Well I'm back!!! After 4 days traveling, visiting and interviewing seed producers, gathering samples of my
Canavalia sp. both in Soddo and Zwai, observing how my hand pollination went on the
Canavalia sp. in Zwai, taking hundreds of pictures, and so much more! I have to admit... This post won't be too scientific and more about my different experiences... I guess it should be pretty exciting then! :) Also, I'm only going to hit the high points. If you have any questions about anything or want to hear more about it, type a comment and I'll be sure to answer it! :)
Rise and shine! We left ILRI at 5:30 sharp Monday morning! We had a long day ahead of us and needed to get an early start! The first client we were to meet was scheduled to be at 8:30. He was going to meet us at a cafe instead of his field that morning because Asebe (I learned the proper spelling of it this week. It's not Eseba) and Teklu didn't need to see it. He ended up arriving there after 9:30, so already we were running behind on schedule for all the other seed producers we would have to visit throughout the day. Besides that...
The interviews went so well!!! I think we ended up with 8 or 9 interviews, so that was great! For over half, the seed producer didn't speak English or couldn't very well, so Asebe or Teklu had to translate for us, which was something I'm not used to. That was interesting. For those who could speak English, it still wasn't the best, so we had to repeat what our question was or rephrase it for them. It was definitely a whole new experience! Listening to all of their answers and stories behind their fields and farms was so fascinating. They all loved answering our questionnaire and some people who work on the field but weren't the manager or owner of the field even asked if we could ask them our questions! Everyone wanted to be a part of it! :)
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Interviewing a worker who wants to
start growing forage on his own but works
on this field |
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Interviewing a large scale producer
From left: Teklu, Millie, seed producer, me |
We ended up staying until Thursday, so good thing I brought enough clothes and everything! Because we were traveling, we spent the night in a different place every night. The first night we spent in Soddo. There's a little building here that whoever from ILRI that travels here spends the night in. It has 3 bedrooms, 4 beds, 2 bathrooms, 1 shower, a kitchen, and a living room. It's small but comfortable. The water heater broke a while back, so there wasn't any cold water. Asebe said he would call someone to fix it so in the morning, we could take warm showers if we wanted. Well.... the guy was supposed to come and have it fixed around 6:30-7 am but didn't end up showing up until after 7:30 and didn't finish until after 8:30. Also, the drain in the tub/shower wouldn't drain at all, so none of us got to take a shower that morning. We were already over an hour behind leaving that morning and couldn't afford to lose any more time by having everyone take showers still.
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| Our little house in Soddo!!! |
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| My room! |
Our second night we spent in Hawasa. We stayed in an International Hotel, so it was really nice. For one night, it costed roughly 750 birr per room. In US dollars, that's pretty cheap, but for Ethiopia, that's getting close the the high side... Millie and I shared a room because there were 2 beds in the room and Asebe didn't think we would mind. It was totally fine. I didn't care. It seems Millie and I share just about everything nowadays! When you first walk into your hotel room isn't the first thing you do is look around? Of course! It was amazing! The shower in the bathroom was crazy high-tech! It had like a touchscreen as your control for temperature, where you wanted the water to come out at, and so much more! It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen! I realize it's really strange to be so fascinated by a shower, but it really was pretty neat! The hotel had Wi-Fi, so Asebe and Teklu could do some work on the laptops and I could talk with a few people from home, but it only worked in our rooms, and I was barely in there, so I didn't use the Wi-Fi much at all. It also came with a complementary breakfast for the mornings! I was really curious what it would be like. Since it was and International Hotel and had a complementary breakfast, I assumed it would have to be a buffet, but what kind of food would be served??? Injera of course! There were so many things to choose from and it was all so delicious! I filled up on that because they said we might not be able to stop for lunch if we got behind on schedule or something.
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| The really awesome shower!!! |
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| My first helping of breakfast! |
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| The outside of our hotel |
Our third night made me laugh. We spent it in Zwai because that was our last stop on Wednesday and we had to stop at the field site in the morning before we left on Thursday. We stayed in a motel this night. These rooms costed roughly 150 birr per night per room! So much cheaper than the night before! We all got our own rooms this time. The key was huge! I don't want to hear Emily complain about how big her key thing was when she had to stay that extra week for track for Conference! This one was a million times bigger than that! haha but anyway! So when I finally figured out how to open the door (the key was really tricky for some reason...) and got to look inside I started cracking up! The first thing I saw was a blue thing hanging right over my bed. It was.......... a bug net!!!! How great is that?! I haven't really noticed any bugs in Zwai, but I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and use the bug net to sleep that night. It's not very often you come across one of those! I didn't hear or see any bugs during the night, so I felt the bug net was pointless, but better safe than sorry right? :) When I woke up though, I saw a cockroach on one of the walls and got slightly grossed out... Good thing I used the bug net! It saved me from the cockroach! :)
Now to backtrack. Slightly. Or I guess just talk about my project. I HAVE RESULTS!!!!!! I CAN MAKE A CONCLUSION FOR ONE OF MY CANAVALIAS!!!!!!! Wondering what that result is? When we went to the Zwai field site on Wednesday afternoon, I went to the plot of my issue Canavalia sp. to gather some more samples to look at when we get back to Addis. I was pretty disappointed because Ricardo traveled there with Asebe the week before and took some pictures of the ones I tagged and told me that none had produced any seeds. While I was gathering some flower samples from there though, I spotted 2 seed pods!!!!!!!!!! I looked for the tags and found they had fallen off and were lying under all the leaved and caught in the vines. Where I found the fallen tags was near the seed pods, so I'm assuming that my hand pollination had worked!!! I pollinated 2 flowers, and there were 2 seed pods near where the tags fell!!! I'm so happy! I found the solution!!!!!!!!!! Asebe told me later that Dr. Jean has had numerous people do a boatload of research about Canavalia's trying to figure out what the problem was and how to make them produce seeds. They've been working on figuring out a solution forever, and I finally found it!!! Me! Of all people!!! Before real scientists figured it out!!! How great is that?!?!?! I am literally on cloud 9 right now. I know I should keep working on figuring out solutions for my other 2 flowers, but I don't even care right now. I found a HUGE solution to one of them!!! I'll keep working on my other plants, but I'm not super concerned with finding solutions for those anymore. I mean I definitely have ideas for the other 2, but yeah. Oh my goodness. I am so extremely happy right now. I actually did my job here!!! All of the work I've done for the past 7 weeks during this internship has paid off!!! And I have helped out ILRI and the Genebank immensely!!! Now they just have to keep hand pollinating until they get enough seeds to start growing more plants... At least I did the first step and found the solution!
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