Yesterday was our last day of planting! It was in Addis though, so no road trip was needed thank goodness! Those 5:30 mornings earlier in the week were rough on me! Millie, Andreas, and I all got to work a little before 8:15 because when we plant, we start early. It drizzled a little yesterday morning, so the soil was nice and wet. Walking around the fields in my rubber boots with about 10 extra pounds of mud on them definitely is not my cup of tea... At least I got a good work out in all day doing that!
There are 2 large field located on ILRI and one small area with many small plots. The field we started in yesterday morning was located by the hostels. (I never knew that field existed until yesterday! How neat!) The workers mainly came from Debre Zeit, so some of the women recognized us from the day before. When they first saw us, they started laughing at us again and said they still felt bad for us because we were still muddy. They wondered if we even changed our clothes. I wore the same jeans that I did in Debre Zeit because I knew I was just going to get muddy again, and didn't want to dirty another pair of jeans. I thought it made sense... Apparently not though... haha...
We found Solomon, who works at ILRI and is somewhat in charge of the planting here in Addis. We asked him what we could do. He told us to do nothing and just watch. Millie and I looked at each other in amazement. We weren't going to just stand off to the side and watch the women plant! That would make them hate us and judge us even more than they already do! (Or at least that's how I feel...) We told Solomon that we wanted to help in whatever way we could, so he led us to the middle of the field where all the women were planting and told us to help them in covering up the rows after the seeds were placed in the ground. One of the women (who recognized us from the day before in Debre Zeit) looked at us, smiled (and I think held back a chuckle), and pointed to a row for each Millie and I to take to cover. Millie started first and bent down to use her hands to push the soil back into the row and cover up the seeds. The women that saw Millie doing this turn bright-eyed and were almost appalled it seemed! A few picked Millie up off the ground and showed her how to do it the "proper way." You don't bend down and use your hands. All you do is use your feet and almost kind of kick in. You just weave your feet in and out over the row to push the soil. Very different. I've never seen that before, but it works really well, doesn't hurt your back, and is a million times faster! I feel like I caught on pretty quick because as I was doing my first row, the woman who pointed me to the row to do said, "Very good!" to me. Score! That comment totally made my day (and probably my life.) I became so thrilled to hear one of the women say that to me. It was probably one of the best compliments I've ever received! I know it wasn't much, but for someone who's main language isn't English, and who barely knows any English whatsoever to say that to me. Wow... It really was great. I swear I had the biggest smile on my face after she said that to me, and I'm sure it was one of those ridiculous smiles that makes everyone else around you laugh because it's so large, it takes up your whole face! (Yes. It was that huge. I'm not exaggerating.)
Despite that compliment, I was still slower than the other women when it came to covering the rows up, so I didn't get to do that many. Also, there were so many workers, they really didn't even need my help. The process of planting here is so fascinating. Two people work together to pull a plow for the rows. The man pulls it while the woman follows behind using a mallet (or something similar to it) to push down on the plow to make sure it digs into the ground to make deep enough rows. The plows make only 3 rows at a time, so it takes quite a bit of time to complete and entire field! (For my family members: the first field is is divided into 3 different large blocks and each block is about 10 times the size of Grandpa and Grandma's big garden if not larger than that. The second field is even larger than that...) After the rows are made, someone lays down the correct seed packet that gets planted in each row. (This eventually became my job as my covering up the rows was always a few shuffles behind the other women.) It is extremely critical that the correct seeds get planted where they're supposed to be because in the corners of each block, there are isolation plots. There can't be the same genus' in the same field because otherwise they will cross-pollinate and that will change the data and end products of some plants. So after the rows are plowed, half of the women would take a row that needs to get planted, grab the packet of seeds, and start moving down the row very swiftly while dropping the seeds in the row! This amazed me. Half of the women were practically standing straight up and almost in a light jog while dropping the seeds with perfect accuracy! After those women got a decent lead, the rest of the women would take a row and start shuffling the soil back into each row with every step. This process continued all morning until we were done planting! We were done planting in Addis before lunchtime! I cannot get over how swiftly and efficiently planting goes here! Everyone knows what they need to do, and they all get it done well!
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| The small 2-person plow |
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| Millie doing the "shuffle" |
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| My lunch from Thursday! The white stuff is cheese! |
I also made soft-boiled eggs for breakfast this morning! Here's to you Dad for teaching me! :)
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| My delicious soft-boiled eggs this morning! |
Today was so great! Dr. Jean said she only had one meeting today and it was at 9 this morning, and it shouldn't last long. She said that after her meeting, she would spend the rest of the morning with us discussing our projects, ideas we have, and our final lab reports. She also spent some time asking us what all we have learned the past couple days about planting. With that question, we never wanted to stop listing things off! There was so much! Just the whole process of it in general was almost completely new to me! I can't get over it! Before Dr. Jean came in to talk to us, I spent some time reviewing my notes, looking at the pollen I germinated and stained back on Monday to see if I saw anything new. I was unable to find any germinated pollen anywhere on either slide, but I did find a large amount of pollen that was stained, so that means that the pollen is still viable at least. I also went out into the greenhouse to observe my Onobrychis arenaria and Canavalia sp. that I just started researching about on Monday. Along with observing my plants, I also looked at the cuttings off the Canavalia sp. I had done on Monday as well just to see if there was any rooting that started. Unfortunately there wasn't, but I expected that because Canavalia sp. is slow to root.
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| The cutting I made on Monday |
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| My Canavalia sp. plant in the greenhouse |
Lunch time!
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| My lunch today! |
The whole afternoon I devoted the whole time to working on my final lab report. Dr. Jean showed us a copy of a previous intern that she had worked with through the BR Internship so that we somewhat had an idea of what she was looking for in ours, and it looks like I need to set to work full force right away! There's a lot needed to go into the report, but I feel I already have a fairly decent start on it, so I feel pretty comfortable with my standings right now. In it, I have to include some background knowledge about all of my plant species, why I chose to study each, any tests or procedures I performed, the results of my experiments, my different hypotheses I have on what the issues in their production is, and much, much more! I think I may even spend some of my weekends working on it just to make sure I get it done in time and have it just the way I want it!
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