Participant Observation and Police Stops

My first full week of proper research is nearing an end, and it’s been insightful and eventful in equal measure. The majority of my first month of research will be participant observation at universities — basically sitting in on lectures and other university activities to get a better idea of how language is used by students and staff.

Aside from realising that I’m glad I’m no longer an undergrad needing to sit through loads of classes everyday, I’ve made some interesting initial observations on language use that I’m looking forward to exploring in more detail. I’ve also been thinking quite a lot on the differences and similarities between the universities I’m visiting in Malawi and those back home:

Differences
Tuition fees: I’ve touched on this in my last few posts, but there’s currently major controversy surrounding a proposed 400% fee hike for university courses here in Malawi. The most recent development from this was a meeting between the President and leaders of the student unions. The president called for the new fees to be reduced by 50000MK (approximately £53) and for the closed universities to be reopened immediately. This reduction still leaves a student who was previously paying 55000MK (£58) now having to pay 350000 (£371) per semester. This compares with undergraduate degree courses in Scotland which are free for Scottish students.

Resources: At my university, and I’m sure at most others in the UK, it’s standard for every teaching room to have AV equipment such as a projector and essentially every lecturer will make use of powerpoint for their lectures. These powerpoints will then be available for students to download from an online learning platform such as Moodle. At the University of Glasgow, lectures have started being recorded so students are then able to go and re-watch the entire lecture series if they want (or not bother turning up for the lectures and just lie in their beds watching the recordings…but I’m sure this is a rarity…). In Malawi, most of the lecture rooms I’ve been in generally have a black board and no facility for using powerpoints — I’ve been told that there are projectors in the main university that I’m going to but every time a lecturer goes to check one out, they’re already in use. So far I’ve seen lecturers read off powerpoints on their own laptops and either have students crowd round their laptops or allow students to copy it to a memory stick after the class has finished.

Similarities

Students: students seem to be the same regardless of whether they’re in Scotland or Malawi — there’s the same awkward silence when a lecturer asks a bunch of first years a question and no one wants to answer, the same bunch of chancers who sit up the back of the lecture room on their phones, and the same complaining about how much work they have to do.

I’m sure more comparisons will reveal themselves as I continue to attend university over here, but it would be remiss of me to finish this post without mentioning the most eventful part of my week. Monday — Thursday I went to classes at universities in Blantyre and on Friday I’d arranged to interview a participant in Zomba which is around an hours minibus ride away. Given the sometimes unreliable nature of the public transport, I thought it best to head through quite early in morning to meet my interviewee in the afternoon. And it’s just as well I did. There was an increased police presence on the road between Blantyre and Zomba and the bus I was in was frequently stopped. At the final checkpoint, about fifteen minutes from Zomba, I was asked for my passport, which I didn’t have. I tend never to carry my passport in Malawi for fear of losing it and I’ve never been asked for it before or known anyone that has been.

So, I was taken off the bus and told to go sit by the side of the road, while the police continued to stop and search other vehicles. It wasn’t immediately clear what was happening or what they actually wanted from me but luckily their was a lovely German man in a similar predicament who advised me to phone someone and get them to bring my passport. It seemed that this checkpoint was specifically targeting non-Malawians and asking for their passports as a host of other people were stopped, got varying degrees of angry with the police, and either let go or joined me waiting by the side of the road for a while. Eventually the police dismantled the road block and took me back to the station where I was told to sit in a room and essentially left to my own devices for a few hours as I waited for a friend to bring my passport. The officers just sat outside joking and laughing, I did briefly consider making a break for it but think my mother would be a tad angry if I had to phone her while on the run in Malawi.

Eventually my friends brought my passport, an officer quickly scanned it and I got to leave. Luckily I’d managed to chat to the person I was meeting to interview and she was incredibly accommodating, came to pick me up and took me to get something to eat while we did the interview. I then headed back to Blantyre and went to the pub, so all in all a successful day!

The whole having to wait with the police for about five hours thing was more an inconvenience than anything else. I’ve since been told that the increased police presence was due to the recent student demonstrations and there’s an anxiety around anyone heading to Zomba to stir things up — so when I told the police I was heading to Chancellor College to meet a professor this may have been exactly the worst thing I could have said. I might look more like a radical activist that I’d previously thought.

While I wasn’t really worried at any point this was mainly due to: 1) this not being my first time in Malawi or my first entanglement with police in the country and 2) the fact that I have a network of great friends here who are willing to drop what they’re doing and come help me when I need it. If it had been my first visit to Malawi and I didn’t really know anyone, I probably would have been terrified. While I wasn’t directly asked, there was a general consensus among the other non-Malawians waiting by the road that really all the police wanted was a bribe, with one person alleging that they’d seen someone bribe the officer in charge earlier to be allowed to go on their way. I did feel that if I’d maybe produced some dollars I wouldn’t have had to wait for my passport to show up and Malawian friends I’ve spoken to since have confirmed this.

Anyway, I’ll keep my passport on me in the future and, fingers crossed, this is the last time I’m late for an interview because I’m stuck in the police station.