The Morehead-Cain

We head out of town, off tarmac, and down dirt roads for about an hour. When we turn off the dirt road, our matatu ends up driving down what has, and will always be, a walking path. Somehow the driver squeezes us through two maize fields, a cluster of thatch huts, a dry riverbed, and we arrive at our survey site.

Upon arrival, of course, no one is there.

Slowly, a wizened old man makes his way up the hill to greet us. Others emerge from huts to see what the fuss is about. After some initial conversation, it’s determined that this man is indeed our mobilizer, but has not been able to contact anyone because no one in the village has phones and they all live far away.

To remedy this predicament, he hobbles into the nearby church and emerges with a drum. After hanging it on a spindly branch, he takes a stick and starts banging away to call people to come meet us. This lasts about 5 minutes, at which point he puts his hands on his hips…and waits.

After about half an hour, no respondents have arrived. The solution: the mobilizer hobbles back into the church and reemerges with…a bigger drum. Repeat steps 1-5. We wait half an hour. No one arrives.

At this point, we really need to get things going, so I split the team up for us to personally go and retrieve people from their homes so that we can start the survey.

Two hours later, we reconvene with all respondents minus two. One guy had elephantiasis of the foot, rendering him immobile, and the other…I was told that he ran into the woods when he saw IPA coming, scared out of his mind for reasons unknown to me.

Ah, the life of a surveyor.