Reflecting User-Created Persona in Indigenous Namibia: what NOT to do when working in Foreign Land

This paper presents the initial experiences and reflective accounts on the arrival of a European research colleague who recently joined our team of researchers working with Indigenous communities in Namibia. He aims to explore how communities across Namibia take on, understand and create persona artefacts of their own, and whether this may simulate or differ from persona as depicted in literature. We report on the first set of interventions in three pastoral locales where persona creation by Namibian Ovaherero was first attempted. We narrate this as a synchronous dialogue that recounts the blunders, protocol-breakings, misunderstandings, and also some breakthroughs obtained thus-far. Ultimately, we reflect on the importance of the preliminary preparation of the researcher and on the usefulness that local experienced researchers’ guidance provides. We conclude drawing on a series of thoughts on how the overall experience has resulted thus-far.