Emic ethnographic encounters: Researching elderly female household heads’ experience with climate change in rural Zimbabwe

Introduction and Background

In this article, I discuss my experiences whilst conducting ethnographic field research for my doctoral thesis in my village of origin in Gutsa village in Zimbabwe. In the research, I was examining elderly female household heads’ experiences with the impact of climate change in my village. ¹ I chose to study elderly women’s experiences with climate change since in the developing world elderly women are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than men (Bridge, 2018). Women’s vulnerability is compounded by caring responsibilities, a lack of resources, poor or non-existent social safety nets, discrimination and higher chances of living alone in old age while socially and economically isolated (Rao et al., 2019; European Institute for Gender Equality, 2012). Furthermore, a life of interacting closely with the environment while gathering and growing food, searching for and preserving water and women’s role in retaining and passing on knowledge about the environment make elderly women ‘living encyclopedias’ on environmental and biodiversity knowledge (Singh et al., 2013).

In this article, I discuss not necessarily in the order they occurred the intricacies of my methodological approach, my deconstruction of prior assumptions, challenges in meeting respondents, positionality and my multiple identities in the field, the unintended therapeutic effect of life histories, my learning of the art of patience in fieldwork, reciprocity and friendship and the challenge of spontaneity. Such a discussion is important because ethnography has generally been seen as an inherently complicated process due to the nature of its approach (Nesbitt, 2000). All this as I detail below can be understood in the debates on reflexivity, ethics and positionality in qualitative research (Chavez, 2008; Greene, 2014).

While research in a community where a researcher has ties can be encouraged, it is important to apply reflexive scrutiny of the researcher’s identity as this guides their epistemologies (Hamdam, 2009). Furthermore in line with Hodkinson (2005: 132), I also prefer to call this work evidence of ‘insider research’ to designate these ethnographic situations as these were characterized by significant levels of initial proximity between me the researcher and the researched. My classification of my identity as an insider is also consistent with Merton (1972) who indicated that an insider is someone who possesses a relatively substantial amount of knowledge of a community and its members.

Having grown up in Gutsa village, still living in the village and studying climate change in a generally Shona-speaking community, I therefore consider this research to be from the perspective not of an outsider but that of an insider. By doing research in my own cultural backyard, I was also following in the footsteps of a number of scholars who conducted ethnographic research in their own backyards (Eriksson, 2010; Kenyattta, 1938; Nesbitt, 2000; Innes, 2009). I therefore considered myself to be an insider as well as an accepted and natural part of the social system. In studying in a village I grew up in, I also relate to Einarsson (2011) who as an anthropologist studying the Icelandic Fisheries indicated that his observations were based to a great degree on his experience as a participant in the fisheries from his early youth and also on a more systematic collection of ethnographic and other relevant information such as biological and historical accounts of seals and seal populations around Iceland and the North Atlantic. Equally important also are Chawla’s (2006: 2) observations that:

‘….any ethnographer, whether native or other, (re)enters the field ensconced in degrees of outsiderness created by temporal, geographic, demographic, intellectual or emotional distance from the field….’

The study location, Gutsa village is in Domboshava communal lands located in Goromonzi district close to 40 km in a north-eastern direction from the capital city Harare. Gutsa village’s population can be divided into two main groups. These are vaenzi and vemuno. Vemuno are those that could trace their ancestry in the village, and vaenzi are those who had bought land and recently settled in the village mainly from the 1990s onwards.

My methodological approach researching in my village

Despite having grown in the study village, this article is derived from a distinctively formal phase of ethnographic research where I examined elderly female household heads’ experiences with the impact of climate change. During the formal phase of the field research, I also to some extent did call upon my experience of growing up in the village. What also marked this phase as a distinctively formal ethnographic phase was that it also included aspects of doing ethnography which involved most of these activities as described by Geertz (1973: 6), ‘….establishing rapport, selecting informants, transcribing texts, taking genealogies, mapping fields, keeping a diary….’ The distinctively formal 19 months long ethnographic phase stretched from April 2014 to the end of November 2015 when I shared the results of this study with the study participants. During this distinctive ethnographic phase of my research, I mainly made use of participant observation, documented ten life histories of elderly female household heads, held two focus group discussions and key informant interviews. The main criterion for inclusion was that one was supposed to be 60 years and above as well as a female household head. I used thematic analysis to analyse the data since such an approach is more useful in qualitative studies where data is coded/grouped into various themes (Nowell et al., 2017).

