The Beginning of the End

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Today marks my T-minus 1 week mark—I have a week left to get at least 10 days’ worth of data, and the weather isn’t exactly cooperating. Blast! But let me rewind a bit to how I got here.



A week ago I returned from my brief foray to Danum Valley. In my absence, my field assistant managed to get himself sick and required a hospital visit in the state capital of Kota Kinabalu (KK, on the other side of the state from where we are—about an hour’s flight away). After his malaria, dengue, and various other tests came up negative, his official diagnosis was “jungle fever.” Only in Sabah.



Fortunately, he healed well after a round of antiobiotics and has been working very hard to help me get the rest of the data I need—but after 4 days of great sun (good for ensuring clear streams, and thus allowing our work to proceed) we’ve had mostly rain for the past 3 days, which has resulted in one failed attempt to conduct experiments on one stream (including an hour’s drive plus an hour’s exceedingly steep and slippery hike, carrying all of our gear, down to a stream only to discover it brown & flooded); one day off; and one day of tadpole surveys in mildly murky water.



The current weather has really been emphasizing to me the touch and go nature of field work. In a lab setting, you can usually control all (or at least most) of the factors affecting your work. You set temperatures, light and dark cycles, amounts of reagents, etc. In the field, you’re at the whim of so many different variables—in my case: rain, which can cause an entire day to be scrapped; car availability; research assistant health; and other factors that are too numerous to list. Here in camp we have a dry-erase board on which we’re supposed to write our field plans for the week. Lately, mine have been changed every 2-12 hours, leaving the camp manager scrambling to plan transportation. They’re all very understanding, and I think I’ve mellowed a bit over the past few months from being in the field and re-adjusting to the nature of the work here. Two months ago I would have been a bit crazy not knowing what I’m doing a week in advance, but now I’m pretty resigned to having to fly by the seat of my pants for the last week.



That being said, I am grateful for the few days of sun I had when I first returned, and am happy that I had the foresight to take advantage of each of those days (including working on our normal rest day, Sunday). I was able to finish primary productivity measures on 3 of the 6 streams I needed, and now have only 1 more stream that lacks any data—so keep those fingers crossed that I’ll have at least one more day with clear streams in the next week! I even managed to get a full set of productivity measures AND a complete tadpole survey on one stream completely solo—one of my biggest accomplishments to date! So I’m trying to look on the bright side even though the rain and clouds have been making that a bit challenging…



Eight days from now I’ll be flying to KK for a day of meetings and wrapping up any other business that needs taking care of before I leave Malaysia, followed by a few days in Kuala Lumpur (KL) with James before flying home to the US. It seems a bit surreal that in two weeks’ time I will no longer be sleeping in a hammock every night; that I will have access to electricity 24 hrs a day; that I won’t have to bathe in a stream or use an outhouse; that I can call my brothers at any waking hour; and that I’ll get to see several friends & family again. At this point in time, it feels bittersweet, but I’m happy knowing that I’m managing to blend what I consider the best of both worlds—my life in the US that I enjoy immensely and my field work in Asia that I don’t think I could do without.

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Photos

A lovely butterfly
This little fellow kept me company while I was getting primary productivity measures on the 15 m stream.

Leeches!
The 60 m stream was the worst--too many leeches to count!