Leaving Belize

We did what we came for- complete data on plant diversity and abundance from 10 Mopan Maya, 10 K´ekchi Maya, and 10 Garifuna home gardens. Most of these gardens were the size of a ¨normal¨ suburban front and back yard. We insinuated ourselves temporarily, and respectfully, into these cultures by bringing along Maya plant experts Polo Romero and Señor Cocom, by first approaching the local government, and, of course, by compensating each gardener for the (non-consumptive) use of their garden ($12.5-25 US). The local government was an interesting matter- an ostensibly democratic (the election process is unclear) combination of the old-school alcalde system and a newer village council system. The alcalde is in charge of legal matters and unrest. The ones we met had less than law abiding pasts, shall we say, but they seemed good people committed to doing well for their community, which they probably would define as letting illegal activity (marijuana growing primarily) go on as long as the village stays civil and harmonious in other matters. Many of the happiest, most prosperous, and most proud of the Maya we met seemed to be involved at one time or another in the drug trade. The village council consists of a chairman, a secretary, and 6 other elected positions. These folks are all volunteers, and via their hard work the organization and limited administration of the town is achieved. On of the most important of the chairman’s roles is as the organizer of quarterly fahinas- communal workdays to ¨clean up¨ the village.

We really liked these little villages. San Pedro de Columbia, a K´ekchi Maya community, in particular was a clean community of nice, open, and proud people who readily shared their gardens, plant knowledge, and language with us. One family was so nice we stayed all day and played with the children, Jerry, Jabril, Gloria, and Valentino Ack. These kids were exceptional in the premium they put on education, books, inane facts, and many of the things I grew up valuing. Jerry, who just graduated from primary school, clutched a book of fairy tales the entire time we were there. When I asked he enthusiastically said he needed new, more advanced book. This was a defining moment for me. It was both something I highly value (intellectual growth and reading) and something I only then fully realized was rarely as valued in these communities. For Jerry, education could mean upward mobility and success. But will cultural knowledge (linguistic, botanical, etc.) be associated and maintained with this growth? A touchy subject that I’m ill equipped to understand fully. The constant becoming of our values requires much attention and labor.

Incidentally, I took the opportunity to test with these children the results of a dissertation conducted in a neighboring village. With mixed skepticism, confusion, and amazement (it was very poorly written), I read this dissertation and its remarkable conclusion that by age 9 children in San Miguel know, on average, 80% of the names of plants in their garden and 50% of the names of plants in the surrounding area. I can say that the Ack kids (ages 6-12) seemed to know more plant names than other children I casually talked to, but still knew less than half of the plant species in their yard. This may be a problem of how we each define a garden, but it doesn’t seem to be. It seems to me that Zarger half-assed her research and came up with erroneous results. It is no wonder I haven’t been able to find any publications by her in the literature- her methods are flawed.

The second Maya village we visited, San Antonio, is the largest Mopan Maya community in the Toledo district (about 2,000) and very homogenous, which we later found out is culturally enforced. This community was generous and nice but conspicuously troubled. All the young men I saw seemed unhappy, tattooed, and wary of us. When we first showed up, the community was celebrating the day of its patron saint and we joined in, drinking a wonderful cacao-based drink, eating food, and listening to live marimba music. I was feeling welcomed and innocently approached some young men with the intention of chatting. I soon told them we were here studying the plants people grow in their yards, which they reflexively took to mean I was a threat to their (obvious) involvement in the drug trade. They concocted a bogus story about being traveling marimba musicians and then stopped talking to me and refused eye contact. Later, they joined a group of other half drunken young men and in a very obvious and drunken way eavesdropped on our conversations with more reasonable adults. This threat may have been neglible but it was rendered so anyway by our association with the alcalde. I realized now how smart it was to get the alcalde´s approval first and how the functioning of the community was best achieved by an alcalde that is connected to the drug trade and, in this case, is deferred to by these young men.

