Lest you think that every day of doing historical research is highly entertaining and interesting, today serves as a good example of the mundane stuff that takes up a lot of my time. I am alternating between straining my ears to try to transcribe an interview I did the other day with a very soft-spoken man who wanted to keep watching a soccer match while we talked. It was a bit distracting at the time of the interview, but nothing compared to trying to decipher what exactly he was saying at various points as I feel like I can hear the soccer commentators better than I can him at many points! When I can't take that anymore I start going through the files of notes and scanned newspaper articles that I picked up the last time I was down at the archives at Morija (the main archives of the largest Protestant Church here in Lesotho). I read through the articles and notes and tag them in an organizing program so that when I go to write my dissertation and want to find all the sources I have that talk about 'opposition parties', the 'Boy Scouts' or 'Agricultural training projects' I just search for those phrases and up pops a list of all the documents I have that mention the topic. Quite tedious work, really, but all part of the job.
However, just when I was forgetting where I was today as I bunker down in front of the computer with my American music playing for company, my ears pick up what sounds like a large group of people chanting or singing in unison. While this is far from unusual for Lesotho, it is not coming from the school just down the hill from my place (I can hear all the children there happily playing after school) and I am not sure where it is coming from. Finally, I figure it might be people coming down the road where I live so I poke my head out the door. Sure enough, about two minutes later as the singing gets louder I see the entire cadet cohort of the Police Training College dressed in identical white t-shirts and royal blue pants with a gold stripe down the leg come jogging slowly by in formation singing. It is quite an impressive sight, especially as their trainers flank them to block traffic on the more major roads. To do this, they carry very long branches that they broke off birch-like trees to warn motorists, if they couldn't see, that there is a large formation of recruits coming down the road, boats striking in unison and singing at the top of their voices.
Stay well.
This will be the easiest way for me to communicate with friends and family over the course of the ten months I will be spending in Lesotho in 2008-09. I am working on my doctoral research in African history focusing on the transition to independence in the 1950s and 60s, looking at the way young people tried to conceive of the project of building a new country from scratch.
2 comments:
I miss hearing harmony everywhere I go. But I did have a candlelit evening of reading the other night.
Sala hantle, ntate.
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