Taking your time

The importance of community visits

Creating bonds and developing a fair, trusting and honest relationship takes time. Doing it in a foreign language, in a new environment, with young people and big, colorful personalities, adds an extra challenge. And if, on top of that, you’re doing it as part of a PhD, with limited time and resources, it becomes almost impossible.

I’m also told time and time again that nobody wants to talk about sexual health, reproductive rights or teenagers’ rights. It’s taboo. Chupi, chupi.

For a long time, I wondered how to do it? Why do it? I have 1000 insecurities, doubts, discomforts, but I surround myself with incredible people and it becomes not so hard.

We take our time. We talk about rain and shine. We want to work with adolescents and youth, but we build our relationships with adults first. We walk, we have tea, we cross the community, we stop 100 times, we take detours. We listen, a lot.

Transect walks are used in the field of geography. Understanding the territory, exploring places, visualizing the environment. What makes this community a community? In global health, transect walks are not very common, but increasingly, research teams are using different variants of this method.

My team and I have been walking in the community for a few weeks now. We spend days and afternoons walking around, talking to people. Are we collecting data? No. We immerse ourselves and discover a new community.

As we meet people, the community opens its arms to us. Many support us, advising us on the formation of our Youth Advisory Board. We managed to form a group of 10 young people to conduct the research with us, 10 co-researchers aged 15 to 22. We know the different blocks of the community, the important places. Fewer and fewer people follow me on each visit: I’m no longer a phenomenon.

It took a month before we started collecting data. A month of immersing myself in the community, introducing myself in a new language. Amar naam Jenny, ami Canada thaki. We walked and detoured, took our time, learned names. I’ve made puppy friends, taken 500 selfies with new faces, come home exhausted from the chaos of my days.

All for the pleasure and privilege of doing research with extraordinary, open-minded, passionate adolescents and youth. And guess what? Everyone loves to talk about sexual health, reproductive rights, teen rights, if you take the trouble to listen to them without judgment, with openness.

It’s worth taking the time to walk a community.