As I pointed above, my experience mirrors that of a number of anthropologists who studied their own cultural backyards (see Einarsson, 2011; Kenyattta, 1938). There are unique experiences that are derived from studying familiar people. Some of the unique advantages of researching among one’s people range from having many contacts as well as having insider information. Since I did fieldwork in my backyard, my experience therefore breaks away from descriptions of the ‘Lone Ranger’ ethnographer who rides off into the sunset in search of the ‘native’ (Rosaldo, 1989: 31). Or, even the experience of a professional intruder who arrives as a complete outsider and stranger to study in a village (Geertz, 1973: 412). Inasmuch as there was potential for bias, the strengths of this ethnography further derived from reliance on casual interactions, conversational and key informant interviews which all served to enable a deeper insight into cultural meanings (Roncoli, 2006: 83).

Being a son of the village, I could have easily overcome the issues of access and capitalized on already being there and proceeded with my research by not seeking clearance from the Ministry of Local Government and the offices of Goromonzi Rural District Council (GRDC). This would also have allowed the option of what has been termed ‘natural access’ by Nesbitt (2000) where an ethnographer chooses a study site where they are recognized by the local community as one of them through being closely known as one of the residents in the study location. However, I decided to take the formal route by obtaining the necessary clearance to conduct my fieldwork. That is, when I came across the hurdles of researching in a politically polarized rural Zimbabwe and the cautious approach that administrators took towards any field research in the rural areas (also see Mukeredzi, 2012). In April 2014, I first went to the GRDC offices where I was advised to first seek clearance from the Ministry of Local Government offices in Harare. I traced my way back to Harare with the application package consisting of a four-page brief of my research, proof of registration as a PhD student in anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, my supervisor support letter and a one-page application. At the government complex, I was transferred from one office to the other and was advised to leave my application package. I went back home with the assurance from the officials that they would get back to me in less than 2 weeks. With the 2 weeks passing and still having no response yet by the end of July 2014, I decided to approach the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate since my study was related to an area of concern to them. I approached them with the same package and advised them of my predicament. They wrote a letter directly to Goromonzi Rural District Council informing them that I would be doing my research in the district. I then went back to GRDC offices armed with the letter and they endorsed it and that marked the official phase of my research. I never received any correspondence from the Ministry of Local Government.

The challenges I faced in meeting respondents

As acknowledged by Kakuru and Paradza (2007: 293), the nature of rural livelihoods in Africa today means that women who are household heads have to juggle many activities to make ends meet. In their research on women’s experiences in Uganda and Zambia, the researchers noticed that during fieldwork more often than not the women they intended to interview were not present in the village when they went for their interviews. I experienced the same difficulty as on a number of occasions during my fieldwork I missed out the elderly women who were part of the study as these women were constantly away from home for one reason or the other when I went to their homesteads. As I detail below, all this was despite having set up and then confirmed the appointment with the elderly women.

Having commenced my life history interviews in August 2014 in the dry season, I had anticipated taking advantage of the dry season as I assumed the elderly women had much ‘free’ time on their hands as compared to summer time. I had a sense of urgency here as I was anxious the coming rainy season and the rains would greatly affect my progress as villagers then would be busy in the fields. However, I soon found out that despite it being the dry season the elderly women were always away from home for various reasons. These elderly women were drawn away from home to either water their vegetable gardens or guard the gardens against livestock roaming freely in the dry season as well as pests, attending funerals, visiting friends and family and seeking medical treatment.

For example, at the start of my fieldwork, one of the respondents Mbuya Tarai ² was in Nyakudya village visiting her grandchildren. Of all the elderly women I interviewed in this study, it was Mai Chota and Mbuya Mizhu who proved the most difficult to meet with initially. With Mai Mizhu even after repeated confirmed appointments and repeated phone calls to her eldest son Baba Maki, I would visit her place and still find her away from home. She was always away from home for various reasons, ranging from visiting her children and grandchildren, attending church meetings or attending births of members from the Independent African Apostolic Church she fellowshipped with and travelling as far as Nyakudya village close to 15 km away to attend to births. ³ Mai Mizhu would also spend some time on her own in the nearby mountains close to her home kumasowe (prayer retreat in the mountains). It was also almost after 5 weeks into my fieldwork that I finally met with Mai Chota as she was also frequently away from home. Her eldest sister had passed away in Harare in August 2014 and she had to extend her stay a few days longer to welcome those who were still coming to pay their condolences as well as attend kugova nhumbi (ceremony to disperse the deceased’s property). The ceremony was delayed due to the acute water shortages then being experienced in the capital city Harare since the clothes had to be washed first. When I went to her place again on the 4^th of September 2014 to specifically pay my condolences, she was not yet back again. She had returned again for a few days and had to rush back to kugova nhumbi.

