UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH BLOGS
The Office of Undergraduate Research sponsors a number of grant programs, including the Circumnavigator Club Foundation’s Around-the-World Study Grant and the Undergraduate Research Grant. Some of the students on these grants end up traveling and having a variety of amazing experiences. We wanted to give some of them the opportunity to share these experiences with the broader public. It is our hope that this opportunity to blog will deepen the experiences for these students by giving them a forum for reflection; we also hope these blogs can help open the eyes of others to those reflections/experiences as well. Through these blogs, perhaps we all can enjoy the ride as much as they will.
EXPLORE THE BLOGS
- Linguistic Sketchbook
- Birth Control Bans to Contraceptive Care
- A Global Song: Chris LaMountain’s Circumnavigator’s Blog
- Alex Robins’ 2006 Circumnavigator’s Blog
- American Sexual Assault in a Global Context
- Beyond Pro-GMO and Anti-GMO
- Chris Ahern’s 2007 Circumnavigator’s Blog
- Digital Citizen
- From Local Farms to Urban Tables
- Harris Sockel’s Circumnavigator’s Blog 2008
- Kimani Isaac: Adventures Abroad and At Home
- Sarah Rose Graber’s 2004 Circumnavigator’s Blog
- The El Sistema Expedition
- The World is a Book: A Page in Rwand
I find this highly disconcerting.
My broadcast of choice for this World Cup has been Univision. I’ve been hooked on its aggressively rolled r’s in Neymar and exaggerated pronunciation of Schweinsteiger, and I’m afraid Canada has presented me with its first cultural hurdle. It saddens to me that for the rest of the cup, I will be the missing the Spanish broadcast’s operatic, 20+ second-long screams of “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!!!!!!”
While I realize this has nothing to do with Punjabi YouTube celebrities, I have been watching the World Cup with my current hosts in Brampton, the suburban Punjab of Canada.
The Pendulum Effect
The beginning may not always be the hardest part but, perhaps because it’s the beginning, it pretty much feels that way. Such was the case with the start of my research — talk about a series of dead ends. Unexpected facility closings, crashed internet, essential materials on loan indefinitely, and, to top it all off, suffocating heat and humidity pressing down on Bologna. Oh, and the picture messages from my family with captions like “Great time at the beach!” and “Wish you were here for the bonfire!” …Smiley face. I started to get pretty discouraged to say the least. Right and also my friends who had also finished their exams had gone back to their respective home towns and countries. But from the midst of my gloom my roommate, who was preparing a horribly difficult law exam and would frantically unload her stress on me as I watered my plants in the morning, one morning asked me how the project was going. “It’s not really going….” I responded, and explained the troubles I was having. But she just laughed. “Darling, you’re in Italy!” she reminded me, “You can’t count on systems and procedures and bureaucracy, trust me. I’m studying them and they’re broken. You have to count on the people instead. Go reach out to people, that’s where you’ll find you resources. I mean, your project should be like your garden; deal with things that are living, that will respond to the energy you put into them.”
