blog post 4: research reflection

Being able to conduct meaningful research has been one of the best aspects of my experience in Zambia. However, preparing my research topic has not been easy. For one, my topic focuses on climate change issues and environmental legislation. Neither of these fields are a part of my course work at Cornell.  Not only are environmental issues not my specialty or where I see my career going, looking at and analyzing policy has proven to be very difficult considering I have little to no experience in the area. Additionally, climate change is a very big issue. It affects many part of the world and there is no way to anticipate how an area will be affected by climate change issues. In most cases, actions concerning preserving the environment only come into effect after the damage from climate change is already done. As student working on the issue for two months, it often felt impossible to tackle such a big topic. Living in Zambia also made things even more difficult. Not only does Zambia lack the resources needed to tackle climate change issues, the climate change issue that Zambia faces are different from those faced by the United States. As a result, the majority of my time in Zambia was spent learning about current legislation in Zambia and the ways Zambians contribute and are affected by climate change.

Although my topic required a lot of time, I am very happy that I was able to learn about climate change issues in Zambia. I feel like my topic was a current concern for a lot of people in Zambia. Many of the organizations we interviewed were very aware of the current state of climate change in Zambia. Many people were interested in the subject and wanted to get involved in the area. Even our organization, Actionaid, has climate change and environmental issues as one of their top priorities. Conducting this type of research was very fulfilling because it feels like many people and organization who are interested in getting involved in climate change issues will genuinely benefit from our paper.

In order to effectively work in my new environment, I’ve had to force myself to set deadlines and plan ahead. Not having access to wifi at abundant life was a huge obstacle especially when we began writing our research paper. Somedays, the majority of my work days would be spent responding to emails, conducting interviews, and downloading environmental legislations to read at night. Additionally, my research experience forced me to be accountable for my own work. Because our topic is so specific, few people have worked on it. This adds a lot of pressure but at the same time makes me want to present my best work.

Blog Post 4

One unexpected challenge I’ve experienced is the limited wifi. I knew wifi would be limited coming to Zambia but not to this extent. The connection was weak at my organization and at times SAIPAR. There was not wifi at Abundant Life, the place we stayed after the month with the homestays. This led for my new office to be internet cafes. And the wifi didn’t always work their either. Another struggle was the limited hours on the weekends. Everything is empty on the weekends in Lusaka, compared to the U.S. and many of the cafes closed early or were not open at all. This is difficult, especially in the final weeks, because I needed to do work around this. To overcome this, I tried to plan my wifi time carefully and downloaded lots of reading to read offline.

One expected challenge I had had an unexpected solution. Before coming to Zambia, I was curious on how we would navigate to all of our interviews without using our phones. In the U.S. I am very dependent on GPS to get to places I have never been to. Also, there are not many road names and addresses to go off of.  We discovered our first line of defense was showing taxi drivers the address or a place nearby and seeing if they knew where it was. We were grateful that people were honest when they didn’t know, which I really appreciated.

Our second line of defense was keeping a list of places nearby the location we needed. Once the driver would get in the general area, he would pull over and start asking locals if they know where the place was. Having multiple places on hand helped. Everyone the driver asked was always happy to help, something that I never experienced in the U.S. Our third line of defense was having the number of person we wanted to interview on hand. Sometimes the locals don’t even know the location. On one of our interviews, the taxi dropped us off in the wrong place and having the number saved us. He was able to help us figure out where we were and gave us directions to where we needed to go. The person you are interviewing can also give directions to the taxi if needed.

Overall, getting to the interviews has gone smoothly and I am grateful for the opportunity. We have gotten to visit many unique places that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise, like the University of Zambia. It’s also a great feeling when you complete a successful interview and can use it to further your project.

Research Post

            My research experience did not go exactly as I foresaw ahead of arriving in Zambia. It twisted and turned more than I would have liked, and it came about later than I would liked. I have never done any sort of research like this before, research that is meaningful and actually beneficial to a field. And a big learning experience of mine this summer was that this sort of research takes serious time. What was even more surprising though was that while the research itself takes time, finding a topic that has not yet been explored and needs to be explore, takes even longer. I remember in the beginning of the program thinking that it was laughable that we would get two weeks to find a research question. How on earth could simply finding a question take multiple full days of work? But as it turned out, I don’t think we had our research question actually figured out until even two weeks after that. Looking back, it makes more sense to me now that in order to find something new to explore, you have to be incredibly familiar with the field as it currently exists. And achieving this familiarity is in and of itself a serious feat and will, of course, take time.

            One element to the research that I have really liked has been some of the doors that it has opened to us. For example just last Friday we talked with the acting Minister of Mines, whose level of importance here in Zambia really is considerable. Some of this definitely had to do with the fact that we are in Zambia, not America, but still, it has been a fun experience nonetheless. For the last few weeks I have been able to introduce myself to some pretty significant people here and have a real, meaningful conversation with them, which honestly is a position I have never been in before. I also got to go to a very fancy conference, which was not a terrible bonus.

