In this appendix, I describe the research routines that yielded some of the information upon which this book is based. One general point about the book's format ought to be noted first. In several chapter epigraphs and elsewhere in the text, I present case material from my fleldnotes set off as extracts. This format was meant to call attention to particular incidents used to illustrate points made in the surrounding text discussion. They are not word-for-word transcriptions of the fieldnotes, however, but rather are condensations or paraphrases of more discursive accounts in the notes. Direct (translated) quotations of Mendi informants’ words have been indicated as such wherever they appear.

The “accounts sample”

The household census, the results of which were reported in Appendix A, was the first formal research project I undertook after settling in at Wepra. After my husband and I had spoken with all the adult men and women of the Senkere community, in the course of doing the census, forty-three men and women (the “accounts sample'”) were selected for the other intensive interviews I planned to conduct. Some salient characteristics of the sample are presented in tabular form here (see Tables B.I, B.2, and B.3).