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!

Banana leaves

last week was our final week at the coffee board. we planned to stay there this week as well, but one of the farmers did not want us to do the mammal study on his farm without him there. luckily we had another site that could replace it. the site is closer to ponnampet than the coffee board, so we will get to stay at our apartments this week! it feels nice not to have to pack up again today after just arriving yesterday. the only problem is getting everyone to leave on time in the mornings. we’ll see how it goes.

so this week’s field sites were a bit challenging. both of them were arabica plantations rather than the robusta ones that we have been working on. the arabica plants are smaller and more densely planted. for our coffee row height and girth measurements, we usually measure 330 plants per grid. these sites put us up to over 700 plants per grid. on top of that, we were short staffed this week. the field assistants are starting to skip work because the projects are coming to an end. it makes it hard on the ones that are coming and doing their job because they have twice the work and they feel resentful. we had a couple of 12 hour field days this week and are all pretty worn out. additionally, one of the sites had a pretty steep slope that kept getting steeper as you went higher. by the third grid, you were climbing at a 45 degree angle. and it had viper snakes which are poisonous. one of them was actually stuck to the sticky paper in the track plate. (i only saw pictures because i was at the other site.) it had gone in after a rat i guess it got stuck. the two people that found it set it loose with a stick. so on my track plate i have rat prints with snake scales which is kind of neat. the other site had wasps - 3 people in my field team got stung. at that site, we got another picture of a small indian civet with the infrared camera and photos of some rats and squirrels with the flash camera.

a squirrel was found dead in one of the traps, so asha and i had to perform surgery again…injecting it with formaldehyde and cutting its ear for a tissue sample (well, asha did it, i just assisted). this time it went a little smoother than last time. i hope that is it for the dead animal preservation. and apparently, we don’t know where the tissue sample from the last one is…that is going to be a shock for whoever finds the little white container and opens it up…nasty.

one of the sites had laborers picking pepper. they use bamboo poles to climb all the way up the trees and pick the pepper from the vine. the picture is above. i don't know how they do it. i was amazed watching them. one of the women that was pruning the plants brought over the nest (at the top of the page) to show me. i don’t know what type of bird it is, but the eggs are beautiful.

here is a picture of us eating lunch one day. some of the restaurants serve the meals on banana leaves. they give you water that you wash it off with and then they put food on it. it works well for biodegradable plates. i am still not comfortable eating rice with my hands. i can’t seem to get it all in my mouth and probably look like a 2 year old. i do think that my tolerance level for spice has increased though. oh and i found out that dosas are made from soaking rice in water for 4 hours and then grinding the rice into a powder. this is then mixed with water and the batter fried like a pancake. i had dosas for breakfast every morning this week with ghee and sugar and coffee. it was good.

in sad news for this week, the crazy driver ran over a dog. we were all in the jeep and there was a dog in the road. he honked and it didn’t move – it looked a little shocked – and the driver didn’t really slow down, just ran it over. it was horrible. we were all silent. he didn’t even stop. then 4 days later, i was in the front seat and i screamed because i thought were going to hit another dog (i guess we didn’t really come close)…but every one in the car found it quite amusing.

in one of the towns, they are widening the roadway – so all of the homes and shops that were along the road are being demolished. it looks like a war zone. the trees that are probably decades old are also not spared. this picture is one of about 10 huge old trees that we passed within a 2 mile stretch of the road. they said that they will be doing this along all major roads including the town where we are all living right now.

so we are doing 2 sites next week and then finally a week of no field! i need the rest. my advisor and the students will be here soon – they couldn’t get here fast enough – i think we are all running on fumes at this point… it will be good to travel to and from my apartment though this week so i don’t have to carry all the equipment with me and i can cook for myself - although i will miss some of the cook’s dishes at the coffee board. i am thinking of working out a site schedule when my advisor is here so we can stop there for lunch :)

