A Day with Granny

Posted in Ethics, General Posts, Methods by Nathan Clendenin on February 3rd, 2006

I worked mainly with Granny today at the house. I felt a bit awkward at first, esp. with the older children like Kate and Mongese. But I decided to just sit with them for awhile, not taking pictures, to allow them to get used to me. One of the babies also took a while to stop crying when he saw me. I didn’t have much of an idea about what shots to take except that I needed interaction with Granny and the kids. I asked God to help me see that story how He sees it. All the children, except Given the oldest grandson, were home and interacting with Granny quite a lot. Many other children from around the neighborhood came by also and I struggled with how to answer them about my project. I didn’t want to reveal anything about HIV for fear of stigmatizing the family, but at the same time I don’t want to be dishonest or perpetuating the silence about the disease. I ended up telling them I was doing a project on people in Mamelodi. Mostly these children and other curious passersby just wanted their photo taken, which I did happily.