Methodological challenges

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any lengths, often inventing stories, just to show how distinct they are from others, including eating habits in South Asia (Wijeyewardene,1990: 3).

Going back to the Kamba-Maasai identity debate, Palalelei remarked that the „difference‟

between the two groups was “obvious...we live here together but there is a big difference”.

Asking him what kind of differences these are, he adopted a linguistic criterion and asked

“what do you people call water? what do you call milk?”⁶⁹ After telling him the Kikamba names (he speaks Kikamba), he told me the Maasai equivalents and posed a question: “And you ask if we are different”? At that point, I got a bit frustrated since going by his initial determination, the knowledgeable man ended up oversimplifying ethnic differentiation.

Drawing his attention to the bilinguals among a section of the Maasai and the Kamba, he asked: “If you learn kimasai do you think you will be Maasai?”, which takes one back to Solinketi‟s story above. Apart from unshared language, he also highlighted the modes of subsistence (pastoralism and farming), transhumance, construction of huts, development disparities, importance attached to initiation rites (particularly circumcision), polygyny and dressing. He noted though that “it is difficult sometimes to say this is what is Maasai and this is what is Kamba”. Besides, it was clear that nearly all the „differences‟ identified were social practices. The tendency to treat an item like language as a „natural‟ attribute, even when actors know that it is learnt within a certain social space, underscores how eager actors are to stress

„difference‟. As we proceeded with our conversations, it was becoming clear that we were talking about how real and fluid ethnic difference is. Convinced as I am that ethnicity is entirely a social construction, one cannot ignore how actors insist on Barth‟s (1969) “cultural stuff” in defining their identity. Barth noted that ascriptive factors in ethnicity are used to mark boundaries but they may change and the cultural characteristics of the members may also be transformed. Common language for instance, has been shown not to necessarily constitute a prerequisite for common consciousness nor protect groups against conflicts (Haneke, 2002: 146).

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(Whyte, 1984: 27). During the study, an attempt was made to establish connections and continuity in the data gathered, integrate research categories and compare data with emerging categories on a regular basis. Researching on interethnic relations posed certain challenges.

Due to the „sensitivity‟ of the topic, some respondents would „disappear‟ leaving some gaps in my fieldnotes and memos. To have a coherent story, such gaps would be filled up with supplementary sources or much later after the respondents resurfaced and were willing to continue. Among the Maasai, transhumance disrupted interviewing process. In certain cases, follow-up interviews meant travelling to distant areas where they had moved with their cattle.

The principle of „theoretical saturation‟ and sampling was adopted where a line of inquiry was followed up to such an extent that there was no more variant or new information emerging.

For some respondents, the absence of a questionnaire made them think that I was not doing

“research”. For instance, Mr Mutua asked, “you don‟t have that form which people fill?” By

“form” he was referring to a questionnaire, which is the commonest method of data gathering in Kenya. When I told him that I had no “form”, he looked unsettled. As noted earlier, I had to engage him into some lengthy discussion regarding the methods of data gathering that I was using. My earlier experiences had shown that apart from their inherent shortcomings, questionnaires introduce officialdom, fear and „distance‟. Surprisingly, I was now getting schooled to the idea that failure to produce this device was also generating suspicion and distancing myself from respondents. Mutua even knew that a questionnaire was „quicker‟

saying that if I were using one, I would have “got” what I “wanted” a long time ago. He wondered why I kept on coming for „clarifications‟ from him.

Generally, I had problems using a tape recorder. At one time, I and a university student (John) who was assisting me with translation of Maa, were given a go-ahead to attend a women‟s meeting. After a short session of self introduction, I asked them whether I could record the deliberations on tape. One member insisted that I should not tape-record the proceedings.

Speaking in Maa she said “you never know where he will take the information”. I complied.

Generally speaking, recording of interviews proved problematic. The perception that whatever I was doing must have been „serious‟ restricted my acceptability and raised the stakes.

Explaining to respondents the reasons as to why I needed the information on tape was understandable but the doubts remained. Their suspicions were not baseless. For a very long time, Kenyans have lived in a culture of fear. Apart from that, I realised that stressing that what they were telling me “was very important” was working against me. By stressing that it was important, some respondents feared that those records may be kept for a long time and that the data could at one time be used against them. In other cases where respondents had no

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problem with tape-recorded interviews, I often noticed that they were more cautious about what they said, in effect restricting the information they would ordinarily share.

For the women group referred above, John and I adopted a strategy where he took notes since a direct translation could have influenced the proceedings of the meeting. Among the issues discussed included a Kamba woman heading a credit scheme. They wondered whether she would lend them more money⁷⁰ and discussed her attitude towards “Maasai groups”, which they felt was negative. One member suggested that they should not discuss about her in my presence but another told them that they should not “fear people”.

Deliberations resumed and I kept on getting concerned why John would not be taking down notes during some discussions. He was to tell me later that some of the things discussed were

“not important”. My experience with John taught me that interpreters/assistants must be chosen carefully. They should know clearly the purpose of the research and that the researcher is interested on gathering data that may otherwise be of very little or no interest to the assistants, or which they may take for granted as members of the local community.

During fieldwork, inconsistency of information made me realise why it was important to match not just what people say and do (Long, 1989), but rather what they also say and do at different times and places. In my first interview with the leader of a credit facility, she told me that 60% of women were receiving loans but then during the third interview in her office, it turned out that out of a total of 204 beneficiaries only 80 were women against 124 men.

Besides, distinctions had to be made between „collective‟ or typical practices and individual ones. Asking a Maasai respondent about his daily diet, he told me that unajua chakula yetu ni nyama (“you know that our food is normally meat”) only to find out in the course of the interview that he had not eaten meat for about a fortnight. The question had forced him to project a positive image about himself and his group, otherwise, in the contemporary Maasai society, meat consumption has gradually become a luxury. Such responses also show that depending on how a question is framed or understood, the respondent might be forced to create some non-existent categories.

I had to be cautious about how „reality‟ was being presented by the actors. In fact, this traversed many areas of the study including the definition who the Maasai or the Kamba were, with a consistent attempt to portray each group as a clear-cut collective entity although observations and in-depth analyses revealed inter-group overlaps. Many decades ago, Leach had encountered the same problem while studying interethnic relations in northern Burma (Leach, 1954: 17).

70 They had previously borrowed Ksh 50,000 which they had lost through „poor‟ investment.

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Last but not least, this is largely a study that anthropologists would perhaps lay much claim to.

In spite of the fact that I have worked closely with social anthropologists (including my supervisors), it is difficult not to see myself as a sociologist „doing anthropology‟, the fluidity of the borderlands notwithstanding. In fact, Jenkins (1997: 6) notes that recent developments in anthropology have made it “...no longer as easy as it might once have been to distinguish anthropology from sociology, its closest sibling and most obvious rival”.

Needless to say, as a researcher, I did impose my own influence or limitations on the data gathered and do acknowledge that at times, it was possible to influence actors‟ responses when asking questions or seeking clarifications on issues that they ordinarily do not deal with in social practice.⁷¹