NSF Funding

May Day had a pretty exciting start for me. The first thing I do in the morning is read my email as I eat breakfast. I have been expecting a rejection letter from NSF (National Science Foundation) for my dissertation proposal now for over a month, but to my surprise my proposal was sent on by my cultural anthropology reviewers for finally approval by the head of NSF (or whoever it is that approves these things). Let's just say I didn't need a cup of coffee to get going that morning.

Holding back my excitement was really difficult. I can't just randomly shout for joy in a city. Srs. Pedro, Jaime, and Sergio, my building guards, would probably take issue for the false alarm. Instead, I did a silent Snoopy dance; taking care not to stomp too loudly because of my downstairs neighbors since it was pretty early. It might seem silly to get so excited, but I felt the same when I received word that I had been awarded a Fulbright. In fact, I had Ted Gragson, my faculty advisor, read my Fulbright acceptance email just to make sure that I wasn't hallucinating. I actually turned cartwheels that time.

I wasn't going to post about it until I had a confirmation letter in hand (but I got scooped), because there is still the off chance that the US Congress will completely lose it and NSF will lose its funding budget. You might find that a bit unbelievable, but only the day after I found out that I would most likely be awarded NSF funding for my dissertation, there was a vote in the House to stop funding certain anthropological research. Two congressmen, Campbell (CA-R) and Garrett (NJ-R), decided that some of the titles were too ridiculous to fund, regardless of what they might tell us about humanity and human history. Some of them had funny titles like "the accuracy in the cross-cultural understanding of others' emotions" or "cognitive model of superstitious belief" or "bison hunting on the late prehistoric Great Plains" or "social relationships and reproductive strategies of Phayre's Leaf Monkeys" The House representatives also proposed to limit NSF funding in general.

This is just typical of the anti-intellectualist and over-the-top fundie religious bullshit that has been directing my country for at least the past decade. Fortunately, H.R. 1867 got voted down. If people wonder why the US is slipping in science and math, or why more native-born US citizens don't become scientists, this might be a clue. I seriously doubt that if these studies contributed to building better bombs or killing people more efficiently that they would have ever been considered for funding restrictions. [sarcasm] Understanding how emotions work in other cultures could only contribute to greater understanding between people working in cross-cultural situations, so lets screw that project over. What a complete and utter waste of Americans' tax dollars. [/sarcasm]

In the interests of full disclosure of where your tax dollars are going, here is the abstract I submitted to NSF for public review. A silly title is attached. Thank you everyone (including my advisor and the anonymous NSF reviewers) for contributing to my education, a greater understanding of the relationship between culture and landscape, and the advancement of science. Seriously. In the words of one of my reviewers, "It is not flashy or very exciting but it may be a useful contribution, and it has a practical side as well."

Ronga Wild Plant Harvest and the Conservation of Coastal Savanna Landscape in Southern Mozambique

ABSTRACT
Social and ecological factors, as well as, the spatial and temporal patchiness of resource distribution, direct resource user behavior in a landscape. Southern Mozambique's coastal savanna landscape is rich in flora and faunal species due to the highly diverse range of available habitats like forest, grasslands, and wetlands. This landscape’s spatial and temporal heterogeneity offers Ronga horticulturists a high diversity of wild plants to harvest for various subsistence needs. Preliminary fieldwork shows a high dependence on plant resources by Ronga communities in the region. This dissertation project proposes to (1) analyze the importance of various social and ecological factors in directing the spatial and temporal patch choice and use of Ronga wild plant harvest, and (2) investigate the specific effects of Rongan wild plant harvests on coastal savanna vegetation diversity, abundance, and distribution.

The proposed research combines ethnographic and ecological approaches to gather information about current and historic Rongan use of wild plant resources and landscape in two coastal savanna communities over a 16-month period. Incorporation of user spatial behavior, and the factors directing it, is critical for developing realistic landscape conservation management plans that meet locally specific needs for both humans and wild species. The proposed research will be used to develop a management plan recognizing Ronga resource use and needs for the Futi Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA). It will also serve as a methodological model for documenting the community resource use information needed to create conservation plans at Great Limpopo and Gorongoza TFCAs in Mozambique, and potentially elsewhere.

Microcredit in Matutuine District

Last year, Dr. Muhammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank (the bank he created in Bangladesh) shared the Nobel Peace Prize for an idea that is helping people help themselves get out of poverty. Microcredit loans provide individuals the capital they need to do things like buy farm animals to raise for profit or a sewing machine to set up a tailoring shop or repair a vehicle that they use to transport goods and people. I've even heard of women buying cell phones with microloans, and then becoming the telephone service provider for their entire community.

