5 - Perils, parasites, politics, and violence

Summary

Introduction

In this age of institutional review boards (IRBs) and research ethics committees (RECs), researchers hope to avoid the faintest suggestion of violence, conflict, risk, or political complications, not to mention potential harm to any participant associated with their research projects. Nevertheless, unanticipated things do come up and these kinds of problems often do confront fieldworkers. In this chapter I mention a few of my experiences that involve such difficulties, both by way of illustration and as cautionary tales. The most ubiquitous problems involved health and travel, but there were many others. Health issues related to food and drink are talked about in Chapter 6, and Chapter 7 deals with issues involving travel and living conditions.

Critters

Issues with animals blend into health issues, but let's begin with animals and then move on later to other kinds of troubles.

Fleas

Probably the most persistent problem in my fieldwork in Central America and Mexico was the fleas. You get them from dogs, household pets, domestic animals—it's wise not to pet or even touch any animal there. And you get them from people, in buses, riding in the back of trucks, in movie theaters, or almost anywhere where people are put in close proximity to one another. Fleas seem to be everywhere. Their bites swell and itch mercilessly. Often you end up scratching them so much that they bleed and can get infected, or at least can get blood on clothing and sheets and what not. My father, who went with me for one fieldwork season to El Salvador and Honduras, called them the “man-eating Central American flea.” They are tricky because they seem able to avoid detection; they climb—usually imperceptibly—up inside clothing as far as they can get, until blocked by something, for instance a belt around the waist or tight seams somewhere in the clothing. They hide and are difficult to find, and shaking clothing usually doesn't dislodge them. They can stay there for days, continuing to bite over and over; when the item of clothing that they are in is not being worn, they just move from it onto other people or animals. Even when you can find them, they are hard to catch, and if you manage to catch them, they are hard to kill.