The name is absent

small but significant sum of money. Thus, those keeping diaries and the HBC workers
‘supervising’ the process were each paid NS$100 (approximately £10) once the
diaries had been collected.

Although cultural norms and lack of resources meant that self-expression
through diary keeping was not common in the Caprivi Region, popular media (in
particular radio and newspapers) meant that all informants had heard of, and
understood the rationale of diary keeping. However, rather than being private
documents, diaries solicited specifically for research purposes “are written with a
particular reader and their agenda in mind” (Elliot, 1997, 9), a factor which may
potentially bias the information recorded. Diary keepers were given a brief ‘guide’
regarding the type of information I was particularly interested in, namely their
experiences, both positive and negative, of living with illness. However, it was made
clear that they were free to write what they wished, and that the NS$100 payment was
not dependent on the type of information recorded.

In combination with the written diaries, the research also drew upon
autophotography to gain a deeper understanding of the emotions and experiences of
people living with long-term illness. While interviewing methods can create and
reinforce the dominant frames within which knowledge is realised, autophotography
draws upon people’s visual imaginations (Latham 2003), enabling it to be an inclusive
and empowering research method which documents knowledge from the perceptual
orientation of the informant (Dodman 2003; Harper 2002; Markwell 2000). While
autophotography does not usually provide a daily reflexive account in the same way
as written diaries, it is argued that photographs are “deeply embedded and
contextualised by the personal lives of the producers” (Rohde 2001, 189), and enable
access to places usually inaccessible to a researcher (Young and Barrett 2001). In this

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