Jicotea

yesterday we completed another for sampling round 2.  it is the most physically challenging site by far, but also one of the most beautiful and fun.  it is about a 45 minute drive from our house to the site. we pass this beautiful cemetery on the way. the graves are all above ground. i am surprised (and thankful) that our old land rover made it all the way and back every day for 2 weeks - and thankful that my field clothes are holding up.

the site is basically on the edge of a mountain – which makes for spectacular views, but sore legs.  we divide the 500 by 500 m grid in half to check the traps, so we hike for about 3 to 4 hours every morning. for the bottom half of the grid, we counted that we go under, over, or between 20 barbed wire fences.  for this site, there is a mix of coffee, forest, pasture, and sugar cane.  all of it is treacherous in some way. the coffee has cobwebs in between the plants that inevitably get stuck to your face at some point in the morning.  the forest has steep slopes in the mud that you slide down repeatedly.  when i work in the group with the farmer, he holds my hand or arm through most of it so i don’t fall.  i told him that i am like an old lady, he said no, i just want to hold your hand - very sweet. this little mouse in the picture wasn’t doing so well when we got him out of the trap. he was very weak and wobbly.  we didn’t have bait left, so the farmer grabbed a banana to feed him and the little mouse sat and nibbled on the banana. he was hungry.

the pasture grass has vines all over the ground that hide the rocks, cow patties, and water underneath them.  they also reach out and grab your feet so you have to do a little hop to free your foot and give yourself a little more air time to place your foot down so that you don’t fall flat on your face. the worst though is the sugar cane. the densely planted stalks are about 8 feet tall and they are sharp.  we wear long sleeves, keep our heads down, bring our arms up to protect our faces, but we still come out with little cuts all over.  it is also loud and hot in there. the silence after getting out of the sugar cane patch is amazing – like someone was sharpening knives in both ears as your push your way through and then just stops at the other end.

some of the points are near some people’s houses.  one of them has a huge dog, named mancha (which means "spot" in spanish). he is tied up, so you can sneak around him while is barking and pulling with all his strength against his chain.  when two of my field assistants were walking that transect line, mancha pulled hard against his chain enough to slip out of his collar…one of them screamed, the other froze in place.  mancha though just walked over to a bush, lifted his leg, and relieved himself.

one day of rest today and then tomorrow we start the last site for this second round.  no rest for the wicked as the saying goes : )

First month

my field research this go-round has been really hectic and my computer died about the 2nd week that i was here, so i apologize for the lag in the posts! the first month was quite a whirlwind! the undergraduate students were here – so we had a full house of 6 people. it was a challenge to get the research started, the equipment squared away, and make sure everyone was fed and up and out on time. not to mention, cleaning the house and doing dishes…wow.

our old 70s land-rover broke down every other day…sometimes we could pop-start it (a new term for me) which means 5 of us pushing this tank of car and one person trying to pop it into gear once it gains enough speed. not the best way to start off the morning heading to the field! sometimes it took us 4 or 5 tries to get it started. when that didn’t work, i was constantly scrambling trying to find transportation for the group. the offices on campus open early and close early – and we are in the field all day, so trying to get things accomplished during the week can be a little trying. luckily the administrative assistant is really nice and helpful, but sometimes there isn’t a car available to rent or anyone to drive us to the site so we either have to walk or take a taxi or a bus. i hope those days are behind us (knock on wood). after about $650 of work, the land rover finally passed inspection – third time’s a charm.

we had a chance to go birding with my advisor here on his research project. they set up mist nets to capture the birds super early in the morning. they then weigh them and band certain species to be able to track them. i got to release a humming bird after they took its measurements. they are a little stunned afterwards, so sometime they sit in your hand before taking off. it was really pretty amazing. the other picture is of a bird’s nest that one of my field assistants found.

the mammal research is moving along – some of the sites have much higher capture rates than others. the three sites are all very different, which is nice to mix it up a bit. we will be surveying each of them 4 times total for this study. at one of the study sites, we captured a total of 4 baby possums – one of them we actually recaptured- in the small mammal traps. we tag their ear with a small metal tag so we can tell if it is a different individual coming back. i really don’t know how those little guys fit in there. the trap would be closed when we went to check the traps in the morning and it would be really heavy! we would have to take the whole trap apart to get them out. when we opened the trap, the little possum would be all curled up in a little ball looking out at you. they are actually pretty cute. all the ones we captured were about the same age, so they might all be from the same litter. my field assistants and i were joking that the mom possum would be mad that they didn’t come home until early morning and would yell “you got your ear pierced too!!!"

