KRISTÍN LOFTSDÓTTIR Never forgetting? Gender and racial-ethnic identity during fieldwork I am sitting in front of my bed, my eyes focused on the fire. The darkness around me is almost complete, the only sounds being the stirring of the surrounding bush, which disappear rapidly into the endless space. There is no wind, just soft whispers of grass and branches. The rest of the household has disappeared into the night, get- ting ready for sleep, as I should. Akali, my assistant and friend, the son in this house- hold, is still sitting there, encapsulated in his own thoughts, probably waiting for me to go to sleep. I have been less than a month in the bush, starting to know its people and daily rhythm. My environment is still new and confusing. I am not able to grasp it, make it sit still, classify it, understand it. Everyday I feel that there are new faces, new environ- ments; the earth is moving under my feet and I just float and move with it, not sure where it is taking me. It is not an unpleasant feeling, just different from what I had expected. What is most difficult is my desire to be myself, to have people look at me and know me as a person. It is not that I resist my new identity as Mariyama, the name which people have started calling me. In fact I like it. Mariyama is also being someone, an individual. It is my other new name that concerns me: Anasara, white person. Sometimes people don’t bother to call me by my individual name, just say anasara. Is that I? My desire is to be seen as something beyond that. These are my thoughts in the darkness, and it is easy to recall them because they have slipped into my mind many times since then. I look up and observe my friend Akali, then interrupt the silence between us, asking: ‘Do you think you can ever forget that I am white?’ He looks up, stares at me as if wondering if this is a sincere question, and then starts to laugh. His laughter is genuine, almost cheerful. I am hurt, I don’t understand: ‘Why are you laughing, what is so amusing?’ His mild laugher changes into a smile, and he says gently: ‘How can I ever forget that you are white?’ I later understand the meaning of this interaction from a more painful and reflec- tive point of view. Being white is the privilege of being able to forget one’s ‘whiteness’ and to forget as well the ‘blackness’ of others. I write in my diary while in the field: ‘You can make friends with people who are so much poorer than you. You will forget the difference of power but they cannot, because the former is a luxury which you can afford but they not’ (notebook, 18 January 1998). Later in my fieldwork, this land- scape of power is, however, confusingly different. While staying with a family in the bush, I hear about a large dance performance not very far away. I want to go and see it, but when I tell that to the oldest brother of the household, who has assisted me Social Anthropology (2002), 10, 3, 303–317. © 2002 European Association of Social Anthropologists 303 DOI: 10.1017/S0964028202000204 Printed in the United Kingdom