CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
3.4 T OOLS FOR DATA COLLECTION
self” whose identity is complicated by a transnational, hyphenated identity (Ncube, 2015) as a South Africa- based or UK-based Zimbabwean. Methodologically, “the duality of observed and observer” (Coffey, 1999:20) is assumed in ethnographic study. Coffey remarks that, “The [researcher] initially and purpose[ful]ly divests him/herself of knowledge to achieve eventual understanding” (1999:20). However, my personhood as a Ndebele woman from Zimbabwe means that I cannot completely divest myself of all knowledge of Ndebele cultural norms in the pursuit of deeper understanding. I lie at the boundary of observed and observer – the participant observer who is both researcher and subject.
There was another ethical matter that I had to consider, which would have implications for the reporting of my research in the dissertation. As a relatively young Ndebele woman interviewing elderly; middle-aged and young Ndebele women alike, I found that the elderly women were forthcoming in imparting insider secrets that would not otherwise be shared as easily and openly with an outsider. I concluded that in honouring the trust that my research participants had taken me into I had to use my discretion but be mindful of how and what I conveyed in this dissertation.
travellers14 identified her as “a middle class lady – a rauni” (1983:43). In an effort to be less conspicuous, among other strategies, Okely describes making “comparable adjustments in clothing: wearing modest longer skirts, loose high necked sweaters” and how the changes she made were positively received (Okely, 1983:43). While I am hesitant to draw a parallel between my own choice of dress (as an indigenous Zimbabwean with roots in Sikelela) during the study with the decisions taken by a British anthropologist while studying Romani travellers to whom she was an outsider (Okely, 1983), this example serves to illustrate the point that dress has an effect on study participant perceptions and attitudes to the researcher.
Pattman (2005) provides powerful insights into clothing as a societal script in Zimbabwe. He explains that
“‘Salad girls’ live in the affluent and low-density suburbs of Harare, and were condemned, especially by boys from lower class urban backgrounds, for going after richer men, staying out at night, being loud, wearing ‘fashionable’ and ‘provocative’ clothes” (Pattman, 2005:505). Given the prevalence of poverty in the rural areas, my choice more conservative clothing that made me more relatable, making it easier for the women and girls in the study to talk to me.15
3.4.1 Pilot
In the ‘pilot’ study I carried out in 2015, I carried out eight semi-structured interviews (see Appendix D for the interview guide on page 236). I have apostrophised the term pilot because it was undertaken a year and a half before I started my PhD. This pilot baseline study was informed the broader scope of my PhD study.
Nevertheless, interviewees provided informed consent to these findings being used for programmatic work and my doctoral dissertation at a later stage. The questions aimed to gauge what girls were using to manage their period before the intervention and to gauge their understanding of menstruation. I was also a participant-observer at a menstrual hygiene camp that took place on 10 August 2015. At the campfire, an intergenerational dialogue took place, with rural grandmothers, mothers and daughter narrating some of their experiences of growing up. The richness of this dialogue influenced my decision towards adopting an intergenerational approach in my PhD.
14 Okely (1982) refers to Romani travellers as “Gypsies”, a word now acknowledged as a racial slur. I highlight this, to make plain a history of misnaming and racist entanglements between Western anthropologists and the communities they have studied. Similarly, Hunter (1933) even uses the n-word in her article, Effects of Contact with Europeans on the Status of Pondo Women. See also Appendix F on page 237-8.
15 I consciously abided by the dress code norms so that participants would not feel ashamed to share stories coloured by poverty, which they might otherwise assume I would not be able to relate to. My considerations emerge out of an awareness of my privilege as a city girl, or umkhiwa, as I was often referred to by Gogo Betty. umkhiwa translates as a ‘white person’, but whiteness becomes an allegory representing “civilisation” and class privilege (isikhiwa). It is also connoted to colourism.
3.4.2 Revisiting the field
Cooper and Bailey (1999) describe research as a journey. Some journeys may be direct, but some are meandering and may even need rerouting – such was my revisiting of the field after the pilot; a kind of renavigating to the destination. In the pilot study, both pre-menstrual and post-menarcheal girls were included. However, when I revisited the site, I excluded pre-menarcheal girls from the sample as they would not have experienced their first period and would therefore not be able to give an account of it in what would constitute a narrative form. As mentioned on page 60, when I first proposed to undertake this study, I was focused on schoolgirl menstruation-related absenteeism as an issue affecting educational outcomes.
