Crafting Communication Protocols with a San Community in Namibia.

Research and development collaboration projects between researchers and rural indigenous communities have the potential to substantially contribute to knowledge creation while at the same time carrying the risk of miscommunications. As such it is of importance to jointly establish communication protocols considering the vast cultural differences between University procedures and community etiquette. In this paper we present efforts undertaken towards crafting a communication protocol with a collaborating San community in Namibia. Exploring interventions within running projects contributed towards practical resolutions. It has to be noted that a communication protocol needs to continuously evolve throughout the collaboration.