The One Who Got Away (hopefully not for long!)

Research is hard.  Trying to do research in a foreign country adds to the complexity.  There's the language barrier.  I'm finally using the phone a little better (although still avoiding it when there's text or e-mail available).  There's public transportation--hot, sometimes very crowded.  (I shouldn't complain, since I've never lived anywhere in the US that had public transportation to the extent needed.)  There are cultural differences that render simple interactions indecipherable.  And there's trying to make connections with people/agencies in an unfamiliar city that is HUGE.  So let me describe my current target.

Actually, I have to back up a bit to give some context on what the process has been to make connections with the agencies/programs I came to study.  My main contact in Mexico is a social work professor who does many other things besides teach at the university.  For the first five months I was here, he also had an administrative position within Mexico City government social services.  He also travels extensively both in Mexico and internationally (he's been to Chile, Colombia, Spain and France while I've been here--and I may be missing a country or two).  He's very involved in politics and it's a year in which a new president and governor of Mexico City will be elected.  He is very knowledgeable and connected and the original plan was for the two of us to go to these agencies together so that he could introduce me to the directors who are all friends of his.  The personal connection and introduction is important, but has not happened as planned.

Here's what HAS actually happened:
Agency #1--I visited on a Sunday in November with a social worker (another friend of my main contact), her husband (who works for the government department that runs the agency) and an international doctoral student who also wants to recruit for a research project there.  Nothing was going in the agency that day (and the person I needed to meet was in Colombia, presenting at a conference with my main contact), but I was tagging along on the trip with the doctoral student and I at least got to see one of the locations.  I also learned a lot about what the program does and the development of other programs in its network because the social worker's husband is the architect who has designed many of the buildings in the other sites.

A couple of months later I met the director of the network of all the sites at my contact's birthday party.

Salvador Dali is big here

Agency #2--My contact said to meet him at 10:30 on a Saturday morning at a certain metro station.  I was running a little late (I forget to factor in enough time to walk to the metro and I hadn't had coffee yet either).  This particular metro line is partly underground and partly above ground.  One of the times it was above ground, my cellphone let me know that I had missed a call.  The number wasn't my contact's, but I figured maybe he was calling from home or some other location rather than his cellphone, so I sent a text back to the number saying I was on my way.  When I got off the metro, I saw a guy I recognized, but not my contact.  He had sent someone else to meet me.  Not someone I actually knew, although as I said I did recognize him from having seen him at a couple of events.  I asked where my contact was and the answer was that he had an appointment (or a date, not sure which because it's the same word) so asked his friend to go with me instead.  Okay, fine.  He is a nice guy and I enjoyed his company (and his dealing with getting us the rest of the way to the program in a taxi and then back to the metro via bus) but he wasn't known to the director of the agency either.  But I did meet the director and learned a bit about the program and got some GREAT pictures.  I still need to go back to that agency for interviews.

Grafiitti is one of the artistic media taught here

Agency #3--In about mid-February, my contact started acting anxious to actually do the visits he had indicated we would make.  After a couple of weeks of "we'll go on Wednesday--I'll call you" (neither of which would happen), one day he said that we had an appointment with the director of Agency #3 on Tuesday (when my main contact himself was going to be out of town for another speaking engagement).  Okay, fine--I can find my way there. 

I'm not sure now whether we really had an appointment or whether this was the next time that the director was going to be available to possibly make an appointment, but I decided to go with the "just show up" method of meeting people. I have to admit, I was a little nervous about going to find one of the programs on my own because I know they all are in pretty impoverished areas.  However, I knew that another of the Fulbright scholars here also had an interest in this program, so I contacted her and invited her to go with me.  She had described having difficulty trying to arrange a meeting with this director, so it seemed like a good plan.  We arranged to meet at a metro stop where the two lines we would be using would cross and go together from there. 

The pedestrian bridge over the highway

Before we exited the metro station nearest the program, I showed her where the agency was located on the neighborhood map posted in the metro.  We climbed the stairs to exit and found that there was a highway between us and where we needed to go.  Hmm, let's see if there's a way to cross this.  Ah yes, a pedestrian overpass.  So we climbed the two long flights of stairs on the overpass and turns out my Fulbright friend is a little afraid of heights--and this bridge.  But we made it to the other side.  As we started walking, she was nervously saying, "This neighborhood's a little sketchy."  I tried to reassure her,  "Oh, it's okay.  We'll be fine."  It actually did seem fine to me, but she's an artist, not a social worker.  Later I laughed and said she might think twice the next time a social worker invites her to go somewhere!

