I’m back. Back in the field. And immediately, it felt as if I never left. I arrived, made a little tour around the village, said ‘hi’ to everyone, caught up a little and it felt just as it did last year. In the first hours I already ate fufu twice, got two baby pee pees on my floor and declined two marriage proposals. I’m glad I hadn't been away for too long, it enabled me (and them) to easily pick up where I left.
However, some things have changed, of course. My room, for example, has gotten another color: fluorescent green (with, in the meantime, fresh brown smears from dusty kiddy hands). The biggest surprise when I entered, however, was an actual bed! I also had two tables made by a carpenter a few houses away. A rather small table to do my work at and a larger one for putting all my stuff, so my evening visitors the mice and cockroaches cannot (or cannot too easily) freely go around sticking their noses in my stuff and so I do not have to bend over for every little thing I need. I did not expect the furniture to make such a big difference, but the brick space I’m in, suddenly feels much more like ‘my room’ than ‘camping in Africa’.
This is quite agreeable seen I’m here for 5 months now, double the time of my last two stays in Ghana. “Five months is a long time!”, a lot of people uttered. But come on, what's five months? To thoroughly learn to use and understand a language takes time, to get to know people and their village life and their mutual relationships takes time. So it’s necessary, for being able to write a PhD on being deaf in Adamorobe.
In the meantime, I looked trough the 500 pages of notes from my last research period again, and sorted out the information in them: I put pieces of information in different ‘sections’ with a computer program. I passed my upgrade exam and I have a humongous list of things I want to get a deeper look into (like stories about deaf gods and dwarfs), things I want to understand better (like interindividual differences amongst the deaf) and situations I want to observe more closely (like the contact between the deaf and the hearing).
But yeah, I’ll admit: at the same time is does quite feel a little bit long, yes, because working in the field isn’t a piece of cake: it’s arduous and demanding mentally/intellectually, there are the constant ethical and methodological considerations which are needed to be made and having a quick peek on the internet or meeting up with my friends in the evening aren’t options I have. But if I want to escape now and again, there’s always my fresh supply of tea and candy from Europe, a stack of about 75 DVDs (with thanks to my friends!), a few fun pictures against the wall and about 10 books on Ghanese culture. And last but not least, Belgian chocolate ;-).
