11 May 08

I hope my anti-malarials are working better than my bug spray…. I found about 20 mosquitoes this morning to kill. Almost all were blood filled, which made them slower and easier targets. Walking around I got to enjoy the not so irritating aspects of nature. I think parasites are fun and all, I just prefer the ones that don’t itch so much and have the good possibility of causing death…
There seemed to be butterflies feeding on aphid milk, lots of ficus/fig trees, acacia looking trees, and sensitive plants along the ground, as well as some of the plants that are thought to of evolved to look as if they were eaten away at so insects would not lay their eggs on the ‘taken’ plants. It seems to of worked too. Very little caterpillar damage other than a few micros in shelters. I did find a ‘cute’ animal for Joel. The chipmunk/squirrels are numerous and dart around the trees and fences. Aside from nature, there are people everywhere. People are on the road, in huts, the woods, holes, digging holes, in houses, and anywhere else you might expect or not to find people. There seems to be a large number of hawks [I found that kites are popular birds here too] and ‘House Crows’ that fly around mixed in with just a few songbirds.
A student took me out to breakfast and I had my first (but by no means last) Idly (rice cake) and Vada (plain donut) that we dip in either a chutney (nothing like chutney I have seen before and is a spiced creamy but thick sauce with I think mustard seed) or sambar (lightly spicy sauce). People started to come today, everyone but Vibha (who I presume is already on Indian Standard Time- IST). People are already worried about money, as it seems most of what we have to pay for cannot be by credit card. The flight to Mangalore will be the biggest expense (though it is half as much as we thought it was at this point, which brought much relief to the group when learned later). The Mangalore flight seems like a lot, just to see a fisheries college and a beach (thinking we had to dish out $400 cash). We were promptly stuffed again as people came over. We also went to a fruit stand and got 4 mango’s a piece, plus a chickoo fruit that LaTisha recognized from Jamaica. I still have not tried Jack Fruit, which appears to be a spiky watermelon that grows on trees.
I met this guy Devaray and his 3 friends in the hallway today. He is a poet and a singer, and has given over 1,000 autographs. I think this might be because he goes around offering people his autograph, which I have one of. He uses the local language (which I still don’t know how to spell but sounds like Canada and has to be related to Karnataka, so I call it Karnata. This seems like a good guess as Tamil comes from Tamilandu). Dr. Nadeem explained that lots of people had their own agendas in India, but while they might have good intentions, we have our own agenda to stick to already. Devaray is a pretty good guy if not a bit full of himself, he’s at least eager to meet lots of people. Either that or he wants to be around Americans.
Dr. Nadeem told me a bit about his work looking at flock management. He thinks it might be better to spread out lower amounts of feed for a longer period than to feed animals and then have periods of starvation when food is sparse. This could have a large impact on feed conversion as gut microflora will have to rebuild itself. The goal is to train a farmer from every village to build interest from the other farmers when they see the success and then have interest from other farmers for training. When this happens they can hold seminars to train more people in groups.