Week 1 - Field House

oh my goodness - it is so nice to be back at my apartment in ponnampet if only for 2 nights! it is so light and airy and i have a bed and running water! this past week, i was in the field from monday to saturday afternoon staying at a house that was basically 4 walls and a roof. it didn’t have running water and the electricity was pretty spotty…there was no refrigerator (i just learned that most of my field assistants actually don’t have refrigerators), we had to bring a stove with gas to cook, and no beds – so we slept on mats on the floor. if i thought that i was roughing it in my apartment here with no hot water, shower, and western toilet, i was very mistaken.

this week was a bit challenging, but good though – all in all. we did 2 sites at once which was a lot of work. we are all pretty worn out. i hope this day of physical and mental relaxation is enough to keep us going for another 2 weeks before our week off from the field which i am anxiously awaiting :)

it is not really acceptable for men and women to stay together if they are not married or family, so the house that we rented is divided into 2 by a wall down the center. i stayed with the 2 female research assistants in the women’s side and the 4 guys stayed in the other. the house was dingy and dark, with very little natural light making its way in - which made getting up at 6am in the dark with no power more difficult…especially after sleeping on the floor on a thin mat where you can feel your bones on the ground.

the other women got up before me around 5:30am. one of them went to the temple in the mornings and got milk, then made coffee for the team. they told me that you can boil the bagged milk twice without refrigeration and it is still good. we left the house at 7am, dropped one team off at the first site which was about 30 minutes from the house and the rest of us continued on to the next site which was about 30 minutes from the first site. the coffee is flowering in this region as well and the farmer was weary of people walking through the farm because if the trees are not pollinated, then coffee berries will not grow next season. so we could not drive the jeep all the way down to the first site and had to take turns being driven by motorcycle or walking 3 km. the walk is pretty, but it is an exhausting way to start out a full day of field work.

after both teams got back from the day of field work around 5:30pm, my female assistants swept and cleaned up the house. we had to fill up the water barrel so that everyone would have water to go to the bathroom (no flush on the toilets) and bathe. not having running water is really tough, plus it is summer here now and therefore some places have a shortage of water, so you have to be careful how you use it. i found washing dishes to be a challenge as well – i could get my dishes clean with the amount of water that i had, but was then left with soapy hands and no water…it is interesting to experience living like some of the people that i worked with for engineers without borders in el salvador – and i didn’t even have to walk to a well to get water, there was a tap right behind the house.

water is quite heavy and you see all these little kids filling up their water buckets and putting it on their shoulder or head. i honestly don’t know how they do it. when we went to the river to wash the traps yesterday, there were people washing clothes and filling up their buckets of water for drinking. i hope they have a filter or boil it at least. here is a picture of a little girl who was about 7 years old washing clothes on a rock with her mother.

in the evenings, i tried to do work and enter in some of the piles of data that i am collecting, but by then it was dark and the power was out again and it is not easy to enter in data by candle light. i cooked some pasta and sauce one night and shared what i had with the group. they generally don’t eat much pasta here and everyone wanted to know how it was cooked. the 2 women prepared dinner for everyone else every night except one when the guys went out to eat and drink in town (the 2 women have never drank alcohol). dinners consisted of rice and some kind of curry with chilies– they always put out curd for me to cut the spiciness when i ate with them. they also made ragi balls (i don’t know how to spell it) which is something from the bangalore region. it is made from a ground grain powder and boiled. it has the consistency of dough and you are supposed to pinch off little bits, rub it around in the curry, and then swallow it whole – like a tablet, they tell me. i can’t do it. it gets stuck in my throat. “it’s good for health”- they say. the amount of white rice that they eat is astounding. when we go out to eat for lunch, i get a half order which is about 2 cups of rice (i'm still trying to figure out how to eat rice with my hands without getting it everywhere). i just can’t eat that much rice in one sitting – my stomach is more adjusted to pasta and breads, i guess.

we didn’t catch many animals this week - 2 at one site and 3 at the other – and these were both native trees and coffee. i did get a picture of a civet cat though from the infrared camera trap and another small animal (not sure what it is yet) from the flash camera trap. so that’s pretty exciting but i don't know what's going on with the low trap rats. sanjay (the mammal expert) said he got really low numbers for coffee farms which makes me feel better, i guess.

