The interviews

Interviews for this thesis were conducted in Ikisaya, Endau, and Malalani, in Oslo, and through Skype (see appendices for a full overview of interviews). In Ikisaya, I conducted 32 interviews with households and professionals at the IEC, in addition to four key informant interviews. Ten shop owners and lantern

customers were interviewed in Malalani and Endau. I made sure to conduct interviews in settings where conversations could happen privately so that the informants felt free to say what they wanted. Interviews with the four ST team members were conducted in Oslo and through Skype between 11.06.2013 and 16.10.2013. I used semi-structured and open-ended interviews. All interviews were transcribed and analyzed with Nvivo. Essays were written by pupils themselves and thereafter typed into word by me. Table 2 gives an overview of the interviews conducted for this study.

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Table 2: List of interviews conducted for this study

Informant group

Number of informants

Informant code

Professionals: IEC staff, board, and ST team 11 P

Households in Ikisaya 25 HH

Shop owners in Malalani and Endau 10 SH

Essays from standard 8 pupils 11 Essay

Key informants: formal interviews 4 Key informant

Number of informants 61

Interviews with professionals

The ST team, staff, board, and agents were keys to understanding the research project and the process of transferring IEC to the local population. I prepared individual questions related to these informants’ understandings and reflections about the preparatory research process, the current state of IEC in Ikisaya, their role, and their vision for the project.

I chose to interview four of the ST team members with various areas of expertise, roles, and involvement in the project. I developed a few questions, which I asked all informants to understand their individual interests and thoughts about the project. The rest of the questions were developed to suit the informant’s

expertise. These interviews helped me gain a better understanding of the process in Ikisaya, the organization, and work of the ST team. Two extensive interviews were conducted with the project initiator. As she is in weekly contact with the staff at IEC, these interviews were also useful to get information about

developments in Ikisaya. Information retrieved about Ikisaya from her is shaped by her interpretation and might be colored by her personal motives. Nevertheless, she appeared to openly share information, including incidences that are not

necessarily in favor of the project. Moreover, as a researcher it is also in her interest to understand the project as objectively as possible.

For the interviews with IEC staff and board members, I developed a set of questions that would help me understand their perception of the preparatory

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process, their understanding of the model, and to what extent they had taken leadership in the project.

Household interviews

To understand how IEC relates to vulnerability reduction, I explored how households made use of the Energy Centre through interviews in Ikisaya, Malalani, and Endau. I was interested in people’s participation and experiences with the ST project, their feeling of inclusion in the preparatory process and in the CBO, and their ownership towards IEC. I therefore sought to interview a heterogeneous group in Ikisaya. This included users, users, members, non-members, and crossed age groups, gender, and clans. Interviews were conducted in Ikisaya market, behind IEC, or in the shops or homes of informants.

Purposive sampling

To explore differences in use and participation, I chose to use purposive

sampling for identifying informants. Access to preparatory fieldwork documents (see appendices), interactions with the staff, and statistical data collection at IEC, helped me identify key issues in Ikisaya as well as frequent user groups and individuals early in the fieldwork. IEC staff informed me that shop owners, and those living nearer to IEC, were frequent users. Therefore, I wanted to explore how IEC had influenced income diversification for shop owners in various settlement clusters in Ikisaya. To see whether there were differences between shop owners in Ikisaya and shop owners in relatively richer places, I interviewed ten shop owners in Endau and Malalani, including the agent in Malalani. The agents in Malalani and Endau provided me with lists of their customers that I used to identify informants. This sample method is referred to as “snowball sample” (Overton and Diermen 2003). Informants in Malalani and Endau were not from Ikisaya. Hence, they had not been included in the preparatory process and were not members of the CBO. These interviews focused on how the lantern was used by customers, how it influenced their lives, and their perception about having light and lasted between 20 and 30 minutes.

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In Ikisaya, I went systematically from shop to shop and interviewed all except three shop owners in Ikisaya market. To compare and contrast with other

households, I further asked my research assistants to take me to households who depended on casual labor, on selling handicraft, and to female-headed

households, as I thought these households would be relatively poorer than shop owners. Interviews touched on informants’ income sources and life situation, their use of and thoughts about IEC, as well as their thoughts about, experience of, and inclusion in the project. Most interviews were conducted with translation, except in a few cases when informants spoke English. However, as there was often need for clarification, the translators stayed during the interview.

Interviews usually lasted between 45 minutes and 1 hour, except in a few cases when informants were especially talkative.

Informant characteristics

To get information about how various groups and genders perceived their

situation, I purposely chose informants from different parts of the village, female and male, people within various age groups, and to interview families who seemed especially deprived (for example single mothers), as well as those who seemed to have a little more (for example shop owners). My sample includes informants from all settlement clusters, while there is an overweight of

informants living in Ngovovoni (near to IEC). It contains 21 women and 7 men.

Thus, my understanding of the village from a male perspective might be a little restricted. I conducted 28 interviews from 25 different households. In some cases, I interviewed several members of one household (informant references A and B). In addition to the two largest clans, I have several informants from the smaller clans. The household sample contains informants from between 21 and 82 years. My plan was to stay in the field for two months. Since, I left Ikisaya earlier for reasons I will explain in section 4.3, I did not get to conduct all the interviews I had planned to ensure geographical representation and gender balance.

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Table 3: Household informants per settlement cluster in Ikisaya

Ngovovoni Ngiluni Kyanzou Mwalikanzi Ndovoini Kalwa

16 2 4 1 2 3

Figure 4: Clan (left) and age (right) representation in household sample

Essays from pupils at Ikisaya Primary School

The focus of my informants throughout my fieldwork was the improved ability of children to study. Therefore, I wanted to explore how IEC affected children’s study habits, as well as their thoughts about the IEC, and what they saw as important in their lives. In cooperation with the headmaster and the head teacher of standard 8 at Ikisaya Primary School, I asked pupils in standard 8 to write me an essay. They could choose between answering:

1) How was life in Ikisaya before Ikisaya Energy Centre opened and how is it now?, and 2) How do you see your life in 20 years?

I asked pupils to state their names and age at the beginning of the essay to get an overview of my respondents. To give something back to them, and to ensure that all had writing equipment, I bought a new writing book and a pencil for each pupil. I got the pages they wrote, while they kept the remaining equipment. The eleven pupils who responded were between 15 and 18 years and their responses reflected various interests and thoughts. Most pupils chose to answer the first question, while some answered both. In my interviews in general, I experienced that many informants found it difficult to imagine Ikisaya in the future. This was

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also reflected in a key informant’s statement when discussing his aspirations:

“there are so many hardships in this place, we don’t dream” (field notes).

Including the views of children and youth has often been neglected in academic research. However, a current trend among social researchers is to acknowledge children as actors with the ability to speak for themselves (Scheyvens et al.

2003b). Including participants below 18 years without parents’ consent can seem unethical from a Norwegian perspective. I informed the pupils that their

participation was voluntary and since the pupils got several days to write, parents had a chance to intervene. This might have resulted in not all of the children delivering an essay. From my interactions with this class, and from their responses, it seemed like the pupils happily shared their views with me.