6 - Eating, drinking, and matters of health

Summary

Introduction

Tales of fieldwork are often full of accounts of eating weird, outlandish things and suffering exotic illnesses. In reality, though, much fieldwork involves neither, and it is not an image of fieldwork that should be fanned. Rather, staying healthy in the field is important, and when health issues arise, very often they have to do with something the fieldworker ate or drank. In this chapter I report some personal experiences involving food and health, coupled with something of an ulterior motive of hoping to allow others to benefit from my mistakes and to take precautions.

Eating and drinking

Talk about fieldwork often involves macho-like accounts of eating various bizarre foods and also of suffering from weird and mysterious health complications. Some advice often given to fieldworkers goes along the lines that you should eat or drink anything offered to you, no matter how suspicious or disgusting it may seem, so that you don't offend the people offering it, so you’ll fit in and be accepted better. About that, let me say this as directly and forcefully as I can: Horseshit! This is horribly wrong and dangerous advice.

A great many things you might eat in fieldwork situations can make you extremely sick, and can even kill you. It is just foolish to eat or drink something in an unguarded or cavalier moment that can make you so ill that it forces you to abandon your fieldwork or causes serious delays, not to mention consequences for your health. It is beyond foolish if, for example, eating or drinking something unusual results in squandering thousands of dollars spent to get you there and equipped to do fieldwork that you have to abandon due to compromised health. If the funding is taxpayer money from federal agencies or from donations to non-profit benevolent organizations, the needless loss can raise the ire of some and bring forth tears of lament from others—funding is scarce. Even worse, it is just irresponsible if an illness due to unguarded eating or drinking causes abandonment of a fieldwork project with the last speakers of an endangered language, where that language may receive no documentation before it becomes too late.