November 14, 2007
From SATA-Peru-2007
Another day at the Casa Mats.
It’s nice here. We’ve got beds, shared bathrooms and showers, and a many long trails through both mature lowland and upland forests to explore. The only thing that makes it bad is the countless mosquitoes constantly biting, whether we are inside or outside. Our only real refuge is under our mosquito nets. When we walk next to the nearby cocha (oxbow lake) there is actually a quite audible high pitched buzz/ringing noise. Turns out that’s the sound of millions of mosquitoes. Yuck.
Anyways, we did more work on research projects in the morning. Data entry for some, and fieldwork for others. I personally went around with Varun and Glenn for some high-quality early-morning botanizing (tree identification).
After the morning work, those that did fieldwork in the morning did data entry in the afternoon and those that did data entry in the morning did fieldwork in the afternoon. It’s gotten pretty routine by now with regards to the research projects and we’re just about finished up. Only a couple more days until the big presentations.
It’s been nice getting to experience what real ethnobotanical fieldwork is like, especially in the rainforest. It’s been especially cool working directly with the Matsigenkas. They’re all really cool people and they make the research fun. It will be sad leaving them in a few days.
We had an excellent interactive lecture after dinner, then made sure to get enough sleep for the full day tomorrow...