And if you can imagine, her little speech was even more inspirational in Italian. So I got my chin back up and reached out to everyone I could think of. Within a couple days I was sitting in a marvelously comfortable chair, surrounded by scores and recordings, full bars of wifi showing confidently on my laptop screen, at a desk in front of a huge open window, with a beautiful stormy rain sweeping in to break the heat. My second project beginning therefore consisted of three straight days of chronologically viewing the eight operas while following the scores. What may sound like little more than a movie marathon was actually a necessary task to compact the progression of the musical periods in the style of time lapse photography. My stance is that history is not so much a constant forward reaching arch as it is a pendulum that retraces, repeats, and revisits itself with the advancement of time. By viewing all the operas in quick succession I clearly recognized the swoop of the pendulum that, like a playground swing, had a foreseeable trajectory but also points of fixture, of seemingly immobility. These fixed points, which will be discussed further once I’ve clarified them for myself, were discovered and hesitantly added to my metaphor only after the review of my marathon notes and are as disgruntling as they are eye-opening. Though I was warmly familiar with every opera on the list before beginning the project, I found myself personally swept up not only in the course of each individual work but in the swoop of the course of musical history also. I doubt I’ll ever forget the day in which I watched La Traviata and La Boheme back to back. I was wrapped in a quilt in my comfy chair with the rain pounding down and the smell of soaking herbs coming in the window and I was sobbing, whole-heartedly sobbing. As Violetta and Alfredo swore to run away from Paris. As Mimì and Rodolfo bid goodbye to waking up beside each other. I was out of control. That’s hard to admit as a girl who was quite recently scornful of the sappy over-wrought tear-jerking associated with bel canto. But I was riding that musical period swing. It all made sense, the actions, the reactions, the emotions, the historical context, the blatantly provocative music. And there’s more! The next opera, the final one on my list, tells the story of a family in an unidentified European totalitarian country during WWII. The father, sought by the police for political crimes (also unidentified), has fled over the border and is anxiously awaiting his wife, child and mother who are trying to obtain visas. Here too there is love, struggle, and ultimately death. But it’s not the same. I did not cry. I felt cold and angry and unsure. Menotti the composer tells us it’s not the same. He points out over and over again in his music and in the structuring of the scenes that the world has entered into a coldness that turns a blind eye to that which only a few years before was the catalyst of life: human relationships. The music, you see, these operas, they belong in their time periods. They are entwined with the spirit of the world as it was when they were written. To follow shortly is a series of (what I find to be) fascinating stories about the original presentations of these operas. But for now I leave you with a picture of my garden. One, because for me it’s a symbol of the care and response relationship I’m now finding also in my project. Two, because I really like my garden and want to show it off. You can’t really tell but there’s sage, rosemary, basil, citronella, lavender, stevia, succulents, and tomatoes!
Introduction ji
I am in Toronto this summer to explore the community of Punjabi-Sikh YouTube comedians in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), focusing on JusReign, AKakaAMAZING, and Lilly Singh: Superwoman. These three have become household names among the Punjabi community in South Ontario for their hilarious and remarkably relatable videos that spoof brown culture in North America. A common theme among the three are “Desi parents and ____” videos, where they impersonate caricatured versions of brown parents. As a half-Punjabi myself, these scenarios ring true in my own life — if not directly from my wonderful Indian mother, than through her side of the family. This includes ambiguous, terrifying commands to fetch something from some other room (baharo/outside, odhoro/over there, othe/there), and random rhyming of words: clock-clook, lease-loos, and so on. These three Punjabis have attracted massive followings on YouTube; Superwoman, for example, has over 3 million subscribers, and she posts videos every Monday and Thursday.
I approach this project with these basic questions: How do these YouTube celebrities imagine and cater to their community of followers? Do they view themselves as representatives of brown and, by extension, Punjabi-Sikh culture? What is the basic message they hope to spread to their audience, brown and beyond?
I close this introduction with the video that turned me on to this community years ago, “Desi Parents are CRAZY” by JusReign.
Change!
As I got on a plane leaving for Finland – it really hit me just how long I will be out of the country. While I will be traveling through the UK and Finland exploring the amazing children’s theater there for two months, I go directly to Italy after for a semester abroad. Do you know how much can happen in sixth months? A family three months pregnant when I leave will have brought a new life to earth by the time I get back. I left in ninety degree weather, and (knowing Chicago) I will come back to wind chills of -45 degrees. Birds will have migrated, we could discover a cure for cancer, new life forms could be discovered! But, I digress. Ultimately, I have always wished to explore Europe’s theatre scene and what better way to do that than with grant from a University!
Singhs on the Small Screen
Pictured, from left to right: JusReign, AKakaAMAZING, and Lilly Singh: Superwoman. Photos of each taken from their Facebook pages; photo of Toronto skyline by me.
A hope for the future
I can’t believe that my time in Guatemala is already over. The past two weeks have been full of incredible people, amazing experiences, and some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. Before I move on to posting about Peru, I want to share a little bit more about the impressive organizations that I was able to work with during my time here.
During my two weeks in Guatemala, I’ve had the chance to visit two organizations in order to learn about their approach to combating the rampant childhood malnutrition in the country. Even though the Guatemalan government now considers lowering the rates of childhood stunting a major priority, their initiatives have been relatively slow to produce progress.