‘Why ask the familiar you are supposed to know?’

One of the challenges I had to grapple with in researching among my own people was asking questions on issues that respondents were very certain I knew the answers since some of the answers to the questions I raised were almost common knowledge in the village. I had to ask these questions since Stephenson and Greer (1981) argued that researchers carrying out research in their own cultural backyard should be officially naïve and record all the minute details while giving stranger value to what might appear as familiar to the researcher from inside. Having grown up in the village as well as currently living in the village, I soon realized this challenge as people assumed that I was supposed to know the answers to the questions I was asking. I therefore had to probe and ask what they thought I knew in order to get the responses and also to be doubly certain. For example, my question on the location of the grave of the last rain petitioner, the year the very last rain petitioning ceremony had been held as well as the names of people who had been in the Village Development Committees (VIDCOs) in the village. When I asked one of the respondents some of these questions instead of getting a response I was asked the question, ‘Uri kundibvunza zvaunoziva wani?’ ‘You are asking me what you know?’ These were also the same issues that Gabo Ntseane had to grapple with while studying her own cultural backyard in Botswana (Sharan et al., 2001). I also had to give respondents more or less the same response that since I was doing research I had to assume I did not know about these things and had to step out of my ‘insider’ status and indicate that as I document the culture I had to assume I knew nothing. This was despite me fitting Banks’ (1998) classification of a true indigenous-insider (emphasis in original) holding the values, perspectives, behaviours, beliefs and knowledge of my cultural community under study.

Positionality, juggling and balancing multiple identities during field work

As acknowledged by Kezar (2002: 96), the assumption within positionality theory is that people have multiple overlapping identities which allow them to derive meaning from various aspects of their identity. As a researcher, reflexivity involves a self-scrutiny and self-conscious awareness by the researcher between them as a fieldworker and an ‘other’ (Pillow, 2003). As an ethnographer, researching in my cultural backyard I found it equally important to reflect on my multiple identities in the field in respect of my relationship between the respondents and me as a fieldworker. Other writers such as Chavez (2008) have also discussed the issues of multiple identities in the course of doing fieldwork in one’s community. For me, reflecting about my multiple identities was uniquely important because in the study site I was a relation to all respondents, the village head’s son as well as a researcher. All 10 of the elderly women in this study were very familiar to me and we knew each other very closely. Nine of the elderly women with the exception of Mbuya Tawira knew me as far back as the time my birth was celebrated in the village. So when I went to see Mbuya No to introduce my study, she reminisced about years gone by heartily saying,

‘Iwe Gnatsio ndaikupa porridge iwe uri kamwana kacheche … Unofanira kunditengera loaf rechingwa’.

With the exception of Mbuya Tawira, the rest of the elderly women had seen me growing up and herding cattle during the December and April school holidays and over some weekends just like the other lads from the village. On a number of occasions, the cattle we were herding had even strayed into their fields and we had been admonished by them for that. Therefore even before I had commenced fieldwork, I had always conversed with the majority of these women on different occasions.

At the onset of my fieldwork, I initially concentrated on establishing rapport with these elderly women. This process mainly involved me reinventing my various relationships that spawned a wide spectrum which were all in a joking relationship (see Bourdillon, 1987). These ranged from them being vazukuru (grandchildren) ⁴ , sawhira (ritual friend) ⁵ (or all combined, for example, Mbuya Ku) and my ambuya (grandmother) (Mbuya Gone was also a muzukuru). Mbuya Gone had been born a muzukuru to my father. However, she later got married into my mother’s family in Mungate village and thereafter she became a true ambuya to me. My father was now supposed to see and give her more respect as his Ambuya (mother in law), but he always insisted that he gave respect more to the relationship that was the first, which was her being a muzukuru! This was compounded by the fact that Mbuya Gone later returned to the village into her family after her second husband passed away. These kinds of relationships on multiple fronts therefore meant that the opportunity to freely talk with these elderly women was in abundance.

