The First “Focus Group”

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I would have put this up sometime over the weekend, but all of the internet in Tanzania was down for several days. This is the first chance I have had on the internet in awhile, so here's the post I wrote several days ago...

Spending time here in Tanzania has been great so far. I think one of the things about it is that you don’t really begin to understand what life is like here until you try to actually make something happen. Doing research in the US is relatively straightforward. You can plan things and they will most likely go according to plan (or deviate in rather minor ways). Last minute fixes may be necessary, but very rarely do things go completely out of control. In Tanzania, there aren’t many places to go if things don’t quite work out. It’s not as easy as running to the store quickly to get something that was forgotten. If you run looking for a store in the first village we worked in, you will likely end up in marshy rice fields with crocodiles.

We held our first ‘focus group’ on this past Friday morning, and it was such a crazy experience. Our plan was to have this type of focused discussion with about 10 mothers of young children. The group was planned in advance with the local village health workers who were supposed to recruit the participants. We brought the correct number of gifts (soap packets and money for sodas) for the participants plus a few extra in case we had 12 participants instead of 10. As we were walking out the door of the house on our way to the group, Marlene mentioned that we should probably bring a little extra money just in case we needed it for anything. I didn’t realize at that moment how glad I would be later that she said that.

After stopping at the research office to gather our two enumerators, we drove off towards the village about 20 km from the center of Bagamoyo. The road was all sand and in very poor condition forcing us to move rather slowly the entire time. By the end, the road was surrounded by marshes that served as rice fields. It was pretty clear that this village would be unreachable during the rainy season as the road would be entirely submerged in water. Right in the middle of all the marshes was a small tightly packed village where we were to hold our focus group. As we drove up, we met the village health workers who ushered us into this covered area outside where the focus group would take place. When we arrived (half an hour after the group was supposed to start) the participants were just arriving. As they slowly piled in, it looked like it would be a good group. They came slowly and when there were about 15 mothers, it appeared to slow a little bit. I remarked to Marlene that this was a big group. If only I had known. More and more mothers kept coming, with two or three children in tow per mother. By the time they had stopped coming, we had more than 50 mothers and probably 80 or more children. This is where planning goes out the window. Apparently the village health workers or the village leader had invited every mother in the village. With more than 50 mothers, it is impossible to run a focus group. I thought it was going to be worthless and that we would not get any information from the group. Surprisingly, as mothers got settled and some left for lack of seating, the group calmed down and we had a really interesting discussion. There was nowhere to buy soap to give the group, but we did end up buying 48 sodas for them to drink. I was really glad that we brought the extra money.

Despite all the chaos and last minute confusion, it worked out. I think something I’m learning about Tanzania is that this is just how things work. Everything is organized at the last minute and you have to be flexible. Something will always go wrong and so you better be able to work without anything that you would like to have. The lifestyle here revolves around not planning in advance and taking life as it comes to you. It’s much different than I’m used to, but at the same time it is kind of relaxing to see that even when things can’t be planned to the finest detail, they work out. Being here is helping me to let go of my vice-like grip on planning in favor of taking each day one at a time.