ABSTRACT
Anthropologists are in the habit of storing up their favourite anecdotes from fieldwork for appropriate occasions. Here is one of mine. One afternoon during the short dry season of 1979, I was engaged in ‘participant observation’ in the Kasigau village of Rukanga, weeding the maize crop under the baking African sun with a group of neighbours. One of my companions paused in his work, spat the dust from his mouth and surveyed the shimmering landscape. After some thought, he said, ‘We heard a few years ago that some Americans were going to the moon. Is this true? Did they really go?’ I assured him that it was true, that I had read about it in the newspapers and seen it on television. He laughed, and those around us joined in the laughter: ‘What was the matter with them?’ he asked, ‘Didn’t they have anything to do here on Earth?’