Adventures in Costa Rica - Coffee Research Part 2

after nearly nine months of planning and coordination, i arrived in costa rica to begin the second phase of field work for my doctoral dissertation. every time i arrive in this country, something inside me releases. you can’t help but slide down in your seat a little further, smile a little easier, relax a bit more. i had a car pick me up from the airport in san jose since i was carrying all my bags of equipment (which probably is a main contributor to the relaxing rather than trying to navigate the bus system). we listened to american 80s rock music that i hadn’t heard in ages – like nights in white satin (i just realized now as writing that it is not “knights in white satin” – i had a completely different storyline in my head for that song), when the going gets tough the touch gets going, all night. the driver didn’t speak english, but he whistled great harmonies to most of the songs for our 2 drive through the mountains from san jose to turriabla.

my research here will be the same concept as in india – assessing mammal biodiversity in coffee farms and surrounding areas, but with much bigger sites and a lot fewer of them. there will be 242 small mammal traps per site and only 3 sites, but each of them are 500 m by 500m…that means hiking about 5 miles a day. i thought that there were between 400 and 500 traps here ready for me to use. i knew there was a chance that we wouldn’t have all 500 here, so i had my field assistants, who are arriving a couple of days after me, stash 20 traps each in case i needed them to bring them. we need 484 traps (to be exact) because we need enough for 2 sites – 1 set in use in the field, the other to be cleaned and ready for the next site - but there are only 305 here. fortunately, i was able to find internet access and send an email to my assistants to bring their traps, but that still leaves us short by about 100 traps. i’ll have to figure that one out somehow.

the living conditions for this research are quite nice. we have rented a house on the campus of a local university that we will be working with. i was under the impression that it was all set up and i could move in immediately, but there were some issues with me technically being a student, but not a student at their university. the campus has separate housing for students, faculty, and visiting researchers. the house can only be rented to visiting researchers not students. luckily, i was able to meet with the powers that be and convince them that my status while here is that of a “visiting researcher” and not a “student.” thankfully, they let me move in!

the house is rustic, but spacious. it has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, living room, office, screened in porch, and kitchen. it is layout will be nice since my field assistants and i will be working together 6 days a week and living together; we will probably want some alone time. the house has filtered water and warm showers, which beats bucket baths in india. the only issue, the kitchen does not have a refrigerator. i am not sure what do about that one. that means no dairy, no juice, and no making extra food for the next day. in india, i was told that you can boil everything 3 times and then it is spoiled. peanut butter is generally a good non-refrigeration option for sustenance and protein, but we bait the traps every day with a mixture of peanut butter, seeds, and fruit. after a while, peanut butter starts to remind you of mice and rats and just isn’t as appetizing anymore.

my three undergraduate field assistants arrive tomorrow morning. i am excited to witness their reactions and impressions of this beautiful country and have some company in this big house!

Finished

at last, the field research here in india is finished!! there were many times that i didn’t think that i would make it through. thanks to everyone for all of the comments and support and kind words. i couldn’t have done it without you! i’m still holding my breath though until i am on my flight home, then i will have a glass of wine and breathe.

today is my last day here in ponnampet. tomorrow, i leave with the students and my advisor to travel for a week. i have sold all of my furniture and appliances to my field assistants for half of what i bought them for which works out well for them and me. i have tried to pawn off as much equipment as possible to the students so that i can fit all the beautiful fabrics and kurtas that i have acquired in my 2 bags…we’ll see how that goes. hopefully i won’t have to leave anything behind.