Very few individuals default on these tiny loans. There is pride and social pressure, and people who default on loans cannot borrow again. But also, as monies are repaid, they get reinvested in new entrepeneurs. Many of the microloans go to women. In the short term, this allows women to support their families and send their children to school. In the long term, it raises their political, economic, and social status.

Today, as I was reading the BBC news online, I came across a site that connects loaners directly to low-income entrepreneurs in the developing world. You actually can pick where and to whom you want to loan money. The basic amount the loaner contributes is $25, which is about 12 large regular coffees at a fancy coffee shop.

Crap, I sound like some sort of Sally Struthers advert for starving children in Ethiopia. Cue the flies and suffering please.

I'm not writing this because I drank their koolaid or they slipped me a 1000 metacais under the table, but because I think that it is a pretty cool idea. Also, because they are operating in Matutuine District, Mozambique where I work. Right now there are 62 small businesses that have started, 63% owned by women, with an average loan size of $800. People have bought chickens, set up small grocery stores, repaired vehicles to run bus services, and repaired fishing boats and nets. In many cases, the entrepreneurs are now employing other people (and thus supporting their families). I've actually bought dry goods from one of the women entrepreneurs listed on Kiva. She operates a little loja (store) in Salamanga. Now I know how she started up her business.

The average wage in Mozambique is less than $1 per day. Things cost less, but people still work pretty damn hard for that less than $1. There are very few beggars here, most people would rather offer some sort of service or product in return for your spare change - carrying your purchases at the market, watching your car (people love to steal anything removable, including the car), selling batiks, hawking fruit and veg on the sidewalk, etc.

Occasionally, I'll have this moment where I get all weirded out thinking about the fact that I'm carrying around more money in my pocket than some Mozambicanos see in a week of working. Then I usually do something like buy roasted peanuts (that I don't necessarily want to eat right then) from barefoot and raggedly clothed 7 year olds hawking them on the street when they should be in school. But, of course, they can't go to school because they can't afford the $4 uniforms, school supplies, or tuition fees, and/or they are orphaned with no one to care them.

I'll continue to buy roasted peanuts, but loaning money directly to people with plans to put it to good use is something I can support as well.

Just another link if you are interested in Kiva:
You Too Can Be A Banker To The Poor - Nicholas Kristof

The Zen of Waiting

Espera. Espera. Breathe in. Espera. Espera. Breathe out.

I do a lot of waiting in Mozambique. Time runs differently here. The viscosity of time varies more widely depending on the scale. On a minute by minute, day to day basis, it flows very slowly. I find myself waiting on appointments, waiting for businesses to reopen after the two hour lunchtime, waiting for emails to appear in my inbox, waiting for meetings to be held so that I can consider beginning my interviews, waiting to get out to the reserve... As I look back to January, the time has flown rapidly. It seems like I only just arrived, and I get nervous about completing the research tasks I have set for myself.

Waiting is tough for me. Chris says that I am high strung (anxious) and I won't disagree. Waiting forces me to recognize that I have no control and I just need to go with whatever happens. Letting go like this is a very difficult practice for me. Yet, amazingly things always turn out. Maybe a little later than I would like, but you can't always get what you want.

Espera. Espera. Breathe in. Espera. Espera. Breathe out.

The students I work with, particularly the anthropologists, find it funny that I am always on time or a little early. "That's so American." They tell me. "A Mozambicano will be at least 30 minutes late, if not 3 hours. That's why we carry cell phones; so we can call to see if the other person even remembered we were supposed to meet." We laugh.

But it is very American of me. Vania and Linda, both anthropology undergraduates, are good about meeting with me on time. The latest they have ever been is 20 minutes. Understandable for 2 serious, intelligent, and beautiful young woman busy with coursework, jobs, and being young and single. They are also hip to American culture and we talk lots about differences between our respective cultures. Maybe it's that they are anthropologists, but I appreciate their understanding.

Espera. Espera. Breathe in. Espera. Espera. Breathe out.

Todos os Trabalhadores do Mundo

The Ideas of Marx, Engels Live the wall across the street from my apartment announces.
May Day was pretty quiet for a socialist, democratic country. I didn't even realize what day it was until I walked down to the US Public Affairs Office and found it closed. Many of the proletariat were still working - the empregadas, the trash collectors, the MCel card sellers, the tomato and banana vendors, the candy men, the cashew and peanut girls, the building guards...

Sr. Pedro, one of the 3 gentlemen who guards my apartment, laughed when I told him that I had forgotten what day it was. "Everyone around the world celebrates May Day, how could you forget?" When I told him that we didn't celebrate it in the US, he was shocked. "What about the workers? They deserve a day." Considering that he was working today, I wondered that he didn't choke on the irony of his words. I quickly recovered by telling him that we celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday of September.

