This afternoon we had some very animated conversations about this graph. Which was very exciting for me. Normally I expect people to be at the very most underwhelmed by charts and graphs. But this information really meant something to everyone around the table today and it was fun to be a part. Without explanation I'm not sure if you can get much out of this, but maybe take a shot at your own interpretation. Maybe in another post I can explain.

This afternoon we had some very animated conversations about this graph. Which was very exciting for me. Normally I expect people to be at the very most underwhelmed by charts and graphs. But this information really meant something to everyone around the table today and it was fun to be a part. Without explanation I'm not sure if you can get much out of this, but maybe take a shot at your own interpretation. Maybe in another post I can explain.

I don't know if you can really see, but in the centre of this photo on the hillside there is a block of trees that are smaller than the rest. This is a native pine planting in the DR, planted by community members, with funding from the government. Connection between community and government courtesy of Floresta.

Turns out I got bumped to business class on the second flight today, which was 3.5 hours. And I got a meal which was pretty good actually. And the flight attendant kept bringing me extra cookies. So yes I did feel pretty important. Don't worry, that's over though.

Where I'm staying is super hot. And with the cool temperatures back home so far this summer, I am out of practice. As soon as I walked into my room, sweat started to bead up on my forehead. And I was reminded of sequels of the movie, Lethal Weapon where the two protagonists keep asking themselves if they are too old for this. We, more like telling themselves.

I'm going to take a tepid shower now and then lie under a fan and hope I can sleep. 

Another smooth and relatively low stress journey to airport and check in. These are not to be taken for granted. And I got bumped to first class! Well first class on the commuter flight to JFK, so the benefits won't last long. One hour and forty eight minutes to be exact. Probably the best part will be boarding first. And I get to pretend I'm important-that should count for something I suppose. 

I exercised  my  civic duty today. That is I got on my bicycle, with the bell and the speedometer, and rode down to the local polling station located in the neighbourhood Methodist church, locked  up my bike even though there was absolutely  nobody around  (you know,  because nobody votes), and put an  X  beside the candidate of my choice. I fear I  may be becoming one of those cliches you see depicted in almost every hollywood  movie. I should have come home and mixed up a wheatgrass smoothie in my solar powered food processor to finish the day.

Here's a travel tip: when you go to the airport bring a pen and keep it handy. At some point you will get asked to fill out a form of some kind and suddenly finding a pen will be your highest priority. This morning I loaned someone a pen and waited while he wrote. Not a big deal but an aggravation all the same. So bring a pen.

This may be my shortest trip ever. A conference where I get to speak. I'm not exactly the keynote speaker though. I have exactly 10 minutes. I think it would be easier if I had more time.

todays check in time: about 40 minutes. just when i was getting used to 15 minute check in times. pearson seems to have changed their system. plus its a monday morning.

The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. Worth a visit. 

So my little journey across SE Asia is drawing to a close. All to soon really. I had worried in the beginning that it might be a disaster (in so many possible ways),  but it turned out OK. I am realizing that I don't know all that much about travelling as a tourist. Most of my travel has been for work, and far, far from tourist zones most of the time. So I'm finding that I'm not super comfortable trapped inside the tourist bubble. Where a lot of things are fake, or at the very least contrived. Even  in  one of the tourist  markets  tonight,  when I was   looking  at backpacks, the vendor confessed to me that the backpack  I  was  looking at was a knock off (Not in so many words, she said,  "This bag 100%, and this one--the one I  was looking at--99%"). 

I'm also learning that it is good to figure out what I'm hoping for out of travel. Granted part of travel is the encounter with the unexpected, but there are so many suggestions out there of things to do or see. Websites, guidebooks, hotel desk staff, taxi drivers, other travelers, everyone has a list of things that might be interesting. As a result I think it's easy to end up doing something that maybe you don't want to do all that much in the first place. What I do know is that I want to get out of the tourist bubble if at all possible. Or at least get out to the fringes of it--escaping entirely may be out of the question.

Below is my requisite photo with the country flag of a new country in my count. I suppose I took a bit of risk setting my camera down at a traffic circle, but there was no one really close by, and I figured I could beat anyone to the camera if they tried to run for it.

Saigon. I'm finally in Saigon. 

Crossing the street in Phnom Penh.  I read that this is one of the worst  places for pedestrians in SE  Asia. I'd have to say it's one of the hard places I've  been  in for walking. But on this, day 2 here,  I have started to notice some patterns that make it a bit more manageable. On day one I almost got hit a couple times. But if drivers see a pedestrian (most, not all!) they will start to drift, if they have space to the side of the road that will make it easier for the pedestrian to cross. This in some cases may mean aiming towards you, which looks like craziness, but actually opens the space in front of you to cross. I don't know if I've explained that properly, but it's like (from driver's perspective) if you aim right at a moving target, you  will definitely miss  it. This works great for scooters and motorcycles, not so great for tuk-tuks and trucks. If you were here you would see what I  mean. But on day one, not understanding this driver/pedestrian agreement, I would panic a bit and this made things worse. The point is (maybe) that there's  actually a flow  to things and it takes a bit to understand. Not that after two days I claim to understand Phnom Penh. But I like it when things start to make sense even a little bit.

GPS and web based maps sure take the guesswork out of travel. It almost feels like cheating. But if I really thought it was cheating I wouldn't use it. It means you can arrive in a city you don't know and know where the bus terminal is, where your hotel is, where the main landmarks are. This makes you much less vulnerable to aggressive cab drivers or touts. On the downside it takes out some of the mystery of discovery. Then there's always the possibility of losing your phone.

This was my transportation for past couple days. It was definitely a good way to get around in spite of the uncoolness factor. For 3 USD perday (apparently cheaper elsewhere) I could go whereever I wanted whenever I wanted. This was very much in keeping with my free picture taking mode. Turns out Siem Reap is on some kind of wetland/floodplain so its pretty flat and a bicycle can get by on just one gear. Plus the much needed exercise. I got lucky there too because it hasn't been overly hot--maybe mid 20's so cycling was a pleasure. The wetland/floodplain is important I think for another reason. I was wondering on the plane, looking down at such a large flat area criss crossed by rivers, canals, marshes and rice paddy, if the geology of the area was in any way related to the civilization that emerged. This morning it hit me: sand. Alluvial plains like this region are likely over time to produce sandstone and sandstone is easily quarried, blocked and sculpted. All of the structures at Angkor Wat just happen to be made out of sandstone.

I don't know which of the 250 photos I took today to post. And I really tried to limit my picture taking today. If this or any other shot looks vaguely familiar it's probably because you've seen something similar in a movie, most notably Lara Croft Tomb Raider. This is the eastern gate of Angkor Thom which was a palace city built more or less 1000 years ago by the Khmer king. There is tons of info out there on this place so I'll let you do your own research if you care. I think any time humans put one block on top of another and they're still standing after 1000 years, it's pretty impressive. If those blocks can also communicate something about the people who set them up that makes it even more amazing. 

I wish I could tell you that this is Angkor Wat. A mystical temple ruins hidden deep in the jungles of the Mekong