The first organization that I visited is called Wuqu’ Kawoq. I briefly gave an overview of their work in a previous post, but I want to describe the work of their nutrition program specifically. The nutrition program of Wuqu’ Kawoq is led by two employees, named German and Yoli. German manages the data collection side of the program, including entering all of the growth data into an electronic medical record system used to track the children. Yoli is a health educator that works with mothers in the program on a group and individual basis, giving all of her lessons in the Mayan language, Kaqchikel.
The program spans many communities, including Paquip, Paya, Solola, and the Bocacosta regions. The program identifies stunted children of less than two years to invite them into the program. The program meetings take place in Centros de Salud throughout the country. German told me that the Guatemalan government has been building dozens of brand new, state of the art Centros de Salud across the country. While this may seem like an incredible thing, apparently the majority of Centros de Salud remain unstaffed or have a doctor working there once or twice a week if lucky. They also frequently suffer from medication shortages, so the communities are unable to obtain necessary prescriptions.
That said, Wuqu’ has been able to take advantage of a less than ideal situation by utilizing these brand new spaces to host their programs. When a child first joins the nutrition program, his or her mother is expected to bring him or her into the Centro de Salud every 15 days. Once a month, for the first three months in the program, the mothers receive viveres, or groceries, of healthy, protein and nutrient dense foods to feed their young ones. Among the viveres are a half liter of vegetable oil, two dozen eggs, two bags of Incaparinas (a protein fortified corn based drink), and two pounds of black beans. These foods are meant to quickly recuperate a child who is underweight and to help them catch up on the growth curve. Many of the foods, such as oil and eggs, are often unaffordable to women in the communities. After three months, the mothers continue receiving Incaparinas every month.
The other visit in the month is used to weigh and measure the children. Each child comes into an appointment room individually to be measured. The measurements are immediately put into the electronic medical record system, and German pulls up the growth chart of the child to show the mother. With these growth charts, it is very easy to see if the child is on track for their age in terms of weight and height. These visual graphs help the mothers to better understand where their child is making improvements and where they’re falling behind. If the child has not gained adequate weight or grown enough in the last month, Yoli will discuss cooking, feeding, and sanitation practices with the mother. If a child has experienced diarrhea in the last few weeks, they receive medication for parasites. This individualized approach ensures that the program meets each family where they are at and helps them to develop healthy habits that are advantageous to child growth.
These bimonthly meetings allow the children to remain under the watchful eyes of the program directors, allowing them to intervene when a child’s growth is faltering. Besides the checkups, the program also has group education meetings with the mothers and home visits of every family in the program. These home visits allow the program directors to observe sanitation and hygiene conditions in the home. All of these things together produce a comprehensive program supporting healthy child growth.
So far, the program has seen enormous success. For example, in a town called Paya, the mothers in the program are weighing and measuring the children on their own every month. They record the measurements and give them to German to be entered into the system. In the Bocacosta region, the program directors couldn’t find any more children that qualified for the program, the ultimate sign of success! Though the success stories are numerous, the program still faces many challenging cases in their day to day work, but the program staff remain incredibly optimistic about what the future holds. I am so thankful to Wuqu’ Kawoq for letting me visit to learn more about their incredible work of providing high quality healthcare to indigenous Guatemala.
Tanzania: week 1!
Where to begin with this past week? So much as happened that it feels like I’ve been in Tanzania for much longer than a week; but with seven more weeks left in my program, I know that there is still so much more to experience.
The way my program is set up, the first two weeks focus on intensive Swahili. From 8:30 am until 12:30 pm, I go to class at MS Training Centre for Development Corporation (TCDC). TCDC is the best center for Swahili language courses, so I know I am learning from the best. After lunch at TCDC, my group then goes on different excursions each day. Here is how my week went.
Bright and early on Monday June 29, our program began. Instead of going to Swahili in the morning today, we had a brief orientation with our professor, and then went to a afternoon Swahili course instead. Despite being a fairly relaxed day, that night was a little more high strung. Tonight was the first night that we had to cook for ourselves. Living with seven, still basically strangers can be difficult; but fresh off of living in my sorority house, the amount of people I was living with didn’t phase me. What did was cooking for them. As a group we decided to make cooking and cleaning groups, and luck would have it that I would be in the first group. Really not having an action plan, we quickly put together vegetarian pasta with homemade tomato sauce. We now consider ourselves to be professionals. That was basically our day.
