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8. Home Visit Translations
- Cornell University Press
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The following is a home visit experience reproduced from my field notes: We walk up to a house made of wood and concrete, resting on cement blocks, with sheets draped over the windows as window shades. As we enter the home, a woman in her mid-thirties greets us kindly but with watchful eyes—“Good morning,” she says. There are four of us: two Barbadian nurses who facilitate the genetics study, a student employee from Johns Hopkins University, and myself. As we enter, there are two mothers sitting at a table, and three children stop their playing to watch us. One of the nurses asks if there is a plug somewhere; after some rearranging of fans and couches, an outlet is found. The setting-up process involves laying out four glass tubes in which to collect blood, plugging in a vacuum cleaner with a special receptacle to collect dust samples, preparing a questionnaire with identification codes, and plugging in and booting up a computer connected to a spirometer, an instrument used to measure lung function. The two mothers closely watch the process with a look of suspicion, apprehension , and interest. When the tubes are laid on the table, one of the mother remarks, nervously,“That’s a lot of blood.” One of the nurses explains,“No, it’s really not very much, just drink something beforehand, like a glass of orange juice, something with sugar.” The woman nods absently and looks at the bottles. When the other nurse comes into the room after making Chapter 8 Home Visit Translations 158 BIOMEDICAL AMBIGUITY a phone call outside, the mother again mentions her worries about the blood. He offers a similar response, attempting to allay these fears. She asks what will be done with the blood. The student employee replies, “We’ll sequence the DNA.” After a pause, she explains, “To compare to a person who doesn’t have asthma, to see if a T is a C or something like that.” The woman nods, says, “I need to see it written down, you know,” and laughs. One of the study facilitators points out the consent form. The woman looks it over distractedly. The other woman asks, “What’s the study for?” One of the nurses replies,“To find out what are the causes of asthma.” The woman asks,“To find medicine?” One of the nurses replies,“Eventually, yes. First to find out what causes it.” The woman nods. The home visit usually began with a phone call to the participants, setting an approximate time for us to arrive. Locating the homes almost invariably included backtracking and circling, asking passerby for help, as we followed directions based on neighborhood landmarks because the roads had no signs. The homes of the participants varied but largely fell in the middle economic range of Barbados: they were often a mix of wood and concrete and usually in the process of being remodeled, according to a common practice of doing some work on the home with the intention of completing the work when more money becomes available. As a result, many homes stood on cinder blocks, awaiting the building of the foundation , and several had leaks that, during the rainy season, resulted in the children gathering containers to capture the rainwater dripping in. The tradition of extended family members living together often resulted in more than two adults living in the home, and in smaller homes sheets were used to partition off larger rooms for privacy. When we arrived, a mother of an asthmatic always greeted us. After introductions, a space was found or made for the team to work, including searching for an electrical outlet and a surface for the computer and blood tubes. The setting-up process then began. The home visit is a cultural exchange requiring mutual translations, as the facilitators and genetics team gather data and samples, and the Bajan families make use of U.S. medical techniques and expertise. The genetics researchers turn the Bajan family meanings of ethnicity, wheezing, and illness experience into a science of race and disease. The Bajan families make the research team’s technologies, descriptions of genes and asthma, and test results into meaningful ways of understanding their and their children’s conditions. These exchanges reveal mutual evaluations of authority as technological and medical designations are created and used in ways that escape consistent representation. [54.163.62.42] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 12:44 GMT) HOME VISIT TRANSLATIONS 159 Gathering Data For the...