FROM MATTHIAS
Like Asantewaa, I am working in ethiopia on the trees for food security project guided by the powerful World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF). This may also be the reason why things are more or less well organized and objectives are quite clear. However, I am in another site of the project and having a slightly different focus. In general, I am also looking on local knowledge about the impact of trees on soil fertility but I am having a focus on the different soils in the landscape. I am trying to explore the soil part by integrating a methodology about identifying local soil quality indicators, developed by Edmundo Barrios (link). I am lucky that I am attending a workshop by him and other ICRAF people about participatory experimental research design right in this moment. The overall methodology has been developed by our guru Fergus Sinclair and is called AKT5. AKT5 is a program that is designed to store, organize and analyze local knowledge. In order to get the information, which we will add to the database, we conduct many interviews with farmers and thus squeeze the information out of them. In the end the data will be used to get an idea about the knowledge of farmers and how to complement to this knowledge as well as serving as a base for designing appropriate interventions.
I have been working at my site for one month and I am now at a point where I have to analyze what I have got and focus more on specific issues. I am struggling a little bit in this case because there are many interesting issues in the area but I have to take care that they produce valuable data for the project. I do also have to enter all the information obtained by farmers into the complicated language of the program, which is not fun at all. However, I believe the communication barriers I am facing by using a translator are much bigger and often more exhausting than anything else. After the project I will go to the headquarter of ICRAF in gangster town Nairobi and start analyzing soil samples and data.
Even though I am pretty much on my own in the field, I get pretty much support by the organization and the supervisors. It is always interesting to talk to other researchers of ICRAF (like in this workshop) and get an idea about future working oportunities. However, sometimes I feel a little bad when people are telling me about possible phDs or working oportunities and I just picture myself relaxing big time after handing in my master-thesis.
Like Asantewaa, I am working in ethiopia on the trees for food security project guided by the powerful World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF). This may also be the reason why things are more or less well organized and objectives are quite clear. However, I am in another site of the project and having a slightly different focus. In general, I am also looking on local knowledge about the impact of trees on soil fertility but I am having a focus on the different soils in the landscape. I am trying to explore the soil part by integrating a methodology about identifying local soil quality indicators, developed by Edmundo Barrios (link). I am lucky that I am attending a workshop by him and other ICRAF people about participatory experimental research design right in this moment. The overall methodology has been developed by our guru Fergus Sinclair and is called AKT5. AKT5 is a program that is designed to store, organize and analyze local knowledge. In order to get the information, which we will add to the database, we conduct many interviews with farmers and thus squeeze the information out of them. In the end the data will be used to get an idea about the knowledge of farmers and how to complement to this knowledge as well as serving as a base for designing appropriate interventions.
I have been working at my site for one month and I am now at a point where I have to analyze what I have got and focus more on specific issues. I am struggling a little bit in this case because there are many interesting issues in the area but I have to take care that they produce valuable data for the project. I do also have to enter all the information obtained by farmers into the complicated language of the program, which is not fun at all. However, I believe the communication barriers I am facing by using a translator are much bigger and often more exhausting than anything else. After the project I will go to the headquarter of ICRAF in gangster town Nairobi and start analyzing soil samples and data.
Even though I am pretty much on my own in the field, I get pretty much support by the organization and the supervisors. It is always interesting to talk to other researchers of ICRAF (like in this workshop) and get an idea about future working oportunities. However, sometimes I feel a little bad when people are telling me about possible phDs or working oportunities and I just picture myself relaxing big time after handing in my master-thesis.
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