we finished up our last research site, # 20, on saturday afternoon. we couldn’t have finished at a better time. for one, my sweat shirt is shot (i'll leave it here, mom, don't worry) but most importantly, the monsoons are rolling in and it is starting to rain here every afternoon. i let the students take the reins for this week and they did pretty well. there were a couple of melt downs and a lot of leaches (luckily none of me) but we all survived.

i took them to one of the sites that we did a month or so ago that had over 100 flying foxes (a type of fruit bat) roosting there. my advisor was mesmerized and said that afterwards that it was one of his top 10 experiences as a wildlife biologist - he has been working for over 30 years all over the world. i guess it is highly uncommon to see so many of that type of bat in one area.

we had a farewell/finished with research party at the farm house. it was a little awkward at first with the field assistants hanging in the hallway and being shy with the students there, but the shyness dissolved once the dance party began : ) one of the field assistants is a dancer that has won dance trophies all over coorg for his bollywood dancing. so he taught us some dance moves and i taught some salsa... it was a lot of fun.


i am definitely leaving with mixed feelings. i am very ready to be home and to close this chapter of my field research here in india. this trip has been physically, mentally, and emotionally challenging. but i have also learned a lot about this research, about a different culture and way of life, about myself and what i am capable of and where i fold - - and along the way met some great people that i will miss. it will be tough to say goodbye knowing that i will probably never see them again. tonight we are all going out for dinner as a thank you to my field team, a farewell for me, and a congratulations for successfully completing the research before the monsoons arrived to carry us all away.

Bats

the first week of field work with the students was…in a word... slow. granted, they are just learning the research and for most of them, it is their first exposure to any type of field work – but the vegetation analysis took over twice the amount of the time that it normally does. then 2 of the girls scream when they see spiders...and we are in the tropics so there are a lot of spiders. hopefully this will be a good learning experience about field work for all them and not scare them off from it.

my hope that they would inject some energy into these last weeks of research and take some of the burden off of me unfortunately did not hold true as i find myself not only leading my field research team and doing the research, but also guiding these students and planning where they eat, their transportation, how they will spend their off days…i don’t know where my reserve energy is coming from, but somehow i keep putting one foot in front of the other! it is fun to have the students around though and share with them what i have been doing all these months. maybe it would have made more sense for them to come at the beginning of the research though rather than the end…

we did 2 sites at once and i spent most of my time at the site with my advisor and students. i missed my field team that was on the other site! they were very and said that it was boring without me over there. although we have definitely had our trials and tribulations, i have been lucky with the people that are on my team. it will be hard to say goodbye to some of them.

one night we did some bat netting and caught 4 bats – 3 false vampires and 1 horseshoe bat. basically, you set up what is called a mist net which is about 3 or 4 meters high and 20 meters in length. the netting in the bat is so fine that the bats are not able to echolocate it and fly into the net. then they have to be detangled to get them loose to take measurements and identify the species. in the one picture it looks like the bat is screaming, but it was just biting the cloth bag. don't worry, they weren't being hurt - but they are probably scared to death. it was really neat to see these little guys up close, but handling them is not something that i would like to attempt myself :)


we also had an interesting conversation with owner of the organic coffee farm which i think was quite eye-opening for the students. he is a younger guy that has married 3 times (“like you people do” says one of my field assistants – meaning they think americans get married and divorced all the time) once was to a german lady. he used to be a lawyer, but moved to his family farm 10 years ago to grow organic coffee. i asked him my series of 10 survey questions about their management practices (pesticides, herbicides, etc), thoughts on coffee certifications, mammal observations, etc. he was a bit belligerent wanting to know exactly why i wanted answers to these questions, what was the purpose of my research and how did these questions actually relate to that. then he started in on the certifications. a lot of the coffee certifications now are starting to incorporate a social consciousness element into their requirements. the laborer’s quarters are required to have access to clean water, they must be paid a certain amount, and they must have access to education among other criteria. “you people come here preaching education, but you have no idea about this society. if the laborers are educated, who will work in the farms? how many farmers do you have left in the united states? everyone cannot have an office job, then who would do the farm work? machines cannot do this work.” these people are basically slaves and oppressed by the society for cheap labor. unfortunately, this is not the first time that i have heard this argument from the farmers. and this farmer’s laborers quarters were appalling. they were outside of the long driveway to his beautiful gated house and almost on top of the oxen stables which smelled horrible. there were 3 little boys that lived there with their parents and worked in the farm. this coffee is sold as certified organic.


