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 :)