I Am, in Fact, a Researcher

So, you, Joe Taxpaper, may be reading this and wondering why your hard earned money is going to fund Fulbright Scholars such as myself who traipse around Africa on horseback and marvel at Rhinos and how oddly male lions pee. Well, I can’t really help you understand that. You’ll have to ask Mrs. Clinton. But I can reassure you that I do, actually, sometimes do research.

In fact, I am currently in phase two of my tri-phasal plan to understand the Swazi National Court system. I’m trying to learn three things:

1. How does the Swazi Nation Court System work ?

2. How does today’s National Court System differ from what it was initially set up to do?

3. What do people think about the National Court System?

I spent the first phase of my research in the library, reading old newspapers, Swazi laws, and student thesis. Now, I’m moving on to the interview stage. Like any good researcher, I spend time looking for contacts to help open doors and introduce me to the people I’d like to speak with the understand the system, mainly Court Presidents. And, like any frustrated researcher, I also go to bars. So serendipity would have it, that I would meet my best contact in Café Lingo, a newly opened restaurant/bar in Mbabane.

I met Pretty (named changed) with some of her Swazi socialite friends one evening. She studies law. She suggested I come to her office to meet her boss. Her boss is friendly and helpful and also happens to be related to the Judicial Commissioner, the head honcho of all the National Courts in Swaziland. Her boss sets up a meeting and before I know it I’m laughing with the Judicial Commissioner himself in his office about how tall his secretary is. Therefore, I will catalogue the cost of the beers I drank the night I met Pretty as “research costs”.