My first interview

I woke up this morning planning to call my interviewer in the afternoon to see if he’d found anyone to do an interview with next week. Instead, Jorge took me to see his Haitian friend—who, it so happens, was the husband of the woman who cooked us that deliciously fattening dinner last week— and I ended up calling the interviewer to do one tonight. I had everything planned: I would meet him in front of the cathedral, near Jorge’s friend’s house, and we would discuss beforehand the topics to be covered, and then he would do the interview in the friend’s house while I observed, so I could do some quality control for later interviews. And, as so often occurs in field research, the plans got modified on the spot. The interviewer went directly to the house, and although I showed him the topics, he also recited them to the other person, and then handed them back to me, at which point I became the interviewer. The interview also took place outdoors at their request because it was too hot indoors. And since they both knew what I wanted to talk about, we almost covered all the subjects in the first 10 minutes. Luckily I was able to stretch the conversation, get them talking at length about the different topics I had in mind, and even got to hear them speak a little of the local creole with someone they knew who came and harassed them for money. It wasn’t quite the experience I expected, but I did get a lot of what I was looking for, despite my American-ness, which might prove to actually be more of an asset than a hindrance down here.

After the interview, the friend accompanied me most of the way to my house, since he was headed in the same direction, and we came across a Haitian friend of his. I said to her the four magic words that seemingly catch every Haitian off-guard when I say them: “Ki jan ou ye?” (How are you?). We ended up talking for a bit, and she said she’d call a Haitian friend of hers and that they’d do an interview together. So, with one-third of my trip already completed (!), the ball is rolling and things look to be mostly on track. I still haven’t gotten together with an informant to test a few things in the local creole (as well as increase my general conversational ability), but I have plenty of resources to consult in the library while I wait for the Haitian priest to be available again (he is a busy busy man) to give me the names and numbers of his French Guianese friends.