I had initially only intended to interview Ndebele girls to capture Ndebele menstrual narratives. However, it became apparent to me that the participants in the study did not need to be girls at the time to recount their own Ndebele menstrual narratives from girlhood. With grandmothers and mothers being accessible to me as a result of the development programme (cf. page 60-1), I started to include their menstrual narratives too, restructuring the interview guide more broadly, as seen in Appendix E on page 236. Greenbaum defines full-group FGDs as “a discussion of approximately 90-120 minutes, led by a trained moderator, and involving 8 to 10 persons who are recruited for the session based on their common demographics […]”
(1998:2). The first FGD was a minigroup FGD. A minigroup FGD is the same as a full-group FGD save for the fact that it is limited to a maximum of 4 to 6 participants (Greenbaum, 1998). The first FGD had six participants and lasted 1 hour and 17 minutes. It came about that the FGDs developed organically out of time convenience, as more participants were free for interview discussions on Wednesdays because it is the day of rest (izilo) from attending to the fields. While it was larger than the first FGD – due to the busier timetables of the participants – this FGD lasted 45 minutes. Wong (2008) argues that FGDs “give the researcher an understanding of the participants’ perspective on the topic in discussion” and this is in part why they have grown so popular in health and medical research. This study lies at the cusp of the sociological subfields of reproductive sociology and the sociology of health. The FGDs enabled me to get an overview of participants’ perspectives on menstrual preparedness. They also gave insights into the consensus16 around grandmothers’ and mothers’ views of what has changed in terms of menstrual education and menstrual preparation in Zimbabwe from the time when they were girls to present-day Zimbabwe. With this overview, I was able to more effectively (albeit loosely) structure the semi-structured IDIs, many of which were with the same women I had carried out the FGDs with.
It is important not to be ‘methodolatrous’ (Stokes & Bergin, 2006). Methods must fit the research rather than the research being confined to a specific method(s). As such, “deep hanging out” (Geertz, 1998) was
16 FGDs have become a reputed research method for developing consensus (Fardy & Jeffs, 1994).
another data collection method I employed. It evolved more out of access and convenience than pre-crafted research design. Burrell (2009) challenges us to consider the fieldsite as a network rather than a fixed site in ethnographic research17. I also gathered data from a convenience sample that emerged when the local primary school invited me to attend a pilot extracurricular menstrual mentorship programme for girls aged 11-12 years. I was given consent by the school and parents to take notes, however, I did not include them in my core sample as majority of the girls were premenarcheal. With this in mind, we should be open to adapting the methodology of the study. Deep hanging out is defined by Kirpalani as “a method of unstructured observation stripped of theoretical concern. It is this immersive viewing of custom, myth and ritual in society that is key to unlocking cultural systems of meaning through analysing the symbols of human social life” (Kirpalani, 2016:70). I spent a considerable amount of time with my host’s best friend (Gogo18 MaGumede), who would visit almost every day to share a tea brewed over the fire or a meal. Gogo MaGumede would visit my host Gogo Betty, often bearing gifts such as vegetables19. During my fieldwork, deep hanging out with elders helped me to enrich the data collection process because I was able to ask questions about customs that I was not familiar with and gain wider context around some of the narratives the research participants shared.
3.4.3 Sampling strategy
The FGDs were a mixture of grandmothers and mothers (see Fig 13, page 89) rural Ndebele women and low educational level. All of the women knew one another personally or of one another; a distinct feature of communities upholding the ubuntu value system (cf. Fig. 7, page 52). Along with the Umzingwane DA (cf. page 59), my host, Gogo Betty was part “the network ‘in’” (Agar, 1980:27). Gogo Betty (65 years) is a well-trusted and respected village elder who shares close bonds with villagers. She assisted in mobilising the women and girls in my sample. As a grandmother herself, she was able to give me access to other women. We used a snowball sampling method to interview them, choosing women who lived within walking distance of Gogo Betty’s homestead. One pre-menarcheal adolescent girl who was recruited had to be excluded from the sample because she had not yet reached ménarche. I had to make some decisions around expanding my criteria for rural women. I learned that many of the younger generations of participants in the study had spent certain periods of their lives in the city, even if they now lived in the rural areas. While some women had grown up in Sikelela for all or part of their lives, some had moved there
17 On page 63, I highlighted that I am not presently resident in Zimbabwe and, as a result, the fieldsite is not limited to Sikelela (Burrell, 2009).
18 Gogo means granny or grandmother in isiNdebele.
19 As I highlight on page 79 in the section on “Re-introducing the fieldsite”, there was drought and so fresh produce was a delicacy. It is also part of an age old ubuntu-grounded guest culture (cf. Figure 7, page 52) whereby umuntu womzini (a visitor/guest) is offered gifts when they visit the village.
because of marriage (umendo) to join their husband’s family, while one had moved to the village because of a work opportunity. This revealed the heterogeneity of the group.20 Batisai reminds us that, “it is worth noting that ‘women’ is not a term of consensus (see Anthias, and Yuval-Davis, 1989:1&7). There is a huge range of categorisation of women in the literature where women feature as ‘generic women’, ‘poor women’,
‘young women’ and [so on] among other categories” (2013:30). The womxn in this study include, but are not limited to, adolescent girls; male daughters; young women; elderly women; reproductive women;
menopausal women; nulliparous21 women; mothers; unmarried women; wives; divorcées. African women, and even Ndebele women are not a monolithic category (Larsen, 2010) and, even within the subgroup of the Ndebele, there are similarities and differences.