Making Sense of My Own Life

Our lives and values shape our research, so diary reflections and reflections on our memories are important contributions to knowing ourselves a little better and also allowing the readers to have a sense of the researcher’s own life. Social anthropologists have made diary keeping not merely an art form, but a way to guide their thinking and to reflect on their own “taken for granted” views as a result of their upbringing and culture of origin. In the past diaries were only a means to reflect on the personal, in order to recognise subjectivity, so that it could be bracketed or set aside and not permitted to shape or influence perceptions. Like all reflections, it is based on a bricolage of events and experiences that provide a world view. Nevertheless I do my best to examine my assumptions and values and to reflect on daily events and memories. Daily self-reflection within two communities in Fish Hoek, South Africa and Burnside, South Australia provides a context for observation by a white middle class woman with dual citizenship. The diary notes strive to make sense of personal and political events that play out during 2021–2022 as the pandemic, climate change and war unfolds and then in 2023, post-Covid when extreme amounts of load shedding (power outages) changed the way of life of South Africans.