PhD thesis Title Page Final _Richard Juma - Victoria University ...

Once I had found somewhere to live for my initial two weeks, I spent much
of the study time with the villagers, talking to them and making
observations. The Turkana men speak a little Kiswahili (Kenya’s national
language) and school children speak some English. This helped
occasionally in communication. However, I identified two male Turkana
research assistants, and friends who could speak both English and
Kiswahili to help me in interpreting some of the words. During the course
of data collection, I could intermittently engage a female interpreter when I
planned to interview a female respondent. However, I made efforts to pick
up a few words in the local language. This was relatively easy since the
Turkana speak a version of my mother tongue (dholuo) and many words in
the two languages (Ngaturkana and Dholuo) are mutually intelligible 54. As
long as esoteric matters were not the topic of conversation, it was therefore
quite easy for me to get the general drift of a discussion in Ngaturkana.
This period of familiarization and observation was crucial as it was during
this time that the study took shape. The issues to be investigated through
future questionnaire interviews were selected from the experiences gained
during this early period. Since I had only lived and worked in Turkana as a
government officer and had never carried out research with nomads
before, I had to learn what the most effective method of interviewing them
was. I was therefore learning as I stayed and discussed various subjects
with them.
Although observation and informal interviews were useful in introducing
me to the pastoral life style, it also helped me to gain extensive background
information on the drought and famine problem and helped sharpen the
focus of my study. This method also had its limitations. Firstly, the
respondents were not systematically selected. We just happened to live
together and talk. Secondly, the issues discussed were never entirely
controlled. A topic would come up and be discussed spontaneously and
54 See appendix 4 for some of the pairs of words in Ngaturkana and dholuo.
69