Well, who’d have thought it? Here I am in the Massif Central in France to do fieldwork for my research after all. I couldn’t come in the spring because of the Covid measures. Then some of my French colleagues interviewed farmers for me. Now we are working in a different part of the Massif Central and I can be involved myself.
At weekends I’m exploring the region where the earlier interviews were done. I had already analysed those interviews with a Master’s student, so it is extra special to go there now. Everything I have read about and imagined is now springing to life before my eyes: the landscape, the livestock and the flora and fauna the farmers talked about.
And yet, it is often precisely the things that you weren’t prepared for that make the biggest impression on you. On this trip it’s been the homeless people. Call me inexperienced, but I have never lived anywhere where homeless people are very much much part of the scene. And I have hardly been in a big city for at least two years. So it was a bit of a shock on my way here to see my first tented camp in the rain beside the Paris ring road. And there are people living on the streets in Clermont-Ferrand, where I’m living now, as well.
I see the same man begging every evening on my way to the supermarket where I get my groceries. I saw him yesterday. I’m one of the many pedestrians who walk past him and pretend he doesn’t exist. I know nothing about him. How did he end up in this situation? Does he sleep out of doors? Even in Clermont-Ferrand, the nights are getting frosty and during our fieldwork I’ve seen snow-covered mountain tops. How can he survive like this? How long would I survive?
I’m one of the many pedestrians who walk past him
No interviews today, I’m working at the office. During the lunch hour we grumble about all the administrative graft. We get stressed about the quality of our research data, our time management and our deadlines. You might almost think it was a really tough life.
Vincent Oostvogels (25) is in the first year of his PhD research on biodiversity restoration in dairy farming. He dreams of having a few cows of his own one day.