But you know, it just isn't the same. I know that the Soviet communists usurped the Celtic celebrations of Beltane to turn May 1st into a day for workers and unions. And that fear of communism is why the US doesn't celebrate Labor Day on May 1. (May 1 is officially Loyalty Day in the US.) However, there's something to having solidarity with workers everywhere at least once a year. And I don't say that just because I come from a pro-Union family (teachers, steel workers, railway machinists, etc.)


Are you HIV positive?
My post generated an interesting response from my friend Josh. He wrote to say that,

"The HIV one was particularly striking. However, and I don't want to belittle the seriousness of HIV, Sen. Duane of NYS senate is an openly HIV positive man who is doing quite well. I know he has a whole world of difference in terms of health care availability etc. but the point I guess I want to make is that it is important to recognize the life in the individual, not the virus in them."

In a much more eloquent manner, Josh stated what I was trying to say with my post. HIV status passes through my brain briefly, and may return if I notice that someone is visibly ill, however, it is the life, the skills, the joy, the wisdom, and the love of the people that I interact with here in Mozambique that really matters. And that is what I focus on.

I found his comment to be an appropriate reminder today for focusing on what we can do to make the world a better place - regardless of our HIV status. So, I tip my hat to Josh, and to Todos os Trabalhadores do Mundo.

Urban Wildlife in Maputo

Everyone has that one thing that freaks the shit out of them. For me, it's rats. I am not completely phobic, but don't ask me to babysit your pet rat when you go on vacation. Mice go into the same category.

So the rat I found hiding under my laundry sink this evening really got my heart racing. It darted out and then rushed back into hiding when it heard my flip flops scuffing along. I caught myself before some high pitched expletives started echoing around the back courtyard of my apartment building.

Rats and humans have been sharing food, disease vectors, and living space for a long time, but it doesn't mean that I have to like it. There is a rat with a white spot on its back that I occasionally spot crossing the courtyard. Really early one morning I caught a young, skinny rat exploring the walkway between my neighbor's and my doors. It looked at me, sniffed, and then continued along the wall. I know that there are other rats, and that is why my doors stay closed even on warm days.

I come by my disgust legitimately. When my brother was 5, he left the door to our home open in the middle of winter (he had just come in from sledding). Two big barn rats decided to set up house in the warm place with food. One took up residence in my closet. For two weeks, all I could hear at night was the rat scratching, trying to get out.

Try telling your dad that there is something in the closet trying to get out when you are 13. Ha! Ha! Ha! I was told to go back to sleep because I was too old for that kind of behavior. After multiple nights of me waking my parents to complain, my dad took our chocolate lab into my bedroom. I don't know exactly how it all went down, but Ginger killed the rat within 10 minutes. It was big. We found the other rat by the smell of its corpse 3 weeks later. It had eaten some poison my dad put out and died in the ceiling of my mom's office/sewing room. Anyway, that's why rats creep me out.

Roosters and guinea hens next door? Noisy, but okay. Spiders? Sure. Ants? Annoying, but fine. The cute little gecko that lives in my sneakers by my kitchen door is more than welcome. Even cockroaches are a-okay. (Chris had some pet Madagascar hissing cockroaches for a while when we lived in Oregon.) I may have been born in the Year of the Rat, but that doesn't mean I have to like rats.

Historic Wildlife Trade

The blog I posted the other night was pretty random. I got really geeky excited over a bunch of old weights and measurements with no explanation. So now I'll try to explain.

Ivory - Museu da História Natural (Maputo). The tip of the tusks is at least 70".

Two summers ago, I got a small research grant to travel to Portugal to collect archival data from the colonial archives about the historic wildlife trade in Delagoa Bay (now Maputo Bay). It was a way for me to look for data about historic plant use, Ronga culture, and landscape descriptions as well.

I found old customs records containing information about a wide range of plants and animals being exported out between 1845 and 1906. The records provided monetary values (in Reis), number of tusks, teeth, and horns, packaging sizes, and weights, but not in a form that I could understand. This made it difficult to calculate the potential sizes of animals killed for their ivory, skin, or horns.

White Rhino (Ceratotherium simum) - Museu da História Natural (Maputo)

Why bother trying to figure out how animals were hunted or how big they were? Or how many trees were harvested? It all goes back to my questions about the African savanna landscape we see today has been shaped by human activities and decisions in the past.

Hippo skull - Museu da História Natural (Maputo). Hippo ivory was used for dentures in the nineteenth century.

I now have some real numbers to crunch. In July, I will be presenting my preliminary results at the Society for Conservation Biology meetings in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. This makes me more than a little nervous (the talking part), but I am hoping for some good feedback so that I can polish up my "little project" into something worth publishing.