well, i’m going to do some data entry, get the equipment ready for round 2 in murnad, and try to do some yoga and watch a movie later – oh and of course make 3 kgs of peanut butter…i have toyed with the idea of dropping this whole phd stuff and opening a homemade peanut butter shop…we’ll see how it all pans out :)

Coffee flowers

the coffee plants flower once a year here after the first rains or even after the mist is thick enough in the mornings to provide enough moisture. the flowers fill the air with scents that to me are reminiscent of jasmine and honeysuckle. the flowers are here for only 3 days and you have to be very careful not to damage them because they are part of the growth cycle of the coffee berry.

the next picture is of some of the pepper picker's children that were taken with the camera trap. the laborers are part of the lowest caste, which used to be called the “untouchables.” they work in the farms picking coffee, pepper, harvesting rice or on the roadways repairing holes in the roads with tar and sweat or collecting garbage or cleaning toilets. castes determine the social and economic status of a person and are hereditary, meaning you are born into your caste and there is nothing that you can do to change it. although the system was outlawed by the government, it is still deeply ingrained in the culture. there is a type of affirmative action here where certain quotas must be filled for schools and government jobs with people from the lower castes.

this is my elementary understanding of the caste system– basically there are 3 religions here – hindu, muslim, and christian. each of these religions is subdivided into caste where the cultures are completely different – how they practice religion, how they dress, what they eat, what occupations they can have. the ruling caste has always been the hindu brahmins – they are strict vegetarians, no eggs, or alcohol. they will not even eat at restaurants that prepare non-vegetarian food. my advisor told a story about a woman from an upper caste falling off the step of a train who turned away from the helping hand of an “untouchable” because she would rather hit the ground than touch his hand. ghandi renamed the untouchables harijans which means “children of god,” but they most commonly refer to themselves as dalits which means “oppressed” or “broken into pieces.” ambedkar, the principal author of india’s 1950 constitution and the first “untouchable” to be educated abroad, called the caste system “an ascending scale of hatred and a descending scale of contempt” (quote taken from this great book that i have started reading called in spite of the gods, the strange rise of modern india). this issue of the caste system is further compounded by the philosophy of karma or reincarnation which does more to oppress the lower castes - many believe that the people are poor and in this place in life because of wrongdoings in their past lives.

i’ve had some frank discussions with a couple of my field assistants about the caste system and some of them feel like it is one of the main things within this society that is holding it back and that it continues to make the government ineffective. all of my field assistants are hindu and are of similar level castes. one of my field assistants is in the highest caste, brahmin – she said if she eats meat that “my family will not tell of me.” i am assuming that means when they die they will not acknowledge her…i’m not sure. she has rebelled though and not married a man that her parents picked out for her in an arranged marriage, but instead has a “love marriage” to a christian nonetheless. so not even a hindu that is below her caste, but someone of a completely different religion. her family is not happy about it, but has not disowned her. so now she says she doesn’t know what caste she is in. the other people in my field team chide love marriages in front of her, saying that parents do not approve of love marriages because most of them do not work out and that is why they get angry. i told them that all marriages in the states are love marriages (but i didn’t admit that about 50% of them end in divorce).

and for the research updates – this week we completed our third site and had the highest number of animals caught yet! we caught 2 rats (who are actually kind of cute, i am still trying to tell myself), 1 squirrel, and 7 shrews. also – in an unforeseen hazard, we also caught 3 of the farmer’s chickens in the sherman traps and one got killed. i guess they see some of the seeds and stick their heads in the trap and then peck right on the spring board and door closes on their neck…not good.

and in other bad news – henry is dead and i think i killed him. i had a little gecko that stayed with me in my room, i named him henry. he was only 1.5 inches from nose to tail. he would walk across the floor and stayed in the corner where i threw my dirty closes – i think it was cool there. so yesterday, when i was putting up my laundry, i think he was under a towel and i stepped on him…

this week i am working from home and not going out to the field. it is a much needed break. i arrived in bangalore on a thursday at the end of january and started field work on that monday. my body needs the rest. my old sports injuries are coming back – my right ankle that i’ve sprained several times in tennis and then most recently when walking across the street in brooklyn and my right knee that i injured in track are both acting up – and i’m assuming they will continue to do so for the duration of my field work here. i think i am starting to feel my 34 years here on this earth!

well i’m off to do prepare for my meeting with the field team tomorrow - this week has been a nice break from them too :) - do some shopping in the neighboring town, and grab lunch with one of the other researchers this afternoon.

