A Day in the Life of a Researcher

When do I work?

It might appear that I spend all of my time traveling around the country or walking through the city without much aim besides exploring. Admittedly I have been 'out of the office' for quite a bit of time since December. This is possible because of the flexibility that being a contracted researcher for the Facultad Nacional de Salud Publica allows; I can do my work in spurts and make my own schedule. When I am in Medellin I have been known to walk into school at 9 in the morning and leave at 7 at night after coding interviews or organizing mental maps all day. Or, I hole myself up in my apartment correcting transcribed interviews and doing supplementary reading. But, since I am still involved in the data-collecting phases for both of my research projects, I am often running around the city to hospitals or displaced shelters (my fieldwork sites) to conduct interviews.

To give you an idea of what a normal field visit day might entail, read on.

On Wednesday morning at around 9:30 I walked into the office I share with other "investigators" and sat down to check my email at one of the work stations. A few minutes later Gilma, my research partner and important friend/aunt-like figure in my life here, struts in proudly (as only a woman shorter than myself can), announcing that she has arranged five interviews for us back-to-back during the day. (After being received with skepticism every time I have tried to call offices asking for an appointment with a nurse or administrator in my foreign accent, we decided that it was better for her to arrange our interviews). Gilma walks up to our desk, starts collecting the necessary consent forms and interview questions, tests the tape recorder, asks everyone in the office if they know where new batteries are, and then pronounces us ready to go.

Gilma is about the age of my parents but does not lead the lifestyle of a typical middle-aged Colombian woman. Originally trained in nursing administration, she worked for 20+ years in quality control overseeing hundreds of government health care employees. Because of her experience, she has traveled all over the country evaluating hospital operations or giving lectures on the new privatized health care system that is still causing national confusion after it switched over 16 years ago. (My project with her looks at how the relatively new market competition is affecting quality of and access to maternal health care in Medellin, evaluating the desired efficacy of the health care system.) She literally knows everyone everywhere, has never married, dedicates her free time at school to learning Arab dance and painting, is always late, hikes with a walking group on the weekends up the mountains surrounding the city, is fiercely independent, and has four daily coffee dates with friends which makes it very hard for us to work on a tight schedule. But out of all of the Colombians I have met, she has the most expansive view of how the country operates, and I absolutely love working with her because she is determined to teach me something new during every conversation.

Anyway, so we walk out of the Faculty and up the street to the headquarters of one of the biggest insurance companies in Antioquia, Comfama. The man we interview is one of her old friends, (of course), and has the most comprehensive understanding of the health care system than any of the professors teaching Social Security at school (Gilma included). We sit in his white office for almost an hour, being served tinto (piping hot Colombian coffee) in small plastic cups, and wowed by his organized, outlined explanation of the problems he notes with maternal health care throughout the city and proposed solutions.

When done, we hurry over to the Faculty of Medicine and interview a woman in charge of NACER, an academic initiative funded by the government to reduce maternal mortality in the city. The professor is another one of Gilma's old colleagues, and has a much different perspective on the subject. She lists off new figures on hospital noncompliance, stressing how every singe maternal death in the city over the past five years has been preventable--a perverted fact heavy with socio-political implications. She is extremely helpful in offering us bibliographical references and access to their data, of which we will surely take advantage once we start writing our article.

Then we head back out the the street and catch a taxi to Alpujarra, the government center of the city housed in squat twin towers. Gilma leads the way through the security guards, into a crowded elevator, and up to the 7th floor where all of the state's health sector resides. We barely find the other old friend we are supposed to interview because every two feet we have to stop for her to greet someone. She's like a superstar walking through the ministry halls saying "Chiu belleza," "Hola reina, tiempo que no nos hemos visto," "Avemaria, mira quien he encontrado aca!" hugging and exchanging picos (the mandatory cheek-kiss hello/goodbye), catching up on gossip and making more lunch dates than she can attend in a month. The interview is somewhat inconclusive since the woman has worked in the ministry for almost 30 years and is so burned out that it seems like she does not even want to remember the problems in maternal health care she has seen during her career. It doesn't help that she is a bit microphone-shy and prefers to talk to us off-record. When we are done it takes almost as long for us to leave the building as it did to come in, and I end up finding a chair to rest on while I wait for Gilma to make her round of good-byes.

Next, we walk six blocks up to the administrative office of another insurance company, Saludcoop, and interview a woman in charge of maternal health who almost makes us fall asleep with her boring comments. She literally speaks so slow that she forgets what she is talking about mid-sentence and we have to remind her of the useless fluff she's saying. Although this might seem like a waste of a half-hour of our time, it important for us to show how little the people directing maternal health programs in the city and companies providing health care services actually know about the subject, which might be why there are so many improvements needed.

Once done, we breath a sigh of relief as we push through the throng of workers heading to lunch as we make our way back toward the other government building. This interview should be a bit more tricky to carry out since we don't actually have a set appointment, but Gilma is convinced that we can interview the Secretary of Health because of her connections. The security guards initially don't let us in, so we go to a public phone and Gilma calls a random man working in the office telling him that he has to come down and approve our entrance. Although confused, she is so convincing that a few minutes later he talks to the gruff guards and we stroll into the building, toward the elevator, and up to the Secretary of Health offices. By this time I am not surprised by the entire floor comprised of a maze of cubicals, and I wonder how these people who have some of the best jobs in the city put up with such a compartmentalized workspace.

Luckily the woman we want to interview is sitting at her desk working, but she won't let us interview her until we get permission from the Secretary since anything she says directly represents the state government. Gilma marches past the bullet-proof glass of the Secretary's office and stands waiting for a woman sitting at the reception desk to wake up, but over the course of five minutes of us staring at her she only nods through her dreams. Heading back out to the main office area, Gilma asks some other random person for the Secretary's cell phone number, and borrows my airtime minutes to call her, while at lunch, to ask permission. Gilma passes the phone over to our interviewee who just stares at us with astonished deference. As the director of the maternal health program in the city, this woman has an incredible grasp of the situation citing specific patient examples up to paraphrasing parts of the law to explain the gamut of problems she is attempting to address. Without her interview, our research would lack the scope of analysis we wish to achieve by looking at every level involved in maternal health.

Again it takes over 15 minutes for us to leave, Gilma being approached by random people who noticed her presence in the office as they trickled back in after finishing lunch. When we finally make it back to the Faculty I am so overwhelmed by the whirlwind of events that just took place that I can barely remember everything we learned. Luckily it is all 'on record' and after the girl that helps finishes transcribing the hours of interviews, I can pore over everything in more detail as the research cycle continues. Now who still wonders if I actually do work?