This blog series would not be complete if I did not talk about the challenge that money presented during my field work and which I have consistently had to work around. First let me lay out what was strongly in my favour. With my acceptance to the University of Otago I was awarded a Doctoral Scholarship of $25K/NZD ($20K/USD) which paid me a non-taxable living stipend every year for three years while I conducted research and wrote up my thesis. This money in New Zealand Dollars (NZD) met my living expenses, even covering my ongoing personal financial debt in United States’ Dollars (USD) which I paid every month via electronic transfers between my bank accounts in both countries.

I was (and continue to be) profoundly grateful for receiving this funding.

It came with no requirements to teach or conduct research for others and the payments were deposited monthly so long as I remained active in the research. I was also awarded two separate Departmental Research Fund (DRF) grants from my Department of $3K/NZD each. One of these allowed me to conduct research around New Zealand, the other I took as far as it would go in my research in the USA. Finally, I had access to a budget of $1K/NZD each academic year from my co-supervisor’s department in which she is the Head of Department (HOD).   This budget from both academic years of 2012-2013 paid most of the fees for my round-trip flight to the USA from NZ. And because the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis had graciously agreed to host me for the US Phase of my research, I had no other academic expenses outside of fieldwork.

And yet it was of course the ethnographic fieldwork which presented the most challenges in terms of time and finances. Because I relied solely on my monthly income in NZD currency which is slightly weaker than the USD, throughout the US phase of my research, all expenses and personal bills were paid in USD and the money usually did not go far enough. It took a great deal of ingenuity on my part to make my needs met but as they say, necessity is the mother of creativity and so creative I was.  After I left NZ to begin the USA phase of my research, I had a hiatus at my parents’ house in Flint, Michigan.  My mother, the most gracious, generous person I know, is a couponer and my parents have more boxed and canned goods in their pantry than they could possibly go through by themselves in a year.  So they stocked me up.  When I moved to St. Louis, we brought with us in my dad’s cargo van 10 shipping boxes of dry and tinned goods from my mother’s pantry.  What I took from her pantry hardly made a dent in the supply.  (She is a very good couponer.)  All of this allowed me to spend far less on food at the supermarket and I only needed to purchase supplemental items (i.e., fruit and vegetables, etc.).  My parents’ generosity therefore ensured that I never went hungry.

Rent for my studio apartment near Washington University was roughly the same as the room I rented in the International Postgraduate House where I lived in Dunedin.  Just before I moved to St. Louis, my grandmother passed away and I inherited some furniture from her.  My little studio flat of three rooms was completely furnished with many of my grandmother’s household goods including kitchenware in the form of pots, pans, glassware and other useful items; lamps, a twin-sized bed, dresser, and the Victorian-style dining room set of table and four chairs that I inherited.  When I moved in, all I needed to purchase was a full-length mirror and a spatula (or pancake turner, as it is also called); all of my material needs were thus supplied.  I often sent a prayer of thanks into the ether to both God and Grandma.

On the downside, in St. Louis I had to pay utilities on my studio flat as well as transportation costs, both of which I did not have to pay in Dunedin because at the house I lived in, we did not have utility costs and I was just a few blocks from campus.  I tried to make my grant stretch to cover my transportation expenses which were by far the greatest expenditure of the work. Because I was a visiting scholar at Washington University and not a student, I was therefore ineligible for the transportation vouchers students were allotted which meant I had to pay all transportation costs. Since my fieldwork took me around St. Louis for interviews and church services and day passes to ride the subway and buses cost $7.50USD ($9.20NZD), these added up quickly conducting what I “fondly” came to call “projectile research” around St. Louis amongst the pop. of 320,000 residents (more on this below).  To save money, if the destination was within two miles and I knew how to get there I usually walked. I often traveled by Greyhound or MegaBus when I left St. Louis to travel around Missouri or to other states for field work, conferences, or home for the Thanksgiving holidays. (Accordingly, while in New Zealand, I joined a discount club with NakedBus for just $20NZD that made my first trip free and a 10% discount on all bookings thereafter. This resulted in great savings on my New Zealand travel.)  Taking a bus was usually far cheaper than renting a car or flying.  I also gave a $10NZD ($8USD) koha or offering to my interviewees for their time in the form of drinks if we met at coffee shops or bringing them some special chocolate, a journal, or something else I thought they might like with me to our interviews.

After being involved in the US phase of the field work for some months, it became apparent to me and my supervisors that I would have to hire transcribers for the interviews I had conducted thus far if I wished to keep on schedule for my thesis completion date. These costs too were out-of-pocket but it could not be helped; I had too strong of a workload and could not get it all done on my own. It was a question of spending time I did not have to do the transcriptions myself or money to pay others to. We reasoned that I could either spend a few thousand dollars now to get the transcriptions done or tens of thousands of dollars later in tuition costs if I exceeded the three year timeline on my scholarship. The choice was an easy one but the timing was not. The transcriptions averaged about $130NZD each and there were several tens of them.

When doubts and fears about money threatened to overwhelm me, I would pray through them and try to remember the small miracles that had brought me thus far in meeting all my needs. I had my own apartment in St. Louis and a bed to sleep in. I never went hungry or unclothed because I had also inherited numerous clothes from my fashion-conscious grandmother’s well-stocked closets. During my years of living abroad, I often had to offload clothing and other items to meet luggage weight restrictions so my own wardrobe had been in a state of flux for quite some time. My grandmother and I were close in size and most of the clothes I inherited had been purchased in the last decade.  Many times I breathed a prayer of thanks for these small miracles and the funding that made it all possible and for the blessings that I get to do this work.

My leave taking in February, 2014 from St. Louis, a city that I loved,was bittersweet. I had met incredible people, some of whom I hoped would remain friends. By the end, however, my time in the USA had the effect of making me long for my life in Dunedin. I came to realize that in New Zealand where my funding went farther in NZD, I actually enjoyed a relatively stable financial life. It was valuable to come to this realization since due to the personal debt load I had accumulated by three years spent living abroad before starting the PhD, I now had a new way of looking at my finances. Living in the USA and paying research and personal expenses as well as ongoing monthly bills converted to USD from my NZD bank account showed me that I was actually in a place of financial relativity rather than stability: my funding did not go far enough. Other anthropological scholars have written about how expensive this vocation is and it is the truth (Behar 1988). But lessons learned, especially those that come at great cost, are ones (hopefully) not repeated. What I have gained in life experience traveling and conducting research in the currencies of the two countries in which I live has been priceless. Following my spiritual call and collecting women’s stories has been a special time of growth in my own life and has provided me great clarity and tools for handling personal and research finances better in the future.