Today will be my last day in the city for a few weeks. I have got to the stage where my interviews are giving me diminishing returns, my list of potential interviewees is running out, and I feel that I am starting to succomb to what seasoned researchers call 'interview addiction' . This is the desire to do 'just one more interview', which of course is neither the last one nor is it productive. The researcher should start the next stage, either a different technique or analysis of the results. I know for certain that in my case, and I suspect in many other cases too, this is an affliction that results not from an enjoyment of doing interviews (they are tortuous), but rather a procrastination tool for delaying the next stage. A general hatred is the transcribing, the translation of texts from voices on a tape recorder to a written transcript of the conversation. It is dull, vastly time consuming, and I particularly despise it because I have a deep phobia about hearing my own voice (do I really sound like that?). It also makes me realise that I was asking the wrong questions, using poor grammar, getting verb tenses muddled, and generally looking like an incompetent adolescent in front of senior government officials, rather than the serious adult researcher that I aim to be. In my case, it is also delaying the trip out to the mountains.

Just to put you in the picture, I have spent five weeks working in a huge, bustly, polluted, noisy, 24 hour, sociable city, living in a great apartment with somebody (an American) who I can relate to when I need to be less Dominican, but who knows such a huge amount about the culture here that they have a source of many a great pointer. I have also had wireless internet access, permanent mobile phone coverage, reasonable electricity supply and a water supply that only works half the time, but at least I know which half it will or won't work. I will move from this to a tiny shack in a small mountain village with a few hours a day of unpredictable electricity, no running water, a half hour journey to pick up mobile phone coverage and important text messages, no water and a bunch of campesinos who I am sure will be welcoming and friendly, but who occupy a different world from myself. In a strange way, I feel that Santo Domingo is far closer to my world in the UK than it is to the mountains, even though the geographical distance is 100 miles rather than 8,000.

However, I know that I have lots of work to do up there, and that will keep me too busy to feel isolated, and that I need to be back in Santo Domingo on the 19th for the most important meeting of this trip:


I am going to a concert featuring Columbia's second most intoxicating export, Shakira. And I can't wait.