Black magic and leaking boobs: transversing worlds, transversing selves?

“Don’t think about the baby, don’t think about the baby” I wispered quietly to myself. This was not because it was my first time ‘back on the job’ again after my maternity leave – in fact technically I was still off- but because I could feel the pressure of the milk supply slowly building up in my chest. My nipples were pressing against the fabric of my nursing bra. One thought of that cute, innocent smile and my milk reflex would kick in. Read: leaking boobs in the middle of this fieldwork event. I had just struck up a conversation with the lady sitting next to me in the large theatre hall. She thought I was a student – something I ran with: yes, please explain the field to me like I know nothing at all, thank you – and started telling me about her friend’s experiences with black magic. I desperately did not want to make an awkward exit, trying to find the nearest toilets to pump when we were just entering the world of black magic.
As a fieldworker, it is my job to enter such worlds. But what happens when my world enters theirs? In this contribution I focus on the entanglements of different aspects of myself with the field specifically and academia as an institution more broadly. I reflect on the one major transformation of my self that I have experienced the last few years: motherhood.