Research training...

sunday is my day off from the field. i got up and did some yoga. it felt great! i really wish that i had time to do it during the week, but with 10-12 hour days in the field, my body is too exhausted. i cleaned the apartment and did my laundry. i don't know if its best to keep wearing one set of field clothes until they are all brown and stained, then switch to another pair - or just slowly wear them all out at the same time. i try to get them clean, but it seems like most of the time is spent picking off all the little sticky seeds. i try to imitate a washing machine and swirl my clothes around in the bucket after soaking them, but the dirt just doesn't seem to be coming off. i think we should have a moment of appreciation for whoever invented the washing machine!



this second week started off a little rough. we wanted to go to a coffee farm that had predominately native trees because we had the mammal expert here with us this week. we asked the farmer over the phone if they were done harvesting the coffee which they were, but we didn't ask if they were done picking pepper. so when we got there, there were pepper climbers, as they are called, all over the site we wanted to use. pepper (black pepper) is grown in clusters on vines that wrap around the tall straight trees. here, they put tiny ladders up the tree, tie bags around their waist, and pick the pepper. on one farm, we saw 2 young boys stepping on the pepper clusters with their bare feet to separate out the pepper corns it kind of reminded me of squishing grapes. after the pepper is dried, you have the black pepper corns.



ok, back to the research, so then had to collect and pack up all of the equipment, relocate to another site, and set up there. it was almost dark by the time that we were done. sanjay and his wife, who have been conducting small mammal surveys in this area for the past 6 years joined us this week to teach us how to do set up the traps correctly, how much bait to use, and how to handle the animals. but as luck would have it...we only caught 1 squirrel in the afternoon that they weren't there. regardless, it was so great to have them here. they were both a tremendous help. they said that they did not find a lot of small mammals in coffee farms and if pesticides or herbicides were applied- a lot of the times they found nothing. they said they witnessed birds falling straight out of the trees after pesticide applications. i only have 1 site right now that is native trees and organic, so i am going to add 2 more to see the effects of pesticides vs organic. sanjay and payal both work in wildlife conservation and sanjay's wife, payal, had the chance to go to the bronx zoo with the wildlife conservation society to do some training on their international research. small world, huh?

this week, i did get a picture of an indian palm civet with the infrared camera!!! i am super excited that it actually works. hopefully, i will be able to get more pictures of medium sized animals. (ignore the date and time...apparently, it needs to be reset every time you put in new batteries...)

on saturdays, we have to check the traps in the morning and then we collect them all to move to the next site. in between though, we have to wash all of them...this is a picture of us washing the 144 traps in a stream that people use to bath in and wash their clothes. it didn't smell so great because cows use it too, but it is probably clean enough for the rodents :)

we are still working to get the apartment set up. march and april is summer here in this region and it is getting hotter. right now it is in the 70s in the mornings and evenings and gets up in the 90s during the day with the humidity at about 75%. so my roommate and i have been discussing whether to get ceiling fans which are about 1200 rupees (about $30) or stand up fans which cost about the same. we also went to buy curtains for the windows - finally...we still have sheets up right now. we went to the fabric store and they only had 3 colors for curtains - cream (but they only had 1 for a door), bright yellow, or pea green. so we picked out some fabric in colors that we liked to have the curtains made. the fabric for the 3 sets of windows was 460 rupees (about $10), then the girl took us upstairs to where the tailors work. it was like a balcony with a roof the looked over the street with about 6 sewing machines and a man sewing away at each. we told the tailor what we wanted and he said it would be about 90 rupees and we should have them in a couple of days...we'll see what we get.

well, i'm off to make some mac and cheese. we only have bread, pasta, and cheese in the house right now. i'll bribe the field team with ice cream to let me stop and buy some vegetables on the way home tomorrow :)

ps - i revised the comment settings have been changed, they were on some restricted setting before - so feel free to comment if you would like!