Fieldwork, Siradjdikhan

It was so green. As we drove out fromj Dhaka (we were supposed to leave at eight, we left at nine—such is the nature of time here), the smog lifted, the roads cleared, and our white DCH van sped by green rice paddies and potato fields. They stretched on for miles around, interrupted by patches of palms and corrugated tin homes.
This was my first time in the Bangladeshi countryside—the goal of today was to see in person the river sand filters and improved dugwells and talk to the villagers about their health effects. It’s straightforward, but, man, it was so cool to see for myself all these things I’ve been reading about since my summer HMUN study guide, ask the villagers questions face-to-face, see the conditions they live in, hear the women splashing as they wash in the ponds, and smell the earthy stink of the dung they dry to use for fuel. It all came alive.

I was tagging along with the team that works on the Christiani/Kile Harvard School of Public Health reproductive study, “repro study” as they all call it. As we rolled into the Siradjdikhan branch of DCH (DCH has about 40 clinics sprinkled throughout Bangladesh), a group of women in burkas was lined up to get prenatal checkups. Just so you can imagine, the clinic is about eight white rooms in two concrete slabs of building, with a squat toilet and a tubewell pump painted green to indicate it is arsenic-free. I watched as the women came in for consultations and lay down for their ultrasounds. All were normal, except for one whose baby was turned the wrong way, head up not down. I looked at their charts later—HIPAA has not met Bangladesh yet, hooray!—and learned that a lot of them actually used birth control in between births. One lady got injections, some used pills. However, most didn’t know their birthdays and some could only approximate their age. One wonders how birth control technology becomes prominent in a place like this. I wanted to talk about it more with the doctors but they really didn’t speak English very well. They also told me at that moment there was an assassination attempt on Barack Obama reported in the paper, which was enough to end the birth control conversation for me.

But on to my project. And where the frustration starts. Let me just give you a snatch of conversation with Joya, the chemist here who does water analyses:

Me: I heard that PSF (pond sand filter) 5 is contaminated. When did we discover that?
Joya: (nods)
Me: So when was the last time you tested it?
Joya: We test it every month.
(after about three minutes of this line of questioning, Joya reveals we didn’t test in January because everyone was busy with the conference and the Americans being here)
Me: Oh, okay, yeah, of course. It was a big conference! But what did we do after we found out the PSF is contaminated?
Joya: Yes.
Me: But what actions did we take? Did we change the sand?
Joya: Change sand? Yes they changed the sand.
Me: Okay, good. When did they change the sand?
Joya: In December they changed.
Me: Okay, but after we learned of the contamination, what did we do?
Joya: We do?

The conversation lasted for upwards of five minutes, in this style of question, repeat, reword, repeat: it was like pulling teeth. All I got was that we skipped a month of testing, have no idea why the PSF is contaminated, and don’t know what our course of action is post-contamination. I was so frustrated—I have no reason to be, because I am in Bangladesh, and so I should be speaking Bangla, not expecting people to speak English. But I just can’t work like this!

Not only is communication slow, there is completely false information that comes across. This is probably accidental, but it makes it so that I try to ask every question two or three times with different wording, preferably to different people. You can imagine how long that takes. A simple discussion that should happen in three minutes takes ten; insights that could be gained from bouncing ideas back and forth are lost in yes, no, nod, shake head, repeat question.

In my field notebook, I have written down at first that villagers get sick from diarrhea a lot from using PSF 1. Then, I scratched it out and wrote “no, no problems.” On the birth control issue, the doctors said that villagers knew very little about birth control and condoms, and used “natural methods.” Then, half an hour later, they told me that injections and pills are “oh, very common!” Even here, in the villages? Oh yes, in the villages! Tablets, injections, everything. I didn’t know to conclude that they use non-condom forms of birth control, don’t understand birth control, or understand a variety of birth control options and choose pills and injections. God help me if I try to do an ethnography like this. I wish I could learn Bangla tomorrow—if my Bangla were even half the level of my Spanish, this would so much easier.

Later, I stepped on the scale in the clinic and realized that I’ve lost six pounds in the two and a half weeks I’ve been here. Not good. Finally, I sat in the back on the van ride back and got carsick. I have not been carsick in ten years. I missed the expat party that night that I had looked forward to all week. And so ended my first day in the field.

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Note: this was how I felt last night. Today was really great, actually, went to the Nordic Club (my Finnish roots, how appropriate!) with the Australians and met some really nice Swedish girls, went to church and lunch in the morning with Rebeka and freinds. The work has its ups and downs, but as a whole I'm doing well, don't worry.