On Tuesday, we made it to our Swahili class by 8:30, and by the class as over at 12:30, we had learned greetings, simple introductions, at least 10 verbs, and much more vocabulary. Despite the quick pace, I have really enjoyed learning Swahili. It’s a meaning that it is a much easier to learn, and it is very fun to speak as a well. For our excursion this day, we visited Meru District Hospital. This hospital was the main site of research for our professor, so it was very cool to see the infrastructure, meet the doctors and nurses, and feel the atmosphere that we had only read about and seen in photos. I think it was at this hospital where I felt the most “culture shock” I have felt since arriving in Tanzania. To see the conditions that people had to go through to get basic care at what should be one of the top hospitals in the area was astonishing, but despite all I saw, I was so impressed with the mentality of the staff we spoke to. They understood their limitations, but worked hard to work against them, and truly create hospital with high standards that could benefit it’s community. After leaving the hospital, we went back to our home in Usa River Rehabilitation Centre (URRC). I was (thankfully) not in charge of dinner, so my dinner partner and I decided to go for a run. Not the smartest idea. Not thinking my workout gear all the way through, I decided to wear a tank top and shorts, like I normally do at home. Mistake number one. We decided to run towards town (Usa River) passing many different small restaurants. Mistake number two. Let’s just say it was not a fun run.
Wednesday during the day was much of the same, except we visited Usa River Seminary Hospital and the DREAM center, which is a center specifically for patients with HIV/AIDS. In the evening, our professor took us to Tangeroo, which has a main market that sells almost anything you can think of. Wednesday and Saturday are considered market days in Meru District, so the market was a sensory overload. Customers were everywhere and every vendor was trying to sell you something. It was a pretty cool experience, mainly because our professor’s Swahili is so impressive. I don’t see myself handling market days like a pro until I can master more sentences in Swahili than “I like rice and meat.”
Thursday put me in a very strange mood. The morning was the same as always, and in the afternoon we visited Nkoaranga Lutheran Hospital. This hospital was my favorite excision of the week. For a private hospital, which private hospitals in Meru District are typical much smaller and less funded, Nkoaranga was not only much bigger than Meru District Hospital, but also had better infrastructure with an orthopedic wing, X-ray, and new pediatric facility. Overall I was impressed with the shape of the hospital, especially because it was in a more rural area of the district. It is a spot that I definitely want to research further.
The reason for my strange mood might seems a little strange to most people, but here is the reason. A little back ground about me is that I am “African” American. I use quotations around African, because realistically, I know somewhere in my genealogy, my ancestors came from Africa. Despite this, I am not sure which parts, because as far as my parents can trace back, my family has been in the States. Thus, I consider myself Black America. With this in mind, I was pretty excited to come to Africa, to experience some of the “heritage,” that I never really had. Also on my trip is a student who was originally born in Nigeria, but is an American citizen. Even thought she is Nigerian, many people in Tanzania think she is Tanzanian. Me, on the other hand, they either ignore or think that I’m American. I’m not sure what I hoped for when coming to Africa in terms of “connecting to my heritage,” but being ignored as having African heritage really put me down.
Thursday was also the day we decided to try eating out. Our meal wasn’t the best because we missed the lunch rush and were technically too early to dinner. Most Tanzanian eat dinner at 8pm, and since we went at 6pm to be back at home before too late, we didn’t get super fresh food. We did try some Tanzania beer, which is actually cheaper than water at most restaurants—so crazy! It was pretty good.
Friday, our excursion was a sanitation tour. This tour was so eye-opening to me. In addition to the Meru Distirct Hospital, sanitation as a whole in Tanzania was shock to me, especially after this tour. Overall there is a lack of education, understanding, and care of sanitation and the environment for most Tanzanians; but as I learned, the environment and sanitation can play vital roles in heath care. Some students will be working on the sanitation improvements/limitations as their projects, and I think that this will be vial information for the area. It is the hope that with an improved environment, health risks can be reduced.
