Table 1 First auto-ethnographic vignette

My initiation as a ‘global health researcher’ in practice was in 2016. In October 2016, I travelled to the capital of a country in the Global South and travelled onwards to a rural region to collect data on an intervention by a development organisation. At 24 years old, this was my first time to set foot on the African continent. After some days of accommodating to this new place, I was tasked with obtaining village chairpersons’ permission to conduct surveys in their respective local councils. Such interactions would roughly follow the same pattern: I would sit on the back of a boda boda, ^awith– in my worn backpack – a notepad, informed consent forms, a pencil, and a bottle of water. I would pay the boda driver a day-rate that included gasoline costs and a compensation for their role as language interpreter.

On a regular day, we would drive over muddy roads searching for village chairpersons and as we arrived the alleged home of a chairperson, the driver would wander around the premises shouting ‘hello’ in a regional language. If the chairperson was home, I would usually ask the driver to explain the purpose of our visit. Commonly, we were invited to sit in the garden, in the shades of a mango, avocado, jackfruit, or papaya tree (the latter offering little shade), and the first order of business would be signing a guest book. After signing the book, I – through the driver’s translation – would start explaining that we were about to embark on a survey study in the chairperson’s constituency and that we would greatly appreciate it if the chairperson could offer their written support. In addition, we would ask the chairperson to draw up a map of the village, with a clear indication of household density and noting landmarks in the village. In most villages, this would be a seamless process and the chairpersons would have few questions or reservations.

It often felt, and looked, like it was standard procedure for the village chairpersons to have a researcher asking them for fieldwork permission. On the contrary, I would be quite uncomfortable and anticipated them to utter objections. I would worry, for instance, that they would criticise the lack of respondent compensation, or more importantly perhaps: that they would conclude that my study would not be of value to their village. But as we reached the end of our long list of villages from which to arrange permission, and taking the absence of objection as the presence of affirmation, I became increasingly convinced that I was in fact engaging in something meaningful.

When we visited one of the last villages on our list, the dynamics felt different. As before, the chairperson asked me to expand on the purpose of our visit. After I explained that we were collecting data on a development intervention, the chairperson asked several follow-up questions and I tried to clarify as much as possible. Finally, the driver conferred that the chairperson had asked: “And when will you install the new water pump?” (fieldnotes). I looked at the chairperson and at the boda driver, waiting for them to burst out laughing. But the chairperson was not joking. My stomach filled with cramp, and an intense feeling of bodily discomfort left me waiting for the chairperson to clarify their question; did they really think that I was here to install a water pump? My mind kept shifting between (a) how I would convince the chairperson that our study was really necessary and (b) whether our study would, in fact, be relevant at all. The chairperson calmly explained that they understood, of course, that water pumps were not a matter of my concern. But what was of my concern (i.e. studying the impact of an intervention) simply was not, at that time, in the best interest of his village. We would be allowed to conduct our study in the village, but the chairperson made it very clear that they would be doing us a favour, and not the other way around.