In all of Belize, there seems to be a high tolerance for filth. This was especially so in San Antonio. I would go so far as to characterize it as laziness and irresponsibility. Litter in a developing country and in a culture fairly new to non-biodegradable packaging is fairly understandable. But stagnant rivulets of pig and human wastes and piles of rusty metal are another matter. Not all yards displayed such love of amoebas, dysentery, and tetanus, suggesting that it wasn’t inevitable in these situations. I guess I can understand, but not accept these conditions. I did, however, have to accept all but the worst conditions in the process of the research. I predict I am gestating amoebas as we speak.

If the dark underbelly in San Antonio could be characterized as new and festering (if livable) in San Antonio, the social problems in Hopkins (the Garifuna community we sampled) were chronic and ingrained in the culture. This village is in a very different part of Belize - an ecologically more simple and saline coastal area. The Garifuna are a mix of African slaves and Carib Indians, which have not survived independently as far as I know. Their culture is very syncretic and interesting. It, at least superficially, shares similar magico-religious traditions with voodoo-probably a result of similar African origins and is very closely linked to the sea. For me, the most powerful and obvious expression of their culture was through drumming and fishing. One morning I awoke at 6 to read and ended up watching some young men in a dugout canoe pull in a net for a half an hour. They jumped in and out of the small canoe, even from neck deep water, with remarkable aplomb and love of getting wet. That they didn’t catch anything is, I understand, unusual. Later that day, Sarah and I charted a boat to go snorkeling and ran into a fleet of these canoes 40 miles off shore (they were based out of a large fishing boat). Their owners would pop up every now and again near the scattered canoes as they dove for lobster, which they used a hook to bring up to the surface.

Here, I must say, is a tragedy of over fishing in the making. Creole and Garifuna fisherman alike are harvesting undersized lobster habitually, depriving the species of any chance of reproducing enough to sustain fishable populations long, much less maximize the potential of the reefs in the long term. Lobster season started June 15th and I have enjoyed many of these fine creatures (less rich and succulent than the New England species I’m used but satisfying and wholesome none-the-less). But many of the ones I was served in fairly respectable establishments were undersized. In addition, I understand there is a good, and undiscerning, market for lobster in Guatemala which fishers illegally tap into on a regular basis.

That night, Sarah and I walked around the town in the meager light of the moon. There were a whole lot of people out on the streets, some drunk but most jovial and kind. This was in part normal but also in part caused by an all night wake in the neighborhood. Instead of joined the wake as we had been advised to (we would have been the only non-black non-Garifuna there and we didn’t know the deceased’s family), we sat at a nearby local bar. After a soda and a nice chat, a man pulled out a large sea turtle shell and began to drum on it. More drums surfaced and we witnessed a wonderfully unique jam session. The rhythm was loud, almost frenetic but controlled, and passionate. Singing in Garifuna accompanied it and young and old sang along. Later, I bought some Garifuna drumming music and it has the power to recall the contented and simple appreciation I had for that music that night.

The gardens in Hopkins were fairly simple and uninteresting. The most interesting feature was the use of bitter cassava (aka manioc in South America). Only sweet cassava, if at all, was used throughout the Maya villages we sampled. It was, to us, an unexpected (granted we knew little about this culture before we went) legacy of the Carib part of the Garifuna culture. The Carib´s former use of bitter cassava was the northern extent of the plant, which was domesticated in South America. I am unsure but doubt that the ancient Maya much used the bitter variety. I know the record is largely absent to answer this interesting question but some more research is in order. In addition, the Garifuna had some interesting African ornamental plants not much seen in the rest of Belize, including the pencil tree among others.

So we leave Belize content with our progress. I leave with a toehold from which to begin to try and understand Latin America and contemporary traditional cultures. I am convinced of the value of plants and their uses in assaying these cultures and their futures. However, more work needs to be done to standardize and deepened the rigor of the field of ethnobotany. It needs to be more than purely descriptive, possibly by making ecological tools and better writing more common. We aim for our publications to contribute in these areas. However, first the mountain of data must become intelligible- the task before us as we return home.