on a lighter note, we took the students to the tibetan buddhist temple which was again amazing. it is really a site to see. we happened to go on a day when there was some sort of event, so the temples were full of monks and visitors. we had lunch at the one of the places that serves food on the banana leaves that you have to wash with water. it was hilarious watching one of the students that is a germaphobe trying to figure out how to handle that one : )

well, this week is my last week of field research here! yay!!! i can see the finish line and i am definitely on the home stretch now.

Hmmm food

pizza blueberries raspberries
lattes orange juice hoagies
calzone pad thai veggie burgers lasagna
foccacia baguettes wine peach cobbler
salads fish cheese
croissants dark beer bagels

i haven’t been letting myself think about the foods i miss until recently - now that i can count the remaining weeks on one hand. hmmm…

so this past week was my last week of rest and data entry…i did about 30 hours of data entry and am all caught up for the sites that we have done to date. only 3 more sites to go! one morning the little neighborhoods were waiting outside my window. they call me “acca” (i have no idea how to spell it) which means older sister and is used as a sign of respect. “can you open the door, acca?” then they all came running in, wandering around the apartment, touching everything. i kept my eye the bag that has the dead squirrel in formaldehyde to make sure they didn’t go near that…then i had to usher them out when i was leaving to go to the college to check to make sure all the equipment was ready for this next week of field research.

thursday, i spent 3 hours on the back of a motorcycle. that was rough. we had to go to a town that is about 1.5 hours away to pick up some plastic bags that are needed for the research. we just went there and then turned around and came back. the other option would have been to take a city bus, but we would have had to take 2 buses and it could have taken 3 hours one way – so the bike was the better option. but after i got off, my knee had stiffened up, my hip flexer was sore, my lower back and hands were almost bruised from bouncing up and down over the half paved roads and holding onto the metal for dear life. my research assistant did share his ear phones with me on the way back, so we had a little motorcycle dance party which was fun :)

on friday, i left for bangalore with one of the project drivers to pick up the 4 undergrad students from the airport which is about a 6 hour drive from ponnampet. on the way, we saw a group of langur monkeys right next to the road that cuts through a national park. they were beautiful! that is the type of monkey that i did my behavior study on at the bronx zoo, but i have never seen them in the wild before. unfortunately, i couldn't find my camera in time to take but one picture. can you find the monkey in the bamboo? he’s there, you just can’t really see him. the students were supposed to get in a little after midnight, but the flight was an hour delayed and i think they were the last ones to get off the flight because we didn’t leave the airport until close to 3am. then we had to get up at 8am to get breakfast, run some errands, and drive them to coorg. poor things didn’t know if they were coming or going – but actually stayed awake for the most part, so that was pretty impressive. on the way home, we saw wild elephants - a first for me. it was amazing. it was dark out, so we couldn’t see them in detail, but they were close. we passed about 5 or 6, then stopped by the side of the road to look at another one that was a couple of meters further down the road, it started flapping its ears which is one of the first levels of threats if i remember my animal planet correctly : ) then started walking towards us which i think is the second, so we drove on. then there was another right on the side of the road, our driver warned a motorcyclist who was coming that way because elephants can be very dangerous. it was a great way to welcome to students to the area for sure.

tomorrow my advisor will be out in the field with us to see what i have been doing for the past couple of months. i hope that i have been doing everything right – i’ve been kind of winging it, but i think that’s part of it. we shall see… then tonight one of the students is staying with me at my apartment. she will help get the equipment organized and set up… help me make peanut butter!! it will be nice to have students here to help out for these last 2 weeks of field research. hopefully they won’t be too tired from the jet lag and all the travel…

Lillyputs?

