Trust, Intimacy and Research

The ethical issues of using information from informants that has been given in a particular circumstance and then used by academics in a completely different one for a completely different purpose are complex. As Les Back so poignantly puts it:

‘All research is an act of betrayal’ (Back 2007).

If one tries to factor in the possibility of change, trust becomes further compromised²⁸. The fact that enough trust was established to argue with my subjects leaves me paradoxically feeling a sense of pride: over the three years some of the subjects—Deddah, Mt, Oi and Mm in particular—became good friends. They are people I still keep in touch with, and I have attended their weddings. Like all ethnographers I indulge and delude myself that I ‘got closer’ than others have previously, I was ‘let inside’ in ways that are hard to achieve (Moore 2013). But despite my fantastical delusions, the ethical issues are still pertinent. It might be accurate to describe some of this PhD as the work of woman raised in London who made friends with women in Zanzibar of similar ages, educational levels and aspirations.

However, a more realistic version is that a great deal of thought and work went into designing research questions (all of which were abandoned as oblique and irrelevant) and thinking through the bias, misrepresentations and slants my presence would consciously or unconsciously impose, and the global structurations imposed on us. This thesis is the reflection of significant interventions by

102 interviewing men (expanded upon in more detail later), older women, younger women, women who came from rural backgrounds and women who had a high profile socially, economically and professionally²⁹.

Trust remains a huge component of this study, and is key to relationships in Zanzibar. It is maintained in very real and obvious ways—by not disclosing names or identities of informants to each other, by honouring the confidentiality of

informants, by turning up on time and by being available, and by not getting angry or irritable when people failed to turn up (which happened often in the first six months, and was a struggle). Trust was also manifested—and created—in much more subtle ways: by changing my sexual behaviour, my clothes, my leisure habits, and ultimately by letting some of the informants into my life as much as they let me into theirs.

At the beginning of the research it proved very difficult to meet women and develop a level of intimacy and trust. There is a startling lack of Zanzibar-based ethnography; Askew (2002) Beckmann (2009) Caplan (2004) and Beckerleg (2004) are notable exceptions who have done extensive ethnographies in this archipelago.

The obvious reason for this is that Zanzibar society is a very challenging one into which to gain access, both literally and geographically. Until ten years ago almost no part of the island had any useable roads. Flights were expensive, ferries

dangerous, unreliable and slow. Even with the coming of better infrastructures, other complexities have arisen.

Trust is important in this society. To become ‘known’ by Zanzibaris, to be more than just another tourist, is a long and complicated journey (a potential future ethnography would be to focus on attitudes to tourism amongst Zanzibaris).

To undertake ethnographic research has many parallels with Cohen’s work on high level cocaine dealers. The rituals, performances, tests, conversations and paths that have to be navigated before people start talking, opening up their private spaces and moving beyond the public performances, is notable.

Cohen’s sociological ethnographic work on Chicago drug addicts (Cohen 1990, 2009) was illuminating, validating and inspirational. In it she describes the process of performing an ethnography of her next door neighbours, and the highly tenuous nature of the trust developed, plus the tensions of being both inside and outside

103 the research project (insofar as she was not a drug user, but was witness to many illegal activities, and was required by her informants to be entirely trustworthy and not report their activities to the police). Like Moore (2013) She also describes the fascinating process of the muddying of boundaries between personal and academic life, and the fact she was never ‘off duty’—a feeling I experienced very strongly.

I lived in Zanzibar during the fieldwork: I visited Maggies Saloon, the outdoor café and markets as part of the mechanics of living: after only a few months I realised I was never ‘off duty’: any interaction could be fuel for my fieldwork. It required discipline and honesty on my part to divulge that this was happening to informants, even when it was not necessarily in my best interests to do so. This is not however participatory research as outlined by Cornwall and Jewkes (1997).

Much of the discussions with Pinky, Hatoumi and others in the saloon took place whilst she was painting my fingernails. Again, in the context of ‘being a customer’ I heard and watched hundreds of hours of valuable discussions and gossip³⁰.

It is important to stress that the only people quoted in this work are those who were expressly asked their permission, and explained the purposes of the work, and not incidental passers-by, clients or customers in the salon. Some of my interviewees at times appeared to fear controversy or talking in ways that would compromise group identity or draw attention to themselves. Facebook, for example, was not often utilised by the informants at the time of my research, largely because the time and money they wished to spend in internet cafes was used to investigate current affairs or academic scholarships. Facebook is a medium undertaken in private by the writer, but very much a public event. This Facebook comment from Aa (one of my informants) in 2011 is an example: ‘You might call me uncivilised or disgusting because I think homosexuality is wrong and depraved. I don’t care, I am willing to stand alone in this one!’ She knows that what she has written will be talked about in ‘real life’ beyond Facebook, and may have consequences for her.

