Monday bright and early we fortified ourselves for a long day in the field. Granted, this would have been a bit easier if the guesthouse warden had differentiated between those who get up for the 3am Ramadan meal and those who decidedly do not. (Note, he got mixed up and knocked on my door repeatedly Tuesday morning as well - I'm trying to embrace the cultural experience of disrupted sleep, but really, it's just plain annoying).
Along with several colleagues, our drivers and our "unmarked" jeeps with conspicuous codan antenna, we drove two hours over an unpaved, sometimes single "laned" road up the sides of mountains and through stunning valleys to Baharak District. From there we embarked on several project visits. First up was meeting with members of the bee keeping cooperative. Two hours were spent discussing the problems of bee keeping - a majority of hives were destroyed by disease, lack of access to markets, poor bee nutrition during the winter and lack of bee keeping inputs. After the meeting we visited the hives on the roof top of the leader of the cooperative. And we bought some honey from him.
Next up was visiting the building of an irrigation canal which diverts water from one of the small rivers coming out of the mountains. Later we visited an enormous canal building effort and from way up on a ridge above a narrow, steep river gorge with a damn holding back the water rushing down from between the imposing mountains. It was really something to behold.
In between the canal visits we stopped to watch calf weighing. Whether a nice
coincidence or the calves were brought in for our benefit, who knows, but what seemed to be evident was that the new kind of feed the calves were receiving was positively affecting their health and weight gain, so much so, that there was a great deal of discussion about how to disseminate this information to market the feed to local farmers, improving incomes for both the feed producers and the farmers.
It was a long, bumpy day, sans much food or water as is typical of field visits, regardless of it being Ramadan, but it was good to see the projects, and the people affected by them, "live" versus descriptions and numbers on paper.
Along with several colleagues, our drivers and our "unmarked" jeeps with conspicuous codan antenna, we drove two hours over an unpaved, sometimes single "laned" road up the sides of mountains and through stunning valleys to Baharak District. From there we embarked on several project visits. First up was meeting with members of the bee keeping cooperative. Two hours were spent discussing the problems of bee keeping - a majority of hives were destroyed by disease, lack of access to markets, poor bee nutrition during the winter and lack of bee keeping inputs. After the meeting we visited the hives on the roof top of the leader of the cooperative. And we bought some honey from him.
Next up was visiting the building of an irrigation canal which diverts water from one of the small rivers coming out of the mountains. Later we visited an enormous canal building effort and from way up on a ridge above a narrow, steep river gorge with a damn holding back the water rushing down from between the imposing mountains. It was really something to behold.
In between the canal visits we stopped to watch calf weighing. Whether a nice
coincidence or the calves were brought in for our benefit, who knows, but what seemed to be evident was that the new kind of feed the calves were receiving was positively affecting their health and weight gain, so much so, that there was a great deal of discussion about how to disseminate this information to market the feed to local farmers, improving incomes for both the feed producers and the farmers.It was a long, bumpy day, sans much food or water as is typical of field visits, regardless of it being Ramadan, but it was good to see the projects, and the people affected by them, "live" versus descriptions and numbers on paper.
No comments:
Post a Comment