The following is my abstract for the presentation:

Wildlife Trade Exports from Delagoa Bay and Its Hinterland 1845-1906

While previous investigation of East African export records has focused on the social, political, and economic changes generated by the slave and ivory trade in this region, these same records could be used to document regional long-term ecological change. This study analyzes available export records for Delagoa Bay (now Maputo Bay, Mozambique) and its hinterland from 1845 to 1906 in order to understand the potential ecological impacts of historic natural resource extraction on this region. Types, amounts, and values of exported biological, non-agricultural resources were collected from the alfândega registers held at the Archivo Histórico Ultramarino in Lisbon, Portugal. Published accounts of nineteenth century explorers and travelers were used to identify unusual items and the extent of Delagoa Bay’s hinterland. Information on the ecological niche of identifiable exports was drawn from the literature to determine potential ecosystem impacts. Elephant ivory, rhinoceros horn, and hippopotamus teeth comprise the top three exports from 1845-1906. Other listed exports include pelts, skins, bones, and horn of various wild animals, sea turtle shells, cowry and conch shells, whale oil and ambergris, fresh and dried fish, specialized timbers (Diospyros kirkii, Spirostachys africana, Dalbergia melanoxylon), mangrove bark, rubber (Landolphia kirkii), and a lichen (Roccella montagnei).

Are you HIV positive?

Sometimes conversations can be real downers. Yesterday, I had one of those talks with my friends Natalina and Ventris. They are visiting researchers in political science and history from the U.S.. Natalina has been studying Mozambique's informal markets, and grassroots organization for HIV/SIDA support and education. During the course of her market research she kept meeting HIV positive women trying to support their families. This led to her current exploration of the HIV/SIDA crisis in Mozambique. She interviews HIV positive individuals (mainly women), as well as medical staff at hospitals and clinics throughout the country.

We were talking about marriage and living apart from your spouse for long periods for research. Like Chris and I, she and Ventris were apart for a long period when she first came out to Mozambique. So Natalina has a sympathetic ear when it comes to me talking about missing my husband.

I mentioned to her a conversation that I had last weekend with my husband Chris. I told him that he didn't need to ever worry about me cheating on him in the field because (1) I love him very much, but also (2) the first thing I think when I meet someone new here is, "Are you HIV positive?"

I feel horribly guilty admitting this, even though it in no way affects my interaction with a person. The reason I think about their HIV status is because I wonder how long I will be able to interact with them and enjoy our potential friendship. They could get hit by a truck tomorrow (and so could I, given the driving in Maputo), so really, their HIV status doesn't matter. However, I am sensitive to other people's pain. It saddens me thinking about the illness that they will most likely experience in the future if they are HIV positive (or the pain of losing a loved one to the disease). I don't know if that makes any sense, but there it is.

I felt guilty admitting this, but Natalina and I are good friends. We have had many conversations on a lot of strange topics. I felt a little relieved when she said that she often thinks the same thing. But she says that it is worse for her. Working with HIV positive people makes you hyperaware of HIV/SIDA's symptoms. Natalina says the number of people walking around in Maputo with symptoms of HIV, if you know what to look for, is shocking - much higher than the official rate would indicate.

The official rate given by the CDC for Mozambique is around 16%. The real rates are much higher than the official counts. Many people refuse to be tested, and others refuse to admit that they are sick (particularly men). These selfish individuals continue to have unprotected sex (with both spouses and others), thus spreading the virus even further. Serial killing wife after wife after girlfriend. According to a 2006 UN report, the rates for pregnant women ages 15-45 have increased dramatically since 2000 (countrywide 11% in 2000 to 16% in 2004). In Maputo province, the rates for pregnant women rose to 18-27% in 2004. Most of the official statistics are based on HIV rates in pregnant women, since they seek treatment to prevent their unborn children from being HIV positive.

Unofficially, the rate for Maputo Province is probably around 45% - based on observations by medical personnel. That means that every other person I meet is probably HIV positive. Natalina interviewed a public clinic nurse on Ilha de Mocambique (Nampula Province, up north) who says in 10 years (maximum) that the island will be empty of people. Everyone the nurse has tested has been HIV positive, and she has worked around HIV positive people long enough to know the symptoms and diagnose the effects of the virus in the untested.

Many in the aid community and Mozambicanos believe that people up north have lower rates because they are Muslim. Bullshit. Men sleep around. So do some women, although it seems to be more common among men (but who are those men sleeping with?). It doesn't matter whether they are Muslim, Christian, or practice traditional religions. It doesn't matter how faithful a person is if their spouse sleeps around. In many cases here, a woman cannot ask her husband to use a condom for fear of being beaten - even if she knows that she is HIV positive. Women can be kicked out of the family compound when their husband dies from SIDA related complications - blamed for his death and left with nothing. SIDA orphans wander the capital barefoot, begging for a few metacais to buy bread to eat and picking through the garbage to find food and valuable things to resell.

I remember a long time ago in junior high school when AIDS was a new thing. That was a very long 23 years ago.