Interviewees were also sometimes unsure of how to express what they were saying as a complete sentence, leaving it to be inferred, or looking to the group, and me, to fill in the gaps, with the understanding that we ‘knew’ the answer, or that this was a composite process of accumulated responses. The temptation then

104 was for me to butt in, to add the extra phrases they appeared to be searching for. I resisted this, but it required me to monitor my reactions carefully. This process indicates the level of learning and self-reflexivity occurring, the very process of collectively building the responses, as important as the words that were actually said.

With this in mind, my presence often required a great deal of reassurance:

reassuring people I wouldn’t judge them, pass the information on to their friends, or use it inappropriately. Les Back’s words came back to haunt me many times. In some ways I tried as much as possible to mimic my informants: my clothes were long, covering my body, I wore Hejab (not a burkah), I shopped and ate locally. I never fraternised with or greeted men in public, and was very clear with the few older male friends I had (and relied on) that they assumed a more avuncular

attitude towards me. I had never been a fan of the Western bars or the party scene on the island, and the transient world of the tourist was now completely out of my ambit, as it was my informants’. During the fieldwork I remained single and

celibate, a conscious choice to respect and reflect to my informants that I understood their values of sexual purity.

However, the minutiae of creating intimacy, of allowing the people I was studying to do something other than just focus all their attentions on me, does not detract from what are some fairly serious barriers to trust. I am not Zanzibari, I am pale olive brown, of mixed race heritage. I am tall and plump, I look different.

Despite my long association with Zanzibar, I am clearly an outsider. Literally everything I say and do indicates my outsider status: using Butler and Haraway’s (1991) theoretical loci, I am the embodiment of “other-ness”. Given that at times this work considers notions of outsider-ness and othering, it is of course essential to acknowledge how given even the many ways that people ‘say what the

researcher needs to hear’ on Zanzibar, this is compounded by their own experiences of negotiating outsiders.

Academic neutrality became (and continues to become) a rather laughable pretence: my very presence was a distance-creating mechanism, before I even open my mouth. My understanding of Zanzibar culture (limited or not), and my linguistic proficiency will never change the constants for my informants: I am an

105 outsider, I am foreign, a mzungu. I have had (and will continue to have) a reality outside the island that none of my informants can check, although I can check theirs. This is an ontological barrier that is very hard to quantify or demarcate. The literature on ‘whiteness’ and privilege (Dyer 1997) explores the privileged platform from which we work, and I believe this goes deeper than simply acknowledging there is a Eurocentric bias, but explores problematic (and I believe insoluble) issues around the schisms created in the process because of my colour and my physical embodiment of so many intersectional colonial narratives.

At the beginning of the research I exploited the novelty value of being a mzungu researcher who spoke good Swahili, and used this as a way to strike up conversations. As the research progressed, the strategies to maintain trust became far more sophisticated. I was very flexible about where we met, I accepted

invitations to birthdays, marriages and funerals, and made a point of not probing if people cancelled, but accepting their decisions. I also tried hard to respond to their conversational tacks, and to always remember that people are essentially shy, and quite intimidated by Wazungu.

All the people in this work knew that I was doing a PhD, very few of the women working in Pinky’s salon had heard of a PhD, and it was explained several times by a prominent customer, who was due to emigrate to England. I am indebted to her for her patience and skills in explaining it in a socially relevant manner. In Maggie’s salon the project was explained in terms of Zanzibar women’s lives, their work, family and social relationships. The ‘media’ element was the most problematic, as for Maggie’s employees, this was an adjunct. In a culture where there is a fear of state bureaucracy none signed consent forms, nor were they shown a ‘letter of informed consent’ as they were for broadcast media projects I have undertaken. Ethically it was essential to me that I did my best to convey why I was watching and listening, but often the mention of the word ‘research’ (utafiti) stopped conversation dead in its tracks. It is important not to overlook that in Zanzibar culture there has been a history of spying and informers (Glassman 2008) for over forty years. It would be extremely rude for a woman, particularly one younger than me, to ask too many questions. This would be interpreted as showing bad faith and distrust. Interestingly though, none of the men I interviewed were

106 particularly questioning of me either, which may be because the profusion of (marine) researchers on Zanzibar has dulled the novelty, or more likely it comes under ‘everything the wazungu do is pretty weird and shouldn’t be questioned’

umbrella. Certainly, to have a job (mine) that involves essentially socialising (which is what it was called) is a strange notion for people who are getting up at 5am to study, get water, wait tables, open up shops or sell vegetables.

Finally, the research benefitted a great deal from two difficult (and dangerous) events—illness and violent harassment by a male expatriate. Both events resulted in the fieldwork period being extended from one year to three.

They also contributed to creation the conditions of vulnerability, isolation, impotence, fear and dependency for me, which I shared openly with the informants. This struggle with material and social life on Zanzibar at one level equalised some of the power relationship, as the informants articulated their surprise at how similar our lives were, and how problematic it could be being a single woman (without the protection of male relatives) on Zanzibar.