Days 1294-1297: I miss everything! But I do research!

Tuesday and Wednesday I had to teach, so Ruth hung out with my parents, and I met up with them in the afternoon, mostly to just hang around their flat and relax.

Thursday, I finally got called to Burma Camp to do interviews!  But you're not reading this blog to find out about my research.  Just in case Ruth ever reads this and wants to know what her Dad did before he failed his tenure bid... after weeks of wrangling, I got a call telling me to come on 11/3.  Not, "would 11/3 work for you?" but just, that's the day.  So I went down and did a marathon series of interviews in Burma Hall (with no A/C).  The only big issue was that - even though I told them I planned about an hour per interview - they had all the interviewees show up in the morning, which meant several of them were waiting around for hours and hours by the time I was able to get to them.  Not that anyone would take my offer to "go and come."  Ah, the military.  I did update my hypothesis, though.  While I'd gone in thinking that perhaps involvement in peacekeeping would have a beneficial effect on attitudes towards human rights and civil-military relations, I walked out thinking that it was more of a "scared straight" program.  What many of them told me was basically that, after having seen societal breakdown abroad, they didn't want it at home.

Friday, I was supposed to go with the family back to Teshie to (for reals this time) see the coffin makers, but I got called back to do more interviews at Burma Camp instead - and given how long I'd been working on it (and that this was the centerpiece of my research project here), I couldn't really say no.

Fortunately, I was done by about lunch time - everyone else had gone to see the coffin makers (Ruth liked the cow!) and I met up with them for a very nice lunch at Next Door Restaurant out in Teshie.  There was a sort of sea-water-filled artificial tide pool there (it looked like it had seen better days, and was maybe from when they'd been planning to expand Next Door with a hotel), and Ruth and I splashed in it and wondered at the tiny, tiny snails.