Saturday (market day) was the day we went into town (Arusha). Arusha is about 30-40 minutes way from URRC, so on Saturday we hopped in our 11 person Land Cruser with our professor, her twins, and our driver, who is a German student who has been volunteering at URRC for the past 2.5 years. Arusha was very overwhelming, especially in the main market. I didn’t buy anything until we went to the Matsai market. I was able to practice my battering, and I was pretty impressed with myself. I bought two handmade items for 8600 shillings, which is about 6 US dollars. It’s so interesting, while everything seems so cheap to us, in reality, it is expensive to most Tanzanians. After Arusha, we came back and went back to Tangeroo, which surprisingly also has a large second hand clothing market. When you think of that old sports shirt you donated to salvation army, you probably think of someone either in your town wearing your old shirt or it still hanging in the store. In reality, those shirts get shipped across the world and resold as garments in developing countries. At this market, you could find items from Coach, Lacoste, and The North Face; but you could also find shirts from American sports teams and colleges. It was really interesting.
Sunday (today) was a chill day in our house. Most of us slept in, stayed in our pajamas all day doing homework and catching up on social media. This week also brought a lot of issues with our power, hot water, and wifi; but today we had limited issues with our wifi, so we were able to catch up with things we missed during the week.
Overall all this week brought new experiences and some great memories for my first week in Tanzania. I am loving the group of students that were chosen for the program, and I am excited to see where the summer takes us. Tomorrow I leave for my home stay with one other student. We will be living with a family (without children—saddening) for about a week. This should be a very interesting week, so stay tuned!
Following are some picture from the week.
The first picture is our dinner from Saturday. Not the healthy, but because we are leaving tomorrow, we had to use all of the random food in our house. The next picture is from the main market in Arusha. The lines of vendors seem to go one forever. Next is a picture of the sewage sanitation in Meru from elevation. The view is amazing! Following that is a picture of a monkey. They are everywhere at TCDC. Finally is an amazing picture of Mount Meru, which is the mountain directly north of URRC. We can see Kilimanjaro on some clear days, such as today, to our east; but Meru we can see everyday, and the view never gets old!
Words, words, words…
I’m back! These posts are starting out sparse because, as of now, I’m still waiting on some of my music via InterLibrary Loan and am mostly reading books to give myself context and background information. And, as excited as I am about reading all three volumes of Ruth Friedberg’s “American Art Song and American Poetry,” I can see how that might not make for as interesting a blog post to share with the world.
I’ve made my way entirely through the first volume and am almost done with the second. These books work chronologically through the history of the American song, starting with the late 1800s and moving through the first two thirds of the 20th century. I really like the format Friedberg uses in these volumes, as she begins by outlining the historical changes and European music trends which might serve as catalysts for changes in American style. Then, she goes into detail on certain monumental composers, and – this may be the most interesting part – she also details the relationships between them and their favorite poets to set. From there, she examines certain songs as examples of American compositional and text setting techniques, including images directly from scores so that musicians reading the book can examine the music and texts for themselves. I’ve found that it has been very helpful not only for contextualizing the extremely contemporary music that I plan to study, but it has also helped me to highlight certain musical elements which might be worth including in my own analysis of the music. I’ve got a long list of angles from which I can approach the music, ranging from the ever-important rhythm and harmony to word painting, texture, and use of the voice’s extended techniques.
Taking advantage of the campus beaches for a change of pace while reading! #gocats
I also had a meeting with Prof. Davies, who was awesome enough to sponsor my research project this summer. He is a musicology professor here at Northwestern and recently taught a class entirely on English and American art songs, so he had some amazing literary and musical resources to share with me. He also spent several years studying in Toronto and suggested I check out Canadian composer John Beckwith, who has composed two different sets of songs for soprano and baritone which use only cummings’s poetry. Canadian music has developed hand in hand with American music, so I put in a request to InterLibrary Loan just a few days ago and now have ten new songs to add to my studies! I could not be more excited to discover this new repertoire – and four of the songs are for soprano (which I am), so bonus points for me! Professor Davies also showed me his method for descriptive analysis of songs, which I will be using on my selected repertoire for the next two or three weeks in order to track the compositional similarities and differences. From there, I’m sure I will find several interesting traits or inconsistencies worth exploring in detail and will delve deeper into certain elements of music in order to ask the right questions to direct my research further.