Inasmuch as I was the village head’s son that was really not the primary identity that vemuno recognized me as they called me sekuru (uncle), ⁶ muzukuru or sawhira. Inasmuch as vemuno and vaenzi were in a joking relationship with me, it appeared there were differences as vemuno were more cordial in their joking relationship. Vaenzi such as Mai Mizhu, Mbuya Tawira and Mai Chota recognized my primary identity as being ‘Mwana waSabhuku’ (the son of the village head) and therefore they always tried as much as possible to help me enjoy the latitude of my role even though I always emphasized the joking nature of this relationship. This was however not the same case with vemuno as they did not identify me with that primary identity of being mwana wasabhuku. To them, I was an ordinary sekuru, muzukuru or sawhira and these were therefore all joking relationships. Ultimately, these relationships on multiple fronts in the village meant that when there were events like funerals or memorial services either in the village or in the nearby villages, they had the potential to draw most of the people away from the village or together in the village. On such days as a courtesy I could not go formally to speak to people in the village about my research; however, as a resident of the village I was required to attend these gatherings which also proved useful to listen to and get news on the latest tidbits and gossips. Due to the spontaneity of such public situations which were a treasure trove of data, I could not ask for consent!

My identity as mwana wasabhuku was the reason that when Baba ⁷ Maki (Mai Mizhu’s eldest son) saw me he viewed me as someone he could approach to intercede for him to my father about the boundary dispute with his neighbour Mai Tawanda and also his need to have a place for open air worshipping. This was important for him because vaenzi also approached the village head as simply the village head even though they called him sekuru as a form of respect. My father, the village head, was known to be very strict/formal in his interactions with vaenzi; either those who had originally settled in the village or their descendants. Sabhuku was feared as a no nonsense man especially in his relationship with the newcomers, and therefore in as much as they called him sekuru it was not a joking relationship with the adult or young family members of the newcomers. Such a joking relationship was somehow possible though on a very constrained scale with the elderly residents among the newcomers sometimes attempting it. Sabhuku always said that ‘Ndikasadaro vanozondijairira’, ‘If I don’t do so they will not respect me’. The result was that Sabhuku’s interaction with the new comers in comparison to the native inhabitants was more formal and constrained if not fear at all. Vemuno could shift roles ranging from the joking relationship to the very formal one when they would have come for meetings with the village head or attending village court sessions. As I proceeded with my fieldwork, I realized that the village head was not easy to approach for most people especially those who were vaenzi as they were distant from him at a personal level compared to vemuno. For example, in November 2014, two young men came to the village head’s homestead towards sunset. On arriving, they politely declined my invitation for them to come indoors. Instead, they sat on the bare earth outside and even refused my offer of chairs to sit on. Initially I did not understand why, I only got to know of the reason later. These two young men had come to see the village head and so they refused seats and sat on the ground as a sign of deference as it would not be appropriate to be sitting on the same level with the village head.

Reciprocity and ‘friendship’

Reciprocity and ‘friendship’ appear to be important in shaping interactions and connecting the anthropologist who studies a familiar community with members in the community (Bourdillon, 1997). Just as Bourdillon (1997) argued, some of the advantages of studying in a familiar community are that the fieldworker’s visits to respondents can also be reciprocated by the respondents who can also visit the researcher at their home. This avoids an asymmetrical relationship between the researcher and respondents in the community. This was also largely the case before, during my formal ethnographic period and beyond, largely as a result of my embedded integration into the community. This is an advantage which as pointed out by Bourdillon (1997) is impossible to be enjoyed by researchers coming at distinct points in time to visit the study location. Unfortunately for the outside researchers, the relations can never get into deep personal relationships which Bourdillon (1997) termed ‘friendships’. For outside researchers, established relations during fieldwork will be expected to die down at the end of the research with the formal exit of the researcher from the field site. However, for me researching in my community, this was not a possibility since I had been born in the area and had only been away for primary and secondary school and my time at university. Even during my time at school, I would always be in the village during the school holidays (almost 3 months spread over the year) and also during some weekends and most public holidays. I had returned to the village to live permanently in 2008 and commuted from the village to Harare, a distance of only 40 km. I have continued to live in the community where I conducted my research and I see, talk to, visit and interact with the individuals I specifically interviewed and observed in the formal phase of my research. The only difference now is that I have stopped asking those questions; I no longer move around with the package that had been my tools of the field, namely the voice recorder, the notebook, the pen and the camera. A number of people in the village have since passed away who I had close contact with during fieldwork and I have attended their funerals and also consoled their family members as is expected of every villager.

