Living in the field is not easy. When I choose to chare my precious Africa memories with others, I most often choose those rare, beautiful moments that make the tears and the sacrifice all worth it. If those images composed the entire picture of life as a field researcher, however, no one would take us for the tough individuals that we must inevitably become. So I am going to assume you want more of the whole picture, and share some of the things about field life that I’ve omitted in the past.
I hate ants with a conviction that few will ever understand. Most people cling to a repulsion to snakes or spiders, but I am not one of them. Snakes are beautiful and fascinating, and have rarely posed an imminent threat to me. Spiders may leave an itchy bite, but few in the world will kill you, and they always travel alone. My fear of ants is not something I was born with. It is a hatred that only daily life in Africa could give me. Ants do not travel alone. They do not prick you with one swift injection of venom like a spider, or a warning bite that draws a trickle of blood before slithering into foliage like a snake. They creap onto your skin with a light tickle that you may never notice, at least not at first. Where one tickles, though, there is another, then another. When one finally bites, the warm is all over your flesh like a blanket of that makes one monster, stinging under your clothes and in your shoes, making it impossible to brush away the pain all at once. I have learned to hate ants. They are everywhere, trail of them dig trenches through the forest. They infest every food I seal and tuck away, every surface I scrub after eating. I hate ants.
Ants seem to find me on those days when I just think I’ve had enough. When my skin is caked with red clay and salty sweat, my rarely washed hair sticking to my forehead and my poor, calloused feet are swollen and throbbing inside my giant rubber boots. When I’ve been hunched over and struggling through webs of vines and thorns for hours to find no chimps at all: this is when one, then a million tiny warriors swarm me until I swear I’m ready to go home.
There are more troubles than just ants though. Sometimes it’s the shear power that isolation from all but a few individuals ever single day, night, and second can do to a human mind. You never choose who you will live with in the field. You can’t select the nicest, kindest, most amiable individuals to become a permament attachment to your work, your leisure, your whole life for months at a time. Your privacy is ripped away. All of your phone conversations, your daily motions, your expressions and moods are on display for a small circle of people that someone else has chosen for you. And it will wear on anyone.
You will have those days when you question what you were thinking. When you worry that your life back home will move on without you. Your loved ones may tire of waiting, or grow weary of your touchy temper that has been worn and exposed by the stress of this challenging life. Just when pondering this and holding back the tears or the pain in your ears from your constant companions, you may run into a tree, fall into a river, get attacked by a swarm of angry ants, and fight with energy you never knew you had to keep it together while others watch your reaction. Yes, field research is a daunting and heart breaking challenge in so many ways. So why do I do this?
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