By William Merrix, Florida State University
In my last blog post, I talked about my first few days here in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Since then, I have gotten to complete interviews, talk to residents, overcome obstacles, and take a culture-rich trip to the country’s capital.
To date, I have completed 10 interviews, 2 informal interviews, and countless hours of participant observation. These conversations have been rich in data and extremely informative to my research questions. This week, I have my final 3 interviews scheduled. While I wished to complete more, I have come to realize how demanding the work is to translate and transcribe these interviews. Each interview is approximately 1 hour and in French. Along with my research assistant, a graduate student in linguistics here at Félix Houphouët-Boigny University, we have completed the translation and transcription work for 3 of the interviews. To ensure we complete all the interviews before I leave, we have left the last two weeks of my research interview free to focus solely on this.
In addition, university students and the people of Abidjan are extremely busy, and I have had some difficulty finding overlapping availability with my target interview participants. To this end, I have often had days of the week when we conduct 2-3 interviews in one day. I have also been proactive in overcoming this barrier. I have interviewed participants outside of the university near their places of work and in the various large markets of Abidjan’s different townships to better accommodate their busy schedules. Daily life in Abidjan is non-stop, and Ivorians are some of the hardest-working people I have met!
As my time in Abidjan comes towards a close, I am preparing to give two talks to faculty and students. The first will occur at a conference on AI and linguistics about independent research I am pursuing with a faculty member in FSU’s Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics. The second will be to students and faculty in UFHB’s Department of Language Sciences about my preliminary findings for my IDEA Grant-sponsored research. In preparation for this, I have been poring over my handwritten interview notes to gather ideas, phrases, and theoretical inferences for my presentation. I will give both of my presentations in French.
Finally, since my last post, I have had the opportunity to visit the capital city of Yamoussoukro with my undergraduate thesis advisor. This was a wonderful weekend experience! I got to see the Basilique Notre-Dame de la Paix, the largest basilica in the world, the former presidential palace of the country’s first president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, complete with its crocodile lake, the Félix Houphouët Foundation for Peace Research, a frequent meeting place for UNESCO, tour one of the campuses of the Félix Houphouët-Boigny National Polytechnic Institute, and have local meals and cultural exchange with a family my thesis chair is friends with. We also visited L’Hôtel Président and Hôtel des parlementaires, two luxury hotels in Yamoussoukro. While in Yamoussoukro, I tried new foods such as beef kidney and bissap, which is a juice made from dried hibiscus leaves. They were delicious! It was a visit rich with amazing scenery, gracious hospitality, and great food!
Me standing in the outer central courtyard of the Basilique Notre-Dame de la Paix.
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