After a break of two days when the women were in the
community taking pictures, we convened again to discuss the photos that they
had taken. The women had signed up for individual one hour time slots on
Saturday and Sunday.
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| Rentia, Delia and I waiting for the women to come. |
Saturday commenced at 10:00, with phone charging stations
organized and set up by my tech support (i.e., John). We will be giving the women their chargers after the last
session on Wednesday, but are keeping them for now so that the women have
motivation to keep attending. The first appointment was late but the second
appointment came early so they swapped places and the third appointment did not
show up until an hour late throwing off the schedule for the rest of the day. Men
were praying VERY loudly in the church for hours and construction of the church
addition continued. A massive loud thunder storm blew through for about an hour in
the afternoon. On Sunday the translator
was late and the power went out in the morning and then again in the
afternoon. I barely had enough battery to finish the last interview.
I
cannot imagine trying to do a project like this without having had previous experience
in Zambia. I have learned from my previous visits to Africa to
expect nothing to work and prepare for as many possible problems as you can
imagine. Even Sunday morning when they
power was out, I was calm (in large part to knowing that my tech guru John had enough gadgets to make it all work!). There were only a few possibilities. The power would
come on, our alternative electric sources would work to power the laptop or we
would need to reschedule to Monday. Hence why I built in several “off” days
into the schedule.
During each interview I pulled the photos off of their
camera and placed them in a file on my laptop. We quickly looked at each photo
and then I asked each woman to pick five photos that she felt best answered the
research question. I placed those images in a PowerPoint file and then we
discussed the five photos in detail to build the captions. The three basic
questions that I asked each of them were:
- Tell me about this picture (or tell me why you took this picture)?
- How does this picture show an answer to the research question?
- What is a solution to this problem?
Many of the photos told similar stories. This project is about “hearing their voices”
but I am not sure that they are looking at the issue comprehensively enough to tell their story. Yet, is that for me to
judge? Should I just let it organically develop and accept if it doesn’t grow?
Do I try and
spur them with more ideas? The problem is that when I share an opinion or idea
they latch onto it as truth, when I am just trying to get them to think of other options.
For the next two days, I will be facilitating discussions with the women so they can share their photos and ideas with each other. They will choose the final 20-25 pictures that will be displayed at the photo show on Saturday. As with any group of women, group dynamics are interesting and unpredictable. Throw a language barrier into the mix and it gets really exciting!
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