I don’t think we will find anything of much value in our data regarding forest creation – the original main interest of our work. These gardens are too globalized and modern to possibly reflect the composition of home gardens in the pre-collapse Maya area. However, these inventories are a good and necessary step in this discussion. More and more, it is becoming obvious that culture, especially the way the landscape and plants are used, is a social construction responding to changing environmental, economic, and political factors. That is, it is silly to say that the Classic Maya did this or that categorically. Their was a mosaic of environments in Classic era Maya Lowlands and a context for their subsistence that changed dramatically over time. What makes sense now doesn’t make sense then and vice-versa. I think I see this transition towards understanding the dynamism and materialism of culture occurring and having occurred over the last decade and presently but I’m not convinced Campbell has dealt with its critiques fully. Gratuitous neologism is one of the most glaring, and superficial, indications of this transition-subsistence strategy matrix, for instance.

So I’m not sure where I would go next with the forest composition question but it would likely not focus as much on contemporary home gardens. Still I look forward to seeing what the data have to say, which will require increasing my statistics capabilities and may not get finished this summer, unfortunately.

Belize update

I think you ought to know that I did an amazing thing three days ago: I swam with a 30 foot long fish. It was a Whale Shark, the largest species of fish in the world. It was congregating as part of a biological orgy cued by the moon that occurs every full moon in March-June in certain spots along the barrier reef aff Belize. This orgy is a matter of mutton and ? snapper sex: millions of them congregate to release their eggs and sperm in places that offer good dispersal (major gaps in the barrier reef). The only successful strategy for these species is to release so many eggs in one place as to overwhelm any possible congregation of predators, such as filter feeding Whale Sharks, dolphins, and small feeder fishes (whales are not common around here for some reason).

Finding these orgies is a crapshoot made only slightly less chancy by knowing the tides and currents (great Creole captains took care of this), going on the full moon (check), and following terns and gulls. We found two of these orgies all day- and we were considered very lucky. At one I got about 2 or 3 minutes of swimming above thousands of snapper and one large whale shark roughly 25 feet away. The sharks here are being chased a bit too much and this one immediately started to descend to distant depths in the species' characteristic slow nonchalant way. It seems they have no natural predators.

At the other orgy I swam with a bottle nose dolphin which was enjoying the buffet. It was a male and he actually approached me to within 20 feet.

That day I also swam with two other species of harmless sharks at a nearby reef- a nurse shark and a reef shark. I must go to dinner but I will finish this later. I'm off to Hopkins tomorrow for three or four days or relaxation and snorkeling.

Belize Photos

New photos here.

Santo Dogmingo

Check out pictures of joey and katie's pup. I have been spending time with them in Carrboro, NC--eating, walking, and talking mostly.

Hope for Alaska

Looks like Alaskans are realizing that Fran would have been a better choice for governor. Frank's approval rate is the 2nd lowest in the union with 27%. 66% of Alaskans say they disapprove of how he is running the state. 2006 will be interesting.

Belize photos

Check out most of my Belize photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/73275024@N00/. Or click on the photostream on the right side of this website.

Also, check out the visiting professor that came with us's photos. He has some great shots of flowers and insects especially.

Bats

Vampire bats running at Jeff's blog. I'd add to his comments that bats wings are another great example of convergent evolution. Bat's wings are mostly highly developed and specialized webbed hands which evolved independently of bird wings. Hence, the name of the bat order Chiroptera (Hand wing).

Vampire bats are in the suborder Microchiroptera which means, among other things, that they use echolocation (megabats do not). There are only three species of sanguivorous (vampire) bats, each in different genuses in the leaf-nosed bat family (Phyllostomidae). All three species of vampire bats are limited to the new world south of Mexico. In Belize, there is the
Greater False Vampire Bat (Vampyrum spectrum) which I hope to see sometime. It is unclear if Riskin, the author of the study that has us buzzing, has tested this species for the ability to run.

