Performing Confessions: making sense afterwards of fieldwork immersion kate rossmanith maCquarie university This paper is abouT memory, anthropological ieldwork and writing, conceptions of time, and the performance of storytelling. It comes out of my ilm project—a documentary about Joanne Good, an anthropology student. In the process of researching and ilming, I have begun asking questions about how ieldworkers make sense of the time they spend in the ield. For this paper, I begin with a story: Ten years ago in 1996, Jo Good, a smart, 34-year-old anthropology postgraduate, went looking for a ieldwork location within which to conduct her research. She found herself in the mountainous region of Toraja in south Sulawesi in Indonesia. She liked Toraja so much she stayed. Jo befriended a local man, Papa Bian, who became her sponsor. She moved in with him and his family and began studying Tato, Papa Bian’s baby son—Jo’s research focused on the social lives of Torajan babies. She learnt how to speak Indonesian and Torajan, she became familiar with the subtleties of a new culture, she took careful ield-notes, and she was shocked into village living with all its material discomforts—erratic electricity, little water, cramped housing, basic amenities. In 1998, the impact of the Asian inancial crisis hit Toraja. The tourists—the backbone of Toraja’s modest economy—left and never came back. Jo’s Ph.D. scholarship income tripled in value and she supported several families, funding medical treatments, hearty meals, and day-to-day living. She had never felt so rich. And then her money was suddenly gone. As Jo’s sponsor, Papa Bian accessed her bank account and gambled away the cash. Jo was left penniless and confused as to exactly what had happened. An illegal lottery was operating in Toraja. Based on horse races in Malaysia, the lottery consisted of little pink numbered pieces of paper sold around Rantepao and the villages. Called the dead-end lottery, it was just that: people were intimidated and beaten over the money they won. Everyone in the family became so obsessed with the lottery—with the 6pm results of the horse races that would see them bankrupt or rolling in cash for the next 24 hours—that child care was completely sidelined. The children weren’t being fed enough and they grew increasingly susceptible to infections. Jo’s careful research of childrearing practices completely fell apart because no childcare was taking place. Jo became increasingly infuriated with the adults in her family. One day in 1999, a ight erupted Being There: After Proceedings of the 2006 Conference of the Australasian Association for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies