One of the greatest challenges of field research, particularly cross-cultural research, is building enough rapport to receive honest and valid information from your informants. In a village setting where people have never seen a Western person, but know of all the misportrayals and looting the Western world has done out of this continent, the mistrust is multiplied. The concept of “studying a culture” or school outside of a classroom is completely foreign and bizarre for most rural people to understand. And a language barrier can only makes things tougher.
I knew that I wanted to take the village mini-ISP to follow my interest in traditional medicine and its intersection with Western medicine, but I wasn’t quite sure what angle to take on it. After I started teaching nightly Spanish classes to a group of teenagers around my house and got to know them more that I realized exactly what I wanted to do. One of the most popular career goals of many young girls is nursing. However, not necessarily for a dedication to helping the sick, but because it’s a lucrative position that can get you out of the poor village and into the city.
However, this stands with an interesting contrast to the vast knowledge and use of medicinal herbs, especially by older people. Every adult in this village can name at least basic herbs for wounds and aches, and I have seen with my own eyes and experienced myself how extraordinarily well they work. So it’s with interest that I wanted to find out, especially as a clinic just opened in the community last year, to understand how young people are balancing herbalism and western medicine, and if the former is dying out with this generation.
To start out I just wanted to learn about herbalism in general and went to visit John the village herbalist for an interview. From the moment I got to his house I realized just how difficult this rapport thing is. His family was not happy to see me, they were convinced I was out to steal the herbal knowledge and make a fortune in America. They insisted there was something incredibly shady about me, and of course without being able to speak their language, this couldn’t get much better. John seemed convinced and proceeded to show me the herbs used to treat malaria, but he was certainly not entirely trustful of me.
Once he sat down with his herbs, I began to ask him questions about himself and his practice. To make him feel at ease, I shared information about my family and life back home, and explained my project idea in detail. When I asked him what were the most common reasons came to him for herbs besides pregnancy (that’s by far the most common), he was extremely embarrassed to explain that it’s generally for sexually transmitted infections, impotency, and other sexual reasons. My translator, Simon, went on to explain that he should not be embarrassed to speak to me about sex because sexual health education was what I did back home and he could never embarrass me or make me uncomfortable with the topic.
He seemed at ease, and from then on we just opened a can of crazy and very interesting worms. His neighbors had now joined his family and I, and we all proceeded to discuss herbs, western birth control, STDs, his role as an advisor to young people that come to him, why I won’t have children (an interesting an common discussion I’ve had in this post-natalist culture, to be explained in another post) , foster parenting in America, and eventually ending with the herbs used to tighten vaginas (my apologies to Eve Ensler and my Vagina Monologues cast mates).
Well, I definitely got my rapport, and a few new friends. I have another interview to do with John and his family, so I’m looking forward to what the next one will bring. It was a very refreshing conversation, sex is something completely and absolutely private, it’s not something spoken about in public but it’s surprisingly accepted of young people.
I’ve surely had crazier conversations in my three years of teaching workshops in Brazil and at home to so so many different kinds of people. I could write a book on the things people tell me and the outrageous questions I answer. But to be able to transcend language and cultural barriers to have meaningful dialogue is something that is always worth sharing.
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