What do I want to know?

This is the question that sends fear and anxiety into the hearts of all graduate students I know, I thought it was bad while I was writing grant applications, but now that I'm in the midst of things it seems even worse. Because I could answer the question (at length) before I started, and then I came and started work and have tried to absorb all these new details and information and still maintain a meta-perspective on my data, that it feels like the details are driving me. It is one of the maxims of anthropology training that what you go to find in the field and what you find are often two different things, and that the questions you develop emerge from the context. So, what then are my questions? I have a sense of themes and concepts but not questions (which was exactly my problem writing both grants and comps)... and I'm really struggling with holding on to what I thought was my main interest and what people here want to talk about (not that anyone is partially loquious about interpreting their own experiences). Plus, while observing is fine, I'm having a really hard time getting time to do informal interviews as everyone is so busy that I feel super hesitant asking for more time for my agendas. I tell people here that I want to learn about the cultural and political context of pregnancy here in Mexico within the broader frame of the relationship between what is happening here and in LA... but the questions that this would lead to are still elusive. Also, I'm still feeling all over and gathering data in domains that I'm having trouble seeing the connections between them. I "feel" that they are there, but it's hard to explain the connections in cohesive ways. Plus, there is an ongoing tension between my project here and my big project including LA-- so I am constantly asking myself if the questions I am asking here apply to this larger context to make sure that I can later draw transborder connections rather than describing two places using loose bridges.

So today, instead of going into the hospital to observe exams, I'm trying to be disciplined and really sit with my data... and type up allllll the fieldnotes that I've been taking. Hopefully, this will unlock some of the meta blocks that I'm hitting up against as I want to both transcribe them and then outline some of the processes that I'm seeing-- like the normative processes through which women obtain prenatal care.

And now an amusing fieldwork anecdote:
After being literally in bed for a week (it was very Victorian dramatic... but I need to acquire a fainting couch to fully be the wan figure I felt like), I started back in the swing of things this week. I hadn't been to the hospital in a couple weeks between events that kept me in the city (and then going into the hospital to find no apts that day), my Dad and Sherry visiting, and then being sick. So it was very difficult to start up again... and one of my hardest issues is that I haven't figured out a way to anticipate the day's schedule, so I just show up and pick a doctor to work with (made more awkward by the fact that I've only met some of the docs and I don't think that the director introduced my project as he had said he would), talk to their nurse about what apts they may have with pregnant women, and then wait for the apt (which is made not by time but order).... argh, I need a better system.
But anyways, yesterday I went with the equipo de salud team again to Xaaga and had a longer talk with a girl I'd seen the first time. She was waiting for her plactica (timing gets confusing since Xaaga doesn't use day-light savings so she told me that people show up sometime within the hour) and I asked her if I could ask she some questions.... one of the things I asked her was her age even though I was pretty sure she was 16 and she responded with a smile "guess" so I purposefully guessed 18 "menos" she smiled, 16? "no, 15" really? I replied with big eyes and she laughed... and we had a good conversation. Later she asked me how old I am and I said "what do you think?" she laughed and said 21, I was like ummm, a little older, "I'm 29" she was totally shocked and was like, I never would have guessed that old (and if you think about it, she could conceivably be a grandma just a little older than me). I made a joke that I'm a "vieja (old woman)" no, she said, "the hills are old, you look so young." Flattery flattery and it was a day I just had my hair in a ponytail sin makeup but dressed up a little. So later after the plactica I took a gander at the sign-in sheet that had circulated and the age range was 15-28... I would have totally guessed the older woman in their mid-30s.
I've been having a hard time guessing ages consistently, but this was something I never would have guessed. I think that it's a combo of having had children and living in a very impoverished village (much more so than any of other villages I've spent time in), life takes its toll on women's bodies here... and in many ways they remind me of Dorthea Lange's pictures of women during the depression.
But, again, this isn't necessarily related to my big questions or what I want to know....