My experience in the field

Hello, today I’m going to talk about my experience in the field. Specifically, about the part of field work. Because the ethnographic method is very important for anthropology, in fact, is the special thing of this discipline. Ethnography means to do a lot of observation of people we don’t know. The objective is to observe other people in their routine and study a process or identify a problem in their cultural context.  

Well, my first experience was in Pomaire with my boyfriend for the course “Anthropology II”. We were there all the day and we made contact with a lot of ceramic workers who told us about their dreams, their fears, etc. The difficulty that we had was the initial part of conversations, I mean talk to someone. We didn’t know how to talk with them, how to gain their trust. So we entered in the stores or in their room work and we act like tourist so it was easier because they wanted to sell their ceramics. It was a great experience but too short.

My first true ethnography I did it two weeks ago, in Pocuro, a rural town in Los Andes. I was there during an entire week so I have to move and do a lot of things. I worked with elder people in an investigation about health. Our team went to the houses of a lot of strangers, we ate with them, and we laugh and cry with them. We helped to organise a benefice bingo, we went to their meetings, we met a lot of places and we took a lot of pictures and we made a lot of participant observation. It was a true ethnography experience.  After that I decided I didn’t want to be a social anthropology because I don’t like to talk with people. I felt much stressed and the anxiety consumed me before to try to talk with someone. But I met a lot of nice people, too kind, with a lot of experiences and beautiful stories. I’m really grateful and I promised to come back one day and visit them. It’s the human part of this job, because in the end of all, we are there for that reason, to recollect experiences and stories of humans who see the world in a different way and live their lives trying to be what they really want to be.

Well, that is all! Thanks! Hope you like it.

Goodbye