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“We Thought You Would Be White”: Race and Gender in Fieldwork

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2009

Frances B. Henderson
Frances B. Henderson
Affiliation:
Maryville College
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Extract

After an exhausting 22-hour trip from St. Louis, I landed in Maputo, Mozambique, alone, for the first time in July 2003 to begin my dissertation research on women and women's organizations in Mozambique since democratization. I spent an hour talking to a young man who was returning home (to Maputo) from Brazil. Seeing it as an opportunity to practice my Portuguese with someone who spoke English, I did not realize that an hour had passed and my “welcoming party” still had not arrived. The young man and I switched from Portuguese to English as he began telling me the “cool places to hang out and get a drink” in Maputo. I had no idea who was coming to pick me up as I was armed only with the information that it was my in-country advisor's brother who would be there. As this young man and I were talking someone came up to me and asked, “Are you Frances?” With a sigh of relief, I said yes, and he replied, “I was here all of the time and I did not realize that you were here until I heard you speaking English with this young man. I did not recognize you; we thought you would be white.”

Type
Symposium
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 291 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 2009

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