I can’t wait to begin the actual musical analysis of this project! All the reading I’m doing is, of course, teaching me plenty, but it is also just making me even more excited.
Until next time!
Véronique
The Growing Crisis in Guatemala: Why Coffee Rust is a Pressing Public Health Issue
You may have noticed this week that your usual Starbucks coffee cost a bit more than usual (1). This slight price increase is, in part, a consequence of Roya, a fungal plant disease that is attacking coffee plantations around Guatemala and the rest of Central America. What you may not have known is that Roya is not only decimating coffee crops, but it is also having profound effects on the health of thousands of Guatemalans.
Guatemala’s history with coffee is long and complex. It begins around the 19th century when Spaniards began stealing large plots of land from indigenous Mayan communities, converting them into plantations, and forcing the indigenous populations to work for them. Through colonial trade and tax laws, the Spaniards restructured Guatemala’s agricultural economy to be heavily dependent on coffee. In this way, coffee became the principal export of Guatemala, reaching 90% of the country’s exports before 1900 (2).
Throughout the 20th century land reforms and civil war in Guatemala, the coffee industry exacerbated the narrative of poverty, racism, and inequality among indigenous populations that had begun centuries earlier. Today, coffee production throughout the country continues to be marked by rich coffee finca owners using indentured servants and migratory farm workers to harvest their beans. As coffee remains Guatemala’s largest export to this day, there are thousands of rural poor throughout the country that depend on the crop for their livelihood.
The importance of coffee exports in the country is precisely the reason that Roya has been so detrimental to the health of Guatemalans. Roya is an airborne, fungal disease, sometimes referred to as coffee rust. It spreads quickly in humid environments, causing coffee leaves to become speckled with rust colored spots, before drying up and falling off. The only potential cure for the harmful fungus is multiple applications of expensive fungicides that are often ineffective.
Since the 1970s, Roya has been a problem in the warm and wet Central American countries, such as Costa Rica and Nicaragua, but has left the cooler, mountainous Guatemalan coffee farms alone (3). However, in recent years, the region has experienced the effects of widespread climate change. The fungus began afflicting Guatemalan farms around 2012 and was recently declared a national emergency by the Guatemalan government (4). The fungus is estimated to have caused over $1 billion in damages since 2012 (5). It is now estimated that 70-80% of coffee crops are affected by the disease. This is among the highest rates out of any Central American country.
Roya is affecting everyone involved in the coffee distribution chain — from Starbucks consumers to the rich coffee finca owners to the poor farmers working in the fields. Coffee harvests of Guatemalan plantations have plummeted to 1/20th of what they used to be (3). The only solution is to trim back the foliage of old plants in hopes that they will sprout new, healthy leaves. Even with this strategy, the plants will not produce the valuable coffee beans for two to three years. Because of this, many farmers have taken to planting new trees that are more resistant to the fungus, but will take years to become productive.
The consequences of this plight of coffee rust reach far beyond increased Starbucks prices. Throughout the many coffee growing regions of Guatemala, including Sacatepéquez, Sololá, Quezaltenango, San Marcos, and Alta Verapaz, hundreds of thousands of people are now without work. Coffee planters and pickers have tried to switch to new crops such as plantains and bananas, but the value of these commodities is far less than that of coffee. Because a large portion of Guatemala’s population struggles with food security, this substantial amount of job loss from the economy will have widespread health effects.
Employees of organizations that work with the indigenous poor around the highlands, such as Mayan Families, state that they’ve seen in increase in families struggling to feed their children. Given that the first two years of a child’s life are crucial for their long term development, one hard season can have devastating consequences on child growth, leading to impaired mental and physical development. In a country where 49.8% of children suffer from stunted growth already, the coffee fungus has the potential to undo much of the nutritional progress that has been made over the last decade.