last night, i fell asleep listening to drumming, chanting, and singing. i’m not sure where it was coming from – it could have been the laborers who are taking down the field hockey stands are camping out near the fields while doing the work or the house down the street that is set up right now for some type of pooja. whatever the source, it was soothing, but eerie as the faint sounds broke though the peace of the night.

then after i feel asleep my mosquito net fell on me. i jumped out of bed searching for my flash light and glasses both of which i keep next to my pillow in the dark. my first thought was that a bat had crashed into the net. a couple of weeks ago, i woke up to find myself sitting up, fighting with the mosquito net trying to push it aside. i was dreaming that i was in the field pushing my way through a cobweb as i do most mornings when checking the traps.

this past week completed my 4 weeks of field work in a row. it went pretty smoothly after a rocky start on monday morning. we traveled to the sites each morning from our apartments which meant that we were always late – let me rephrase that – the driver was always late and therefore we were all late. here is a picture of some little kids filling water buckets at the end of my street that i was watching as i waited for the jeep. we had about a 45 minute bumpy drive to the sites each way. mondays are long because we have to figure out how to fit the grids in the sites, measure, then set up the grids with the traps, and then bait all the traps. of course, none of the guys eat breakfast before they leave the house in the morning, so they want to stop for breakfast along the way. it’s a battle that i have completely given up on. the women manage to feed themselves before work, but the men do not. there are things that they could have, but they don’t – so anyway, on top of being late already, we have to stop for breakfast. and then they can’t agree on a place to eat, so they want to stop twice…it was a mess, but we finally made it to the field and got everything set up.

this week there was one site that was native and one that was mixed vegetation both in the same rainfall zone. the farmer at the native site applied a chemical fertilizer to all the coffee trees on monday afternoon (even though we called before to make sure he wasn’t going to do any type of applications that week), so we caught 0 animals at that site – although we did get a picture of a civet cat running through the site. in the mixed site, we only caught 3 rats this week.

tuesdays and wednesdays are really busy long days. we get to the sites in the mornings, check the traps to see if there is anything in there, then do vegetation analysis (basically measuring all the trees in the grids) for the rest of the day with an hour lunch, before baiting the traps again before we leave. we have gotten pretty efficient at all of this, but it is still hard work especially in the hot sun. by thursday afternoon, we are finished with the vegetation, so we have time to relax a bit before baiting the traps. we stopped and got some tea one afternoon. there was a coffee scale where we took turns weighing ourselves. i have lost a couple of pounds with the change in diet, the physical activity, and the constant sweating :) i am looking forward to putting the weight back on when i get home!

one of the research assistants was schooled in an ashram. he learned yoga, mantras, and all religious teachings. when he’s not talking nonsense like telling me there are little people about a foot high called “lillyputs” that live is tiny houses in the arctic or that in the deep oceans there are half human-half fish beings – he is a wealth of information and great to talk to. he explained to me the teachings in his ashram are taken from five major religions – hindu, buddism, islam, jainism, and christianity. hindu represents satya - truth. buddism is dharma – the rules what we follow or moral codes of life. jainism is peace. christianity is prema – love. and islam is ihimsha – non-violence.

jainism is a religion that is not that well known in the west. i know very little about it other than the followers do not cause harm to any living being. they give up all their worldly possessions and walk the earth. they do not walk in the grass in case they could step on an insect, they even carry a feather to sweep the ground in the front of them, they cover their nose and mouths with gauze to not accidently inhale any organisms. they are obviously vegetarians but also do not eat root vegetables (would harm the bugs and earthworms) or yogurt (would kill the bacteria).

my research assistant drew me the symbol that is a combination of each of the 5 individual symbols (like om for hindu, the cross for christianity). the short form of the symbol is the swastika which is the symbol of the universe. this is the symbol that hitler modified slightly for his use which i think most of us in the west now associate with racism and evil – but here in india the swastika is continues to be a sign of peace.

well this is my last week of data entry before my advisor gets here on thursday. i have about 20 hours left to do…i am going to pick up the students from bangalore this friday. this day has been so far away for the past couple of months – i am glad that it’s finally here. i am excited to have some new recruits to help with the last 2 weeks of field research!