Lastly, let us remember that the bible specifically says that bats are unclean animals which we should not eat since they cheweth not the cud nor divideth the hoof (Leviticus 11:19).

The Ivory Billed Woodpecker is NOT extinct

What a rare treat, these tears of joy for old-school conservation. What other species (and government I dare say) but ours would silently pump $10 million+ into buying up the land around where another endangered (and thought to be extinct) species was seen and make sure it was well protected before announcing (a year later) that the spieces wasn't extinct. I remember reading into this last year and finding less than conclusive accounts, which now seem like they must have been strategic, and touching.

See for details:

http://today.reuters.co.uk/News/NewsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2005-04-28T203324Z_01_N28115095_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-ENVIRONMENT-WOODPECKER-DC.XML

It is important to point out that there are major reasons to get away from thinking on the species-level and move toward ecosystem-level thinking (as is hinted at in the end of the above article). But for now let us bask in some good old biophilia.

Classes Fall 2005

I will be studying the following exciting subjects (and making you listen to me talk about them):

Anthropology 395: Advanced Special Topic: Past Human Landscapes

Biology 305: Evolution of Iowa Flora (Labs will be held at the fancy new facility on our college-owned prairie CERA)

Biology 345: Advanced Genetics

Philosophy 242: Ethical Theory


And this summer I will be taking:

Biology 399: Summer Research: Maya Ethnoecology

Grinnell College Environmental Mission Statement

Folks,

I'm on a committee that is developing overarching environmental guidelines for Grinnell and we wrote up a draft. If you have any comments please leave them for me. We meet with the President next week to finalize the statement. See below:

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Grinnell College “aims to graduate women and men. . . who are prepared in life and work to use their knowledge and their abilities to serve the common good” (Grinnell College Mission Statement). It follows that the College values the common good of environmental sustainability: the long-term maintenance of the environmental resources and services that support human and all other life on earth. Thereby, Grinnell College is committed to promoting environmental sustainability in all its actions.

The College, in pursuing this over-aching goal, will pursue strategies to:
Reduce resource consumption.
Increase resource re-use and recycling.
Reduce waste output.
Maintain a healthy campus environment for the Grinnell College community.
Acknowledge Grinnell College’s interdependence with the Iowa landscape.
Foster native Iowa biodiversity.

Successful implementation of environmental initiatives will complement other college priorities, such as reducing financial costs and creating campus landscape and architecture that promote personal health, safety, and productivity. The above environmental goals and their associated benefits will be achieved most effectively if they are seamlessly integrated with campus operations.

To achieve its environmental goals, the College will:
Challenge all members of the campus community to improve their environmental practices.
Incorporate analysis of environmental costs and benefits into budget planning, purchasing,
campus planning, construction projects, and daily operations.
Provide the educational and human resources necessary to assess, research, implement, and improve environmental strategies.
Provide opportunities and resources for research and free inquiry of environmental issues.

Guano

I hope to resolve the meaning of the word guano. It seems that the word came into use in the mid 19th century when it became an export commodity (mostly from islands off Peru and Chile) for use on European and, later, American farms. So the term mostly means easily collectible nutrient rich droppings. Most dictionaries simply call guano the feces of sea birds. Wikipedia, the most useful site in my search, calls it " the name given to the collected droppings of seabirds and bats." The word has its origin in the Kitchua (aka Quechua, an important Peruvian upland native group with a relatively global visibility. My spelling is the more politically savvy according to Lara Janson, a friend who is going to the area on a Fulbright next year) word "wanu" which, I gather, refers to its ability to enrich argiculture. The most important animal for the Peruvian industry of guano exportation has been the Guanay cormorant and the Peruvian Pelican.