The unintended therapeutic effect of life histories

During field research, I came to appreciate the unintended therapeutic nature of life histories as a research tool since the approach enabled some of the elderly female respondents to open up and share some of the most painful episodes in their lives. I learned to empathize with study participants as they narrated their life history experiences. For example, Mai Chota, when she sorrowfully recounted how her children had passed away, Mai Reni’s account of an episode she considered the most painful experience in her life when she was betrothed to a man she sarcastically referred to as ‘her aunt’s husband’ without her knowledge or consent. Mai Reni pointed out that she had never told anyone about the suffering that she went through during her time in Chipinge nearly 40 years ago when she gave birth to three children there. On the particular day she recounted her painful experience, I had gone to see her so that she could sign the consent form. After she had signed the consent form, I had bid her farewell but as I was leaving we kept chatting about general issues happening in the village. From then on, she gradually moved to narrating her experience in Chipinge. What I had thought would be a meeting for less than 30 min stretched to close to two and a half hours as she tearfully recounted the painful episode in her life (fortunately, I had carried my voice recorder with me). She said sorrowfully that,

‘My aunt and her husband heard about my father’s death and they did not tell me for close to 2 years’.

She has never forgiven them for this as she said it reflected their heartlessness. Mbuya No and Mbuya Ku also opened up on the painful accounts of their suffering in the early 1970s to 1980 during the war of liberation (almost half a century ago). Then, having to carry hot and heavy pots of sadza ⁸ on their heads to the freedom fighter bases in the mountains in the village and in the process burning their scalps as well as being beaten up by combatants from both warring sides and having some teeth knocked out. Finally, they shared on their experiences of losing everything and having to start a new life as widows in a newly independent Zimbabwe.

Learning the art of patience and spontaneity in doing fieldwork

As I conducted the interviews, I learnt that I had to be very patient with these elderly women who also had young children (mainly grandchildren) in their care. For example, Mai Reni spent most of her time consumed by the need to earn a living for the grandchildren in her care. ⁹ When I visited her in order to conduct the second interview, she had just returned from Chibvuti where she had gone to peddle her wares. She had also taken this opportunity to go and pay tuition fees for her two granddaughters who were attending crèche in Chibvuti. When I arrived for the interview she had just started to prepare a meal outside in the small thatched enclosure. I had to wait for close to 20 min sitting under one of the trees in the yard trying to escape the sweltering November sun. On this particular day, I had been fasting as I went around the village and finally to Mai Reni’s place for the interview. So, when she was ready with tea for her grandchildren she offered me a cup of tea with chimodho (homemade bread) and I was at pains to politely decline the offered tea without telling her that I was fasting. I then resolved to change my fasting habits in the course of my fieldwork deciding thereafter that I would not fast as long as I knew there was a chance of visiting a research participant as declining an invitation to partake in a meal is viewed as uncouth in the village. I was later to have my first meal in the course of my fieldwork at Mai Reni’s home when I visited her on another day and found her about to prepare her lunch. I enjoyed a meal of sadza with green vegetables mixed with kapenta (small dried fish). On that day, I had to stop twice in the middle of the interview as one of her young grandchildren twice soiled her pants. She was livid about this habit as she was disappointed that despite her teaching him not to do so, this lad continued to soil his pants.

You do not have the right to remain silent anything you say I can use it

Proceeding with my fieldwork, I soon discovered the need to reflect on the challenges of my ethnographic research spilling over into public spaces in a place I grew up in and the spontaneity of fieldwork. This I had to reflect upon on numerous occasions after coming across the challenges of getting informed consent at village gatherings such as funerals, kurova guva ceremonies, the village head’s dare (court) or at agricultural inputs distribution points in the area. All these public spaces tended to blur the fine line between being immersed as a participant observer, partial observer and complete onlooker and trying to gather data from everyone present at the site. Of course, I soon realized there was practically no point in attempting to seek informed consent from each individual in public spaces or at such other gatherings. These spontaneous incidences did prove handy for me as they gave me the opportunity to get the latest tidbits and gossips about various issues in the village and beyond. In these emergent environments and settings, I relied on the knowledge that almost everyone in these settings now knew of my new status of being a student conducting research even though I was one of them. This therefore tended to free me of the ethical dilemma of recording all conversations without seeking direct consent from each individual in these public settings in instances where I had been a participant not by design but still had to soak up on data from these settings.

Conclusion

This article has provided insights into the complex nature of doing ethnographic research and capturing the everyday life of fieldwork and the fieldworker and therefore has made significant contributions to the body of knowledge focusing on the dynamics of carrying out anthropological research in one’s own cultural backyard. In this article, I discussed my experience of carrying out ethnographic research in my village of origin Gutsa village in Goromonzi communal lands, Zimbabwe. A number of anthropologists have written about their experiences of carrying out research in areas they are familiar with and how they had to call upon their reflections and experiences of having been born and grown up in the areas that ultimately became their field. In the course of my research, I had to grapple with my multiple identities and demarcate the space where the formal phase of my research started and ended at. This was further compounded by my position as the village head’s son who was allowed the latitude of enjoying my role which had different points of respect between the vemuno and vaenzi.