Journal #24: Gatekeeping

     So I have been thinking about my timeline a lot lately in lieu of recent class discussions and have been trying to take a guess about how much time will be spent on what and so forth... I must be honest. I have no idea. One thing that I want to be sure to do though is to identify my gatekeepers early on and build relationships with them that will help to lead me to the right contacts, the right activities, and the right places. The first week at least will be spent solely on getting to know my surroundings and some people that I will be working with. We listened to an interview about an article that was written on a woman who did an anthropological study on polygamists. It was very interesting and freaked me out a little bit because she said that it took her 4 months to really gain the trust and respect of these people she was working with. I don't have four months. I have 3 months to get my entire project done. That really is no time at all so what does that mean for me? Basically it means that I need to be able to focus on what is important at all times. What information should I be gleaning from each observation and each interaction? Where should I be spending my time? Who should I be talking to? etc... a lot of these questions cannot be answered on my own. It will be very important that I find those people within the community that I can trust to lead me to the right places, people, and activities to complete my social situation triangles. It is kind of scary to think about how important every person and every interaction can be, especially because I will be in Ghana for such a limited amount of time to really conduct an anthropological research project. Nonetheless, if gone about the right way I can really gain good insights that can add to a larger theoretical effort within my field and build a background for further research down the road.
     I can only make guesses about who these beneficial people will be but as of now I think that Mama Doris (my host mother) will be extremely beneficial to the entire scope of my research for who she can introduce me to and for the information that she, herself can give me because she works at the hospital so she will be very helpful in getting me acquainted with the hospital and staff quickly. The people that I interact with daily at the hospital will also give me great insights and will provide relationships that I need to get access to certain people or pieces of information. The most important thing to me is not going to be getting the information itself because that will not yield the best results. I need to focus on building relationships and getting that cross-cultural experience. Really becoming part of the community and immersing myself into the community will allow the information to come far more naturally than it would if I was solely interested in the information alone. Building those relationships is going to be something I work really hard to accomplish.