October 31, 2007
From SATA-Peru-2007
Halloween in the rainforest! Unfortunately, there aren’t any houses offering candy for ethnobotany students here in Shipitiari. Oh well, I guess we are a little old for that nowadays anyway.
The mosquitos here are horrible. Very much worse than the bugs at MLC. I guess this is real rainforest haha.
We got our first taste of ethnobotanical fieldwork today. We divided into groups and chose research projects to do with the Matsigenka. One group made a map of the nearby land how each part of that land was used. Another group interviewed a Matsigenka about the types of pets they keep and how they care for them. Some gathered information on the subsistence and land use calendars of the Matsigenka. Still others researched medicinally useful plants of the Matsigenka. Finally, a group did an inventory of all the plants to be found in a nearby Matsigenka garden.
Interactions with the Matsigenka were at first quite difficult, due to our inexperience with the Matsigenka language and culture. After help from anthropologist Glenn Shepard, however, we were able to get along quite nicely and get some good information and new insights into Matsigenka life and their interactions with the natural environment.
After lunch, a few of us went for a swim in the river to cool down – it was pretty hot out.
We worked hard throughout the afternoon to put together presentations of our data and analyses and were able to present them before dinner.
We all went to bed early because we have an early wake up tomorrow for our long boat ride to Casa Matsigenka. Hopefully everyone will be too tired to play scary Halloween pranks tonight…
