TITLE: Waiting for permits
DATE: 2020-03-04
AUTHOR: John L. Godlee
====================================================================


While I was on fieldwork I got stuck waiting for an uncreasonable 
amount of time for research permits so I could carry out my 
fieldwork. These permits really should have been sorted before I 
even arrived in Tanzania, and I was assured at the time that they 
would, but that's another story.

Waiting in a dusty office somewhere for days on end without the 
resources which normally allows one to work efficiently can be 
incredibly draining. My mind regularly went through a rollercoaster 
of emotions, being angry, desparate, despairing, sad, hopeful. Then 
all of a sudden, when the permit does come through, everything 
changes very fast and you have to be ready to go, so it's difficult 
to become engrossed in any singular task as at any minute the task 
might need to be abandoned.

While I was stuck I did a number of things to stave off being 
depressed and to pass the time. I read books, this is one of those 
opportunities where even the most heavy going literature can seem 
enthralling because there is no alternative media to consume. Last 
year on fieldwork in a similar situation I read all of Sherlock 
Holmes and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I have also read Joseph 
Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Moby Dick on previous fieldwork. 
This time I chose to plough through Bram Stoker's Dracula, which 
was very enjoyable. At the same time I read Bitter Lemons by 
Lawrence Durrell, which is a pleasant romantic (in the Victorian 
sense not the 21st century sense) autobiography of living as a 
British Ex-pat in Cyprus during the Enosis uprising. Along similar 
lines I also took the chance to watch lots of Youtube videos, which 
I could download to my phone, mostly on the subject of making good 
pizza.

I also wrote plenty of blog posts, some about fieldwork and others 
on more niche subjects that had been on my mind for a while, such 
as picking a new notetaking app for my Android phone with a 
detailed comparison of all 69 note editors available on F-Droid.

I had some real work to do, going through reviewer comments on a 
paper I had written, but those periods were not nearly enough to 
fill the interminable wait.

Getting into a strict routine helped me to track the passage of 
time and helped it to melt away, as I always knew what was coming 
next. I would get up at 06:45, have breakfast and wash then leave 
for the office at 07:30, arrive at 08:00. Sit in the back office 
catching up on reading and checking any emails that had come in 
since I last checked until about 10:30, then take a walk to the 
front office and see what was going on. Lunch at 13:00 for one hour 
then back to the office for writing and odd jobs until 17:00, then 
home, shower and relax until 18:30, then go for supper until 20:00 
and then bed until the next morning.