Indian summer

i was trying to do a post week but somehow along the way, i got a week behind so this week i am playing catch-up…last saturday night, the project director called me and asked if i would like to go to a coorgi wedding with him and his mom on sunday morning. this area is called coorg and the people coorgi – i think they are their own caste…i still can’t keep all that straight. so on sunday morning i put on my long kurta and new Indian style pants – which are kind of like clown pants or hammer pants – really baggy in the seat and legs and then cinched at the bottom. they are really light weight cotton and good for the heat here. the weddings are 2 days at least, so i went on the morning of the second day. the bride and groom are separate until the afternoon of the 2nd day. traditionally the coorgis were warriors, so for the weddings, they wear the clothes of the warrior and have swords. the ceremony involves the groom’s men chopping 5 or 6 banana stalks after walking around them 3 times, then they are feed tea and little food from the bride’s family symbolizing that they have made it successfully to meet the bride at her house after their journey. this took place outside for this wedding. the second part took place inside on a stage. it was set up to look like a room in a house and the groom went to the stage and sat down in one of the chairs and then the bride came out and sat down in a chair next to him – this i’m assuming is meant to be the inside of the bride’s house. afterwards a procession of people waited to make their way through the room to congratulate the new couple. i’m really glad that i had a chance to see the wedding. i tried to sneak some quick pictures, but people kept encouraging me to go up in the front and take pictures, meet the groom, take pictures of him…this is a picture of the groom and his best man.

then one of my field assistants is playing in a field hockey tournament that has been taking place here for the last month, so i went to see his game. it was fun, but really hot at 2pm in the indian summer – even under the shade. when i got back to my apartment, my neighbor who doesn’t speak english saw me in my indian clothes and smiled really big and said “super!” it was really sweet.

this week for research we did one native trees and coffee site and one exotic trees and coffee site in the low rainfall zone. it was exhausting as the dry heat seems to drain all the energy and moisture out of your body. the native site is near to the forest and the farmer said elephants come through the farm regularly, but we didn’t see any unfortunately. the exotic site had pigs…50 of them. the farmer said that he keeps them put up during the day, so my advisor said go ahead and use the site since the small mammals are nocturnal – but it was a bad idea. the pigs ran through the grids during the day, eating all the bait, kicking the traps around which shuts the door on them. so by the time we baited in the afternoons, the pigs probably shut a good number of the traps reducing our chances of getting any captures. i’m not sure if i will be able to use that site in the analysis - we shall see. this is a picture of the laborer's daughters who are so cute!

we stayed at the coffee board again this week – but had a different room that had a shower with hot water!!! it was my first shower in months!! i had to share a room with both of the female research assistants who not speaking to each other, so that was a bit of a pain but we survived :) next week, one of them will be gone most of the week, so that should be better.

we did some site seeing during our lunch break 2 days this week. one day we went to a tibetan buddist temple, called golden temple. it was so peaceful. i wish that i had more time to spend there. i heard the monks chanting and playing the instrument that looks like a 2 foot long horn. it was beautiful.

then the other day, we went to a national park where you could ride elephants and see deer and monkeys. here is a picture of a bonnet macaque trying to get water from the water fountain. the elephants were with their trainers and the deer in a fence, but the monkeys were just hanging out wherever – which was kind of cool, but kind of unnerving because i know this type has fangs and can be aggressive. but they were fine.

originally, i had thought that we were going to be able to do 1 site instead of 2 for 2 weeks, but i found out that we can do them at the same time - which shaves a week off of my field research!! that means that i have 3 more weeks left. two more weeks, then a one week break, then we will do the last week with my advisor and the undergraduate students. that will leave 2 weeks for bat netting and showing the students some of the sites, and then i may actually get to travel to see Hampi which i have heard is a must if you are here. so that will be nice to see.

my roommate is leaving tomorrow…i must admit that i am jealous - i am tired and ready to go home too (and craving so many foods!!!). if i can make it through these next 2 weeks, i'll be in the clear :) we clean the traps in the rivers on saturday mornings and yesterday had the help of 4 little ones. they actually thought we were making a movie because i was taking pictures - and one of the field assistants played along with the story telling them which of us were the villians and which were the good guys. finally someone told them the truth - i gave them some chocolates for helping us out - after making them wash their hands with sanitizer of course.