It's almost nine in the morning and I'm camped out at a cafe getting some breakfast. Even though it's still early, the temperature is 82 degrees (28, for you non-Americans out there) and the humidity is 70%. It's bearable now, but it will only be on the rise throughout the day. The funny thing about being in a time zone that's exactly 12 hours ahead of New Orleans, is that the weather is usually about the same at any given time. For example, right now at home it's 78 degrees (26 celsius) with 87% humidity.
So I guess you might have already figured out, since I'm talking about the weather of all things, that things have been moving pretty slowly here. Last Thursday we made it out to the field for the first time. The project that we're working on is a capacity building project with the goal of reducing newborn mortality due to infection. Cambodia has community volunteers that visit new mothers after they give birth, so the project has been working to improve their training and supervision, as well as providing additional trainings within the health centers where women give birth.
Our primary job while we're here is to conduct about 30 interviews with the volunteers, the health center staff, and the mothers themselves. Although this kind of qualitative research seems pretty straightforward, it can actually be very complex. You need to think carefully about how each question is worded to make sure the questions are leading or difficult to understand, and also think about how you'll capture the information. For example, taking notes is less time-consuming than recording and transcribing the interviews, but may not capture all of the detail.
Last Thursday, we went out to the field to pre-test our interview guides. Pre-testing guides is something that we do to see how well the guides actually work in the field. We look for things like whether the questions make sense to participants, whether the interview is too long or too short, etc.
Being out in the field reminded me of working at Medicines for Humanity and all of my visits to different countries to support programs, but with one major difference. When I was at MFH, my visits were usually jam packed so I was running from a meeting here to do some home visits there and finally visit the clinic over there. Those of you who have worked with me know that I like things to be fast-paced (and I like to talk). Doing interviews with a translator requires me to sit still for an hour or ninety minutes and spend most of that time just listening and writing things down. For me, this is a definite challenge.
My colleagues were doing interviews on Monday and Tuesday, but we didn't want to overwhelm participants with too many people so I hung back. Tomorrow and Friday, though, I'll be back in the field doing the real interviews. I've been here for nearly three weeks now, and the waiting to get out and get something accomplished has been a real challenge for me as well. I'm viewing this as a learning experience and a lesson in slowing down, paying attention to detail, and shutting up for once.
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