Incidentally, lest we think that this industry was of little importance, let us remember that when the English began to import significant amounts of guano in 1847, their nightsoil industry collapsed. The nightsoil industry collected human wastes from cesspools outside houses in London and other major cities to distrubute to agricultural areas. While the transition to connecting house waste streams to city sewers was well underway, many houses still used cesspools near their homes and paid nightsoil men to take it away periodically. In 1856, the problem of human wastes accumulating in the Thames and London's groundwater became so serious and undenyable that a massive undertaking was begun to build the world's first major system of sanitary sewers seperate from storm water sewers. The seperation of London's water supply from its waste disposal was undertaken by Sir Joseph Balzalgette and saved many lives by reducing cholera epidemics and other fecally transmitted diseases.

The game of the Season

I urge you to try Bottle. It is a simple game that requires only a Powerade or Gatorade or similar bottle. You get three or four plus people together and stand in a circle on the grass. The object of the game is to catch the bottle with one hand (and no trapping against any part of your body) after in bounces off the ground and before it hits the ground a second time. So the game starts with a player throwing the bottle against the ground and everyone trying to snatch the bottle out of the air at the same time. It ends up being pretty fun because you never know what is going to happen and everyone dives around for the bottle as it goes bouncing through the air off people's attempts to snatch it. A good starting throw is important. Try holding it by the cap end and trying to make it hit the ground on its bottom and then bounce up pretty high. Keep score or not; we typically don't here. It's so much fun no one usually gives a shit. Good for most ages and athletic abilities.

Note from Belize

Today I walked through Maya ruins- Cahal pech and Xunantunich. Archeologists have reconstructed them but they have recreated only what they know was there. It is pretty impressive. Actually, I hardly have the capacity for a proper taking in: today, I've decided to read a novel to relax from all the learning I have been doing the last week. I was on Glover's Atoll, one of four atolls (sunken islands with reefs all around the edge) in the caribbean. Specifically, I was Middle Caye, on one of the three cayes (small islands made of accreted corals) on the atoll. Middle caye is about 7 acres and is taken up by a research facility for anyone who wants to do research. The staff are all locals- creole, garrifina (essentially a unique caribbean african culture), and belizians. They speak english and creole mostly, the latter when they are in a rush or shooting the shit. I shat with them a few nights on the dock where they sit with a shotgun and gaurd their boats from theft by locals or Guatemalans who can boat there in a few hours. BUT, the mostly amazing thing has been what lies under water, through the plastic of a dive mask. Do you know what it is like??? I can't describe it. I wish only that a similarly easy (amazingly easy) portal into the below ground were possible. The water in the whole attol is from 1-100 feet deep and we spent most of our time in depths of about 1-20 feet. You drift on the water and look down at the most-creative-and-full-of-secrets-and-surprises aquarium you can imagine. Parrot fishes eating the corals make an audible crunch and there are so many of them it sounds like rain. Small nurse sharks sometimes can be seen around the reefs hanging out. Angelfishes, grunts, snappers, rockfish, gobies (cleaner fish who wait for large fish to come and bite off parasites even from inside the mouth), wrasses, basslets, squirrel fish, etc. I learned to recognize at least 3 species in each of these groups plus more groups I can't remember. Then there are the corals- hard ones with calcium carbonate between the polyps (clonal indivuals), soft ones with protien structures seperating the polyps, and sea fans. Sponges, amazingly different kinds of algae, land crabs, hermit crabs the size of your fist that can climb trees, parrots, ospreys, grackles, other birds. I haven't coutned but I bet I've learned a hundred or more species in a week.

Now I'm the mainland, enjoying the forests. I think so far I have only seen what we would call second growth and what I thought was great in Alaska until I saw a real old growth forest and realized what was really great. I hope to see a similarly huge and great forest but I'm not sure I will. The trees and amazingly diverse (there are most species of trees in 10 square hectares in the tropics than in all of north america) and they are covered in epiphytes (plants that live on the trees). Iguanas, lizards, kinkajus . . . .

A Working Description of my Thesis

Riparian Decomposition

Carbon dynamics in forest soil alongside major uncontrolled river systems in southwestern New Mexico.