Identificación de la etapa clave del TCA involucrada en el bloqueo metabólico de la cepa P putida KT2440∆apaH.

A host of challenges were encountered during the process of the research. A major challenge that I encountered was striking a rapport with the hawkers both at the market and on the streets. This was due to the resentment that many of them harboured because they were in the first place not making many sales as compared to when they were on the streets and pavements, and also because of their mobile nature which made contacting them difficult.

Besides the foregoing, most of them were cautious of talking to interviewers because of the activities of investigative journalists who in recent times conducted under-cover investigations to reveal sensitive information in the country. For instance, there was a case where I was interviewing a lady hawker along a pavement at the busy area of Tudu around the Kinbu area (Accra CBD) where all of sudden she became hostile because AMA guards had surrounded us inquiring what was going on. Even though I was scared myself that they may attack me and collect my recorder and camera, I did not show it to give them the sign but mustered courage and continued with the interview. I assured my lady hawker I was interviewing of her safety after a friend who was nearby explained to the group of AMA guards that I was conducting a research.

In times where informants were doubtful of my identity, I had to confirm my identity with my student card and the introductory letter that I took from the department of Geography, NTNU interchangeably with my old University of Ghana student card depending on the circumstances I

find myself. There were times I had to use my old University of Ghana student card just to forestall the event of informants asking for money because of the fact that I was coming from abroad and the perception that I had been given money to do the research. In fact, there were times where informants requested for some money. There were instances I had to just part with some few Ghana cedis but on humanitarian grounds.

Related to the foregoing was the issue of noise. Many of the interviews were conducted in the market, along the streets and on pavements. As a result, there were problems of hearing as there was noise all over with people shouting on top of their voices and even from loud speakers with music advertising and calling out to buyers to come and purchase their items. There were times informants had to intermittently break from the interview to attend to buyers. These situations sometimes stalled the progress of the interview and indeed interrupted the flow of the conversation and hence the quality of information of the interview.

Another challenge encountered was the difficulty in meeting the AMA authorities. In spite of the fact that I started making arrangements via phone long before my arrival in Ghana, I had to make several appointments before I could meet the AMA official to interview. Even though it was frustrating that the official kept postponing arranged meetings due to his busy schedule, I persisted with follow up phone calls and visits to the AMA premises. Sometimes I waited long hours at the reception before being told of his absence in the office. However, my persistence yielded results when I was finally granted audience after several postponements.

It must be noted that apart from politics and religion most Ghanaians are football loving. As a result of Ghana’s participation in the World Cup which was ongoing in South Africa during the period of the research, sometimes arranged interviews had to be rescheduled especially on days that Ghana was playing or any of the top teams had a match. Besides, I was very much interested in watching the matches myself as a researcher. This situation stalled the progress of the research. In this regard, booking of appointments with respondents were carefully done not to clash with days that Ghana most especially had a match.

Further, a limitation to the study was the sample size of the study. Admittedly, there are so many hawkers in Accra, but the study covered only a few and thus raising concerns about transferability (generalizations) which can have implications for the findings (see Lincoln & Guba 1985; in Gatrell & Elliot 2009). This is against the backdrop that purposive sampling that was done could blur or might not actually reflect the characteristics possessed by other

respondents thereby making findings skewed. Similarly, I also do not know how to use the qualitative software programme to analyse my data. So everything was done manually. Not only was the transcribing of the interviews tiring and time wasting as I had to keep replaying to be able to transcribe verbatim, the sorting out of the data into themes and putting them under the broad themes in the manually drawn matrix was very tedious and cumbersome.

I however strived in cognizance of the aforementioned challenges and limitations to judiciously follow the time plan of the research so as to be able to finish collecting the data on time considering the limited time period (2 months) that I had on the field. Issues of positionality, power relations and critical reflexivity were very crucial for the success of the study.

Chapter Four

Background of Study Area