Decisive Moments

In this recurring series, members of the DAWNING team reflect on fieldwork lessons by looking at behind-the-scenes images that evoke meaningful episodes in their journey. In this first installment, Research Director Camille Sachs selects three images to look back on some her most decisive moments in the field to date.

Water and Fire

This image, a watercolor sketch by our Graphic Storytelling Director, Eric Andriantsialonina, shows me interviewing a young woman in Baringo county, Kenya. Sitting by my side is Edinah Samuel, the logistics manager in our Kenya team, who was translating for me that day. We were there to investigate the impacts of water insecurity on the rights of women and girls.

This was one of the first interviews that I led myself, so it was an important moment in my career. I am happy Eric was there to capture it in such a beautiful way.

The woman, Grace Kulei, had been displaced from her home village by communal violence. A member of the Tugen ethnic group, she and other villagers lived along a river that divided them from a settlement of people from a different tribe, called the West Pokot. The two communities regularly interacted with each other and shared a boarding school where their children lived and studied side by side.

In Grace’s telling, her community lived on the side of the river that had better land and irrigation for farming and grazing livestock. The West Pokot side was rockier and less hospitable. In recent decades, droughts had become more common in Kenya, and life became more difficult, especially for the Pokot villagers, who were mainly pastoralists. Tensions between the two communities rose.

One evening, Grace said, some Pokot villagers secretly took their own kids out of school and set fire to the building, while the Tugen children were inside. Fortunately, they were able to evacuate the building, but the message to Grace was clear. It was intimidation –intended to chase her and her fellow Tugen off the land.

This story stays with me, because it illustrates the lengths that people are willing to go to for access to water and land.

After the arson attack, Grace left for a different area of Baringo. When we spoke, she was working as a cleaner at a research institute and was pregnant with her first child. Her life had been completely transformed. She missed her home but felt grateful to live in peace and without fear.

A Wake-Up Call from Ukraine

Earlier this year, we traveled to Moldova to investigate the impacts of international targeted sanctions. One afternoon, we visited the town of Cahul, near the border with Romania. After wrapping up a couple of scheduled interviews, we had some time and decided to explore the area.

A big emphasis of DAWNING’s work is the close collaboration with the local members of our team. In this case, one of them, Alex Macovei, who’s visible in the foreground of this photo, suggested we could visit the Romanian border, where truck drivers sit and wait for hours before they’re cleared to cross into the EU.

We drove over and approached two idle truckers from Ukraine on their way to the Black Sea port of Constanta. It turned out to be a fascinating conversation. They were two young men, both around 30, whose lives had been upended by Russia’s invasion of their country. They leave their homes in Chernihiv once a week to make this multi-day journey, bringing empty trucks from Ukraine to Romania and returning with trucks filled with supplies for the war effort.

They showed us photos of their neighborhoods and homes, which had been destroyed by Russian bombs, and explained how Russian troops had encircled the entire city. They told us that their children, who they left behind each week, had their childhoods stolen from them.

This picture was taken by Rafe Andrews towards the end of our meeting. I am taking notes. Raul Roman, our director, is to my left, and right behind him you can see Eric Andriantsialonina, who’s sketching the scene –yes, Eric can draw anywhere!

Sometimes, these unexpected conversations turn out to be the most insightful. We were in Moldova to research sanctions and the implications of Moldova’s EU accession, but for these two drivers, those topics felt very distant from their immediate desire for safety and security.

At the same time, the conversation was a window into how the policy issues that we were researching impact peoples’ lives. After all, Moldova and Ukraine joining the EU Customs Union would mean they have to spend less time sitting around at the border.