A view from the bridge on the way to Agency 3

Anyway, we found the agency, said we had an appointment, and did end up meeting with the director (even though he wasn't entirely sure my contact had set something up).  The director also then set a meeting with my Fulbright friend to talk about her wanting to offer a workshop in graphic design at the agency.

Agency 4 is in what used to be a cinema

Agency #4--A week or two after Agency #3, once again I was supposed to meet my contact at a particular time in a particular metro station.  I arrived just about on the dot, but I wasn't really sure exactly where to meet him so I went outside to send him a text message that I was there.  I fully expected that he was still on the way.  My text didn't go through, though, and the network message was that his phone was outside the service area.  So, unable to contact him but seeing the agency about a half a block away, I headed over to the agency.  I introduced myself and said that he and I had an appointment with the particular person but that perhaps my contact wasn't there yet.  Not only was he not there, the person we were supposed to meet with wasn't there, either.  So I'm looking like the crazy gringa again.  One of the staff showed me around a little bit and talked a little bit about the agency and its programs and then asked if I'd like to meet the director (turns out the guy I thought we were going to meet with isn't the director).  Of course I would!  Right after I got settled in the director's office, I got a text from my contact saying that he was not able to get away from the university but that I should go out of the metro station and over to the agency and introduce myself on his behalf.


The director clearly wasn't too happy about having me dropped on him, and I didn't have even the pretense that I had an appointment with him, so I asked if there would be a more convenient time for us to talk.  We set an appointment for a few days later.  I've now been back for some interviews.

Back to Agency 1 again--So now I'm getting brave.  I called the director of the network of sites and asked to set up a meeting, reminding him who I was and where we had met.  He arranged to meet me at the program site at a particular day and time the next week.  I exchanged texts confirming the time and date early the next week.  Then I went out of town, just overnight, but I would then be arriving back to Mexico City the day of the meeting.  While I was on the bus on the way back to Mexico City, I got a text for the director that he had to go to his actual office that day and I could meet him there.  Great--I was all prepared to go to one site and now I had to figure out where his office is.  It turned out okay--even though I arrived to call on him in his government office, in a government building, without ANY picture identification (I know better than this!).  I didn't even have the photocopy of my passport that I usually carry!  The security people weren't going to let me in but then they called the director's office and he said he was expecting me (the not-so-bright gringa this time).  I got to meet the site director as well as the overall director.  I've even been back to the program site for an event (this time I took along my husband and a friend of a friend visiting from Colombia)--good thing I hadn't needed to meet the director there for the meeting because it turned out that I didn't know what metro stop it was near, partly because I had gotten there in a car on the first visit.  I'm good to go there for some interviews now--hopefully this coming Saturday (and I know how to get there now).

Agency 3 again--I had managed to get a business card from the director when my Fulbright friend and I had visited, and it had the director's e-mail address.  I sent him an e-mail last week asking if I could meet with him again to get started with data collection there.  I said we would need less than one hour and I could be there anytime except Monday morning.  He responded with a time for today. 

This morning I got up early enough (for once!) and made the final preparations to my questions.  I arrived at the metro close to the agency at the time I was supposed to meet with the director--close enough to be culturally "on time".  I crossed the scary pedestrian bridge (I'm braver when I'm responsible for someone else being there, you see).  I recognized some of the buildings on the other side of the bridge and the railroad tracks that my friend and I had crossed (she hadn't liked that, either).  Then I wasn't entirely sure whether we had turned left for a block before continuing in the direction parallel to the highway/railroad tracks.  I started to go a block to the left, but it was clear that the first street I would come to was quite a distance--that just didn't fit my memory.  I decided maybe it was on this street parallel to the railroad tracks and started walking that way.  I knew I would recognize the agency when I saw it and, sure enough, there it was with the giant armadillo painted on the side.

To make the story a bit shorter here,  the director wasn't there when I got there, so I was waiting, reading e-mail on my US phone, reviewing my questions and making some notes about a few other things I wanted to ask about.  Other staff began to arrive, many of whom I had met on the first visit (but not sure they recognized me).  Finally one woman I think I had not met on the first visit said she would call the director to see when he was arriving.  She came back with bad news that, unfortunately, he hadn't gotten the appointment in his calendar and was at another meeting out of town.  He would have to contact me when he gets back, to reschedule.

So, that's the one who got away--this time!

As I said to start with in this post, research is hard.  Many times anything that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong.  It may not have disastrous results when things go wrong, but it definitely is frustrating!