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

directly and gave me the reasons why X was rich and Y was poor, while
others could only talk about themselves.
Another challenge was lack of privacy when interviewing the household
heads. This came about because the people were crowded within the
clusters and many people were always around either just listening or
occasionally joining in the interviews completely uninvited. For instance,
when question 17 was asked (see Appendix 2) “were there any human
losses you know of due to starvation?” There would be chorus answers
“Yes, many etc”. This came from even neighbours’ who were passing by.
Yet to maintain the rapport which had been established between the
interviewees and me, i could not stop them talking, as to do so would be to
cut the flow of potentially useful information. My earlier stay with the
Turkana nomads while working as a government officer in 1999, and
during my reconnaissance survey, had taught me that Turkana people are
good talkers when properly motivated, but become completely withdrawn
at the slightest suspicion that you are unhappy with the way they conduct
themselves. Similarly, I could not pull someone aside to interview privately.
Such an action would be highly suspect and I would have risked being
called anti-social or even an enemy (amoit) who wanted to do harm to the
person pulled aside. I could have been isolated, and that would mean the
end of my interviews with them. So, I proceeded cautiously. Sometimes I
noticed that while interviewing a respondent, someone whom I had just
interviewed a short while ago or on the previous day was sitting quietly
close by and occasionally making gestures as questions were asked and
attempts were being made by the respondents to answer them.
The sum total of the experiences gained during the pretesting phase was
that, in order to minimize negative effects, I had to find new approaches to
the interviews. Absence of privacy in particular seemed to contribute to the
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