================================
While I was on fieldwork I got stuck waiting for an uncreasonable
amount of time for research permits so I could carry out my
fieldwork. These permits really should have been sorted before I
even arrived in Tanzania, and I was assured at the time that they
would, but that's another story.
Waiting in a dusty office somewhere for days on end without the
resources which normally allows one to work efficiently can be
incredibly draining. My mind regularly went through a rollercoaster
of emotions, being angry, desparate, despairing, sad, hopeful. Then
all of a sudden, when the permit does come through, everything
changes very fast and you have to be ready to go, so it's difficult
to become engrossed in any singular task as at any minute the task
might need to be abandoned.
While I was stuck I did a number of things to stave off being
depressed and to pass the time. I read books, this is one of those
opportunities where even the most heavy going literature can seem
enthralling because there is no alternative media to consume. Last
year on fieldwork in a similar situation I read all of Sherlock
Holmes and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I have also read Joseph
Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Moby Dick on previous fieldwork.
This time I chose to plough through Bram Stoker's Dracula, which
was very enjoyable. At the same time I read Bitter Lemons by
Lawrence Durrell, which is a pleasant romantic (in the Victorian
sense not the 21st century sense) autobiography of living as a
British Ex-pat in Cyprus during the Enosis uprising. Along similar
lines I also took the chance to watch lots of Youtube videos, which
I could download to my phone, mostly on the subject of making good
pizza.
I also wrote plenty of blog posts, some about fieldwork and others
on more niche subjects that had been on my mind for a while, such
as picking a new notetaking app for my Android phone with a
detailed comparison of all 69 note editors available on F-Droid.
I had some real work to do, going through reviewer comments on a
paper I had written, but those periods were not nearly enough to
fill the interminable wait.
Getting into a strict routine helped me to track the passage of
time and helped it to melt away, as I always knew what was coming
next. I would get up at 06:45, have breakfast and wash then leave
for the office at 07:30, arrive at 08:00. Sit in the back office
catching up on reading and checking any emails that had come in
since I last checked until about 10:30, then take a walk to the
front office and see what was going on. Lunch at 13:00 for one hour
then back to the office for writing and odd jobs until 17:00, then
home, shower and relax until 18:30, then go for supper until 20:00
and then bed until the next morning.