So far, the response to the epidemic has been varied. Since April, the World Food Program has been providing emergency food assistance to 14,000 families across Guatemala (6). While admirable, this is a small portion of the hundred of thousands of Guatemalan families that are suffering from the outbreak.
Then, just two days ago, The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched a $23 million dollar fund in partnership with Keurig Green Mountain, Cooperative Coffees, Starbucks, and Root Capital to support the thousands of coffee farmers affected by the devastating fungus (3). The fund will be used to “provide on-farm, agronomic trainings on climate-smart, resilient practices to coffee farmers and farmer organizations” and to rehabilitate “disease-affected fields and… stabilize coffee supply chains in Latin America and the Caribbean (3).” Though this support is crucial for the coffee industry, these solutions will take years to return farms to full productivity and do little to alleviate the immediate suffering of families.
Clearly, the effects of the Roya fungus have rippled throughout the country of Guatemala. No one solution will mitigate the repercussions of this epidemic plant disease, but multifarious efforts that address both household income and food security, as well as large scale agricultural and economic factors will continue to make progress towards overcoming it. Though the challenges are great, in the words of longtime Guatemala resident and coffee shop owner, Michael Roberts, “Guatemala has been through a lot. What’s gotten them through is the resilience of the people.”
(1) Wagner, Meg. “Starbucks Hikes Prices on Brewed Coffee, Lattes, Bagged Beans.” NY Daily News. N.p., 24 June 2014. Web. 27 June 2014.
(2) “The Culture of Coffee in Guatemala.” Coverco – Commission for the Verification of Codes of Conduct. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 June 2014.
(3) “Devastating ‘coffee Rust’ Fungus Raises Prices on High-end Blends.”OregonLive.com. N.p., 31 May 2014. Web. 27 June 2014.
(4) Davidson, Kavitha A. “Guatemala Declares National Coffee Emergency.” The Huffington Post. N.p., 09 Feb. 2013. Web. 27 June 2014.
(5) “USAID, Texas A&M Invierten $5 Millones Para Combatir La Crisis Causada Por La Roya Del Cafe.” U.S. Agency for International Development. N.p., 19 May 2014. Web. 27 June 2014.
(6) “Guatemala: WFP Assists 16,000 Families Affected by Coffee Rust and Drought.”World Food Programme. N.p., 30 May 2014. Web. 27 June 2014.
(7) “USAID, Keurig Green Mountain, Cooperative Coffees, Starbucks and Root Capital Launch $23 Million Resilience Fund to Help Farms Fighting Coffee Rust Crisis.” U.S. Agency for International Development. N.p., 19 June 2014. Web. 27 June 2014.
Weeks 1 and 2 in the Lab
My study is ready for its first participants! Here is what I have been working on over the past few weeks:
Filming a video for the study stimuli with the help of some research assistant friends
Recording sentences for the test portion of the study. I <3 my Midwestern accent. It will never change. 🙂
Editing sounds in Praat. Side note: Did you know the Praat icon is a mouth and an ear? It seems like every time I use Praat, someone (an RA, grad student, etc.) has this revelation. Praat is one of my favorite open-source software programs. It’s easy to use (even though I still don’t know what Praat Picture is for) and you look really fancy when you’re using it. You can even make a Pinterest-y craft project with it. #science
Making video clips for the stimuli and test sentences Adobe Premiere
Putting everything in WISP for MatLab, which has been the most frustrating task so far. If WISP were a person, it would be that person who cuts you off on the highway, then drives really slowly in front of you. Ugh.
Calling families and inviting them to come to the lab and participate in the study. YAY!
Since I don’t know who is reading this post, I can’t divulge many details of the study itself. You’ll just have to wait until it’s finished and read the resulting paper to learn about it! 😉
Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit jealous of my friends, the majority of whom are interning at big companies or traveling this summer. But then I remind myself that working with infants and children is my passion. And my friends are only posting the highlights of their summers. I can’t post the highlights of mine because it’s pretty weird to ask to take a photo of someone else’s child. I may not be interning somewhere with a high-rise office, but I get to avoid workplace drama and business suits (yikes). I may not be traveling somewhere exotic, but I get to spend time with my family and friends in my favorite city on earth.
I think it’s a good trade-off. 🙂