More than the analysis of oppression or the sense of duty toward the oppressed the core political experience of our generation may well have been to go on such a voyage, discovering for ourselves this recognizable foreignness,this shimmering of life" (Rancière,2003,p.2).While the voyage mentioned by Rancière could be likened to ethnographic work, several questions are hard to figure out regarding what the voyager can do with this 'political experience' once back home, and how (s)he could produce knowledge from it. [...]it seems that trying to 'understand man by all of his experiences and achievements' (Lévi-Strauss, 1984) cannot be limited to having been there (Watson, 1999). [...]it was also autoethnogra-phy - challenging, tough, and rather unflattering (Jones, 2005) - and an exploration of the "reflexive connection between the researcher's and participants' lives" (Ellis, 2004, p, 30) that, in the end, allowed me to necessary and salutary surpassing of myself in aid of the translation of the words and pains collected on the way of my fieldwork. [...]I relate how my immersion in my field of studying a mining community in Indonesia led me to engage my body and emotions in the situation.