Challenging fieldworks: lions or lice
31 July 2014, near Moramanga
Thinking of challenging fieldworks, I’ve had to come face-to-face with Maoist guerillas in the Nepali mid-hills (2001); been chased by wild elephants in Chitwan National Park in Nepal (2003-2004); come out safe from some of the most dangerous bus rides in Northern Ghana (e.g., bus ride along a two-lane highway in torrential rain without windscreen wipers!); survived drinking absolutely disgusting water from a puddle to avoid dehydration and collapse in the field at over 42°C; and had some close escapes from dangerous snakes and scorpions in Northern Ghana.
Since September 2013, I’m working as a researcher in the ESPA-funded P4ges project.1 After almost a year in the project and on my third field trip to Madagascar, I now feel I should share my field experiences from this project here as blog posts. This is just a preamble for what will hopefully be a series of posts about doing field research in Madagascar — primarily about conducting socio-economic surveys at the household level in rural Madagascar.