            I think the last and maybe favorite aspect to my research has been the end satisfaction. While we still have a ways to go, we are certainly nearing the end, and it has given me a lot of personal satisfaction to see the work start to take shape as it has. It is especially fulfilling to see real experts like Tine and Marja look at your work are show both genuine interest and approval. It makes these feelings all the better too that this success in our research was not something I always knew would happen. There were certainly moments of uncertainty and doubt, and so overcoming those to create something that means something to me, my research partner and supervisors, and the field at large really seems like quite an accomplishment.

Searching, searching, and re-searching (blog post 4)

Searching, searching, and re-searching

“What’s financialization?”

When I first learned I’d be conducting research in Zambia, I had no idea I’d eventually find myself reading the latest academic work on the structure of the commodity trade industry and the effect of shareholder interest on company growth. It took us weeks to understand what financialization meant, but now that we finally do, I’m grateful our research brought me into such uncharted territory.

Financialization has become my new favorite word and the fact that Microsoft adds a little squiggly red line beneath it every time I type it into Word no longer induces a feeling of fear. Now, it’s just a reminder that Karl and I have the potential to contribute to a truly new body of research. If nothing else, my new knowledge has given me a much deeper interest in the legal framework for business and finance, so I’m excited to explore the topic more even after I return to America.

Though I’ve learned a lot in my time so far, our research has been quite challenging. Because Karl and I initially planned to work on separate papers, we got a late start on our research and are now scrambling for a few more interviews to tie up some loose ends within our paper. As we’ve attempted to secure these interviews, difficulties have arisen. For one, it’s often tricky to determine the stakeholders who could provide us with unbiased, relevant, significant information. The major actors in our research are the government and mining companies, both of which are notoriously difficult to get a hold of.

Once we are able to schedule meetings with the right people, it becomes hard to know who to trust. We often encounter interviewees who cite entirely contradictory facts, with one stating there is no problem where the other tells us there is. It can be frustrating to choose a side, especially for a research paper that is almost solely reliant on the information gathered in interviews.

The solution to these issues is a tedious one. We’ve learned to ask as many interviewees as possible a set of similar questions so we can determine the prevailing view. When we don’t have enough experts in a given area to do this, we back up our findings with whatever we can find in the existing research available online. When neither strategy is possible, we accept that a caveat is necessary for the corresponding section of the paper and move on.

As I watch my final two weeks in Zambia come, I’m grateful for the struggle and the success of our research experience. While I’m sure we’ll have a few late nights ahead of us to catch up to where we want to be, I’m confident that I’ll be satisfied with our work in the end.

Blog Post #4 - Reflecting on Research Experience

Conducting research in Zambia has been a great experience. Even though some days were harder than others it has granted me the opportunity to develop essential research skills and the opportunity to work with passionate human rights organization.

While working in Zambia I expected that having access to WIFI would be a challenge but experiencing it on a daily basis sometimes became frustrating. Not being able to quickly google a new term or organization that I came across in a reading was very limiting. However, it did teach me to prioritize my time at my workplace and be as efficient as possible. Another challenge I faced while conducting research was getting access to research papers. This was a privilege that I took for granted at Cornell where any journal was accessible through the University’s database. Even though I am able to search some papers through Cornell’s library, some are still not accessible. Another problem included gaining access to the projects and data on various NGO’s web sites. Many organizations do not update their websites or publish their data so it was hard to find what work was actually being done in the field. This then made me contact organizations directly to gain access to information. Next talking to governmental departments was also a barrier. This is a problem that I assumed would be present in any country, being that most government officials are not readily accessible to the public. Therefore our research became heavily reliant on the connections we made during interviews and talking to other experts, to gain us access to a personal contact of theirs within the ministries. This created a process of waiting for emails and phone calls from various people.

A challenge I  faced specifically due to my research topic was becoming familiar with the current context of climate change in Zambia. Due to our lack of a strong environmental background, the first month was spent sifting through various international, national and local climate change policies and programs. Being that the data was scattered throughout multiple government departments and civil organizations throughout the country, it was hard to find gaps in the data because most times the information was available but hard to find. For this reason, it took us a long time to narrow our research topic and actually conduct interviews with more of a purpose rather than just gaining an understanding of the environmental issues that Zambia is facing.

Nevertheless, the challenges faced on the daily basis is minuscule to the effects that our research could have in helping to better the lives of many people. While conducting interviews I’ve heard a lot of stories from researchers based in rural communities who have watched people suffer whether from water pollution due to mining companies, malnutrition due to lack of arable land, or fatigue from trying to find water sources. Hopefully, these last two weeks will work in our favor and allow us to finish our research at the highest quality of work.

Blog Post 4

The work and research experience has been interesting for me. It started off very exciting, but the excitement wore off fairly quickly when I realized how much I disliked sitting in the office for multiple hours every day, just reading through papers. Don’t get me wrong, I like my research topic and I do think that it is interesting, however, I just got bored of sitting in the same place for an extended period of time. This boredom was definitely one of the most unexpected challenges I faced. However, I have found a way to overcome this challenge because now I work at the office in the mornings and then go to an internet café in the afternoons. I feel like having this change of scenery has been really good for me because it has kept me from being bored and it has also helped me be more productive.

Another challenge we have faced for our project is that its been difficult for us to find current information on our topic. We are doing a comparative study of social protection programs in Zambia and Namibia, and while we have been able to find a lot of good information for Zambia and we have also been able to interview a lot of relevant stakeholders and government officials for information about Zambia’s social protection system, the same cannot be said for Namibia. We have found that most of the information we can get for Namibia is online and we have found it difficult to get interviews for information on this part of our paper. We tried going to the High Commission of Namibia, but they told us that they don’t have anyone we could interview and that we should go to Windhoek to get the information we want. Obviously, they didn’t understand that we are unable to leave Zambia. Just hearing this answer repeatedly was pretty discouraging and it made me feel helpless and irritated that people were unable to help us. However, I took this rejection as an opportunity to be creative with sources I could interview because I realized that government officials were not the only people who would know about Namibia’s social protection programs. I started emailing and contacting researchers, specifically the authors of various papers I had been reading, in order to get my questions answered. This turned out to be a really good idea and I was able to get a lot of the information I needed using this method of communication.

I definitely think that due to the short timeline of this research project, I have had to be very diligent about my work and maximize my efficiency as much as possible. Usually, I like to take my time to complete assignments and give myself enough time to get distracted. However, with this timeline and the amount of work that needs to be accomplished in less than eight weeks, I feel like I had to change my working style to be as focused and efficient as possible. This change in my work style has resulted in me feeling very stressed about finishing my project sometimes because I usually try to work in a manner that allows me to budget my time well. This time, however, I feel like I haven’t gotten the opportunity to budget my time at all because I had to start rushing as soon as I started the project. I do feel that this is a good learning experience for me though because I think that it is important for me to become used to working on short deadlines because it will be a very useful skill for the future.

In terms of tolerating discomfort, I feel like the best thing for me has been just coming home and relaxing and taking my mind off work for a little bit. I try to make it a point to do as little amount of work at home as possible and just be very focused and efficient during work hours. I feel like having a designated period for work and a designated period for relaxation during the day has been one of the main ways I have been able to acclimate myself to and deal with the stress of this research project. Every day, I look forward to coming back and just talking to my friends, or reading my book, or watching a movie I downloaded. This designated time I reserve for myself has really helped me deal with the discomfort I have been facing.

Reflection on Research

During orientation, everyone told us that we would have to be patient because things would take time and that doing multiple things at once would be most effective. I didn’t realize just how slow things would be. There were articles after articles everyday because we were given a broad topic on intellectual disability which could be addressed through different factors. Because we were also at UTH two days out of the week, I felt like even though we were doing work, we weren’t doing much since most of it was reading and taking notes. It was also a bit difficult because most of the information we found wasn’t in Zambia, they were on other countries. The lack of information took some getting used to especially since the Wi-Fi was slow every morning at the office.

There is only so much information within Zambia about people with intellectual disabilities and none of them focus on specifically how to change people’s attitudes. Yes, there a ton of policies in place and the Persons with Disabilities Act passed in 2012 was a push in the right direction, but between policy and practice there is a large gap. People are still believing what they want and saying what they want despite what the law says. So the question became how can we change people’s attitudes? Having eight weeks didn’t seem like enough time to figure that out.

During the second or third week, hearing that some people were already having interviews with their stakeholders made me nervous. We had a brief list but we hadn’t set up any interviews. It also became a bit overwhelming when we started going in a direction different from Michelle. I realized that even though we had been gathering a lot of literature on disabilities from Zambia and other countries, we had focused a good chunk of our time on what Michelle wanted and pushed our paper planning to the side. On the bright side of it all though, we were able to use the survey Michelle to gain opinions on people with intellectual disabilities. Luckily we can use some of the data within our presentations.

Meeting with Marja during the third week made me feel better about our initial progress. We filled her in on how our research was going and what question we would focus on for the paper and about the struggle we were having with the limited information. Marja told us that in our case that was actually a good thing because any information we would bring to the table would be new and hopefully could be used by the SANI Foundation.

Not gonna lie but going to the offices at SANI every morning wore me out by the middle of the day so I had to push through to find more research for our paper. When we came back from Livingstone, Michelle told Erica and I that three new staff members had been hired so there wasn’t any space for us at the office and we would have to work from outside the office. I was honestly happy because Coffee Culture, Ms Beez Café as well as SAIPAR were really close to Abundant Life Fellowship. Because we also went to Livingstone and I was in the second Peace Corps trip, I had a good break from doing work and it helped jumpstart my motivation to interview organizations and continue our research.

One challenge was getting around when we started having interviews. We didn’t know exactly where certain organizations were so taking the minibus wasn’t an option. Luckily the taxi drivers either already knew where to go or asked for help from other taxi drivers on the way.

I’m happy with what we’ve done because we went through almost all of our interviews within one week, interviewing at least one organization everyday. We were also able to send out survey through ZGF in their newsletter and the emailing list through SANI. The good thing though is that for the paper, we were able to create a outline, which is something I usually do on campus since I struggle with papers. Our outline is subject to change, paragraphs might have to shift a bit, but otherwise having it helps us compile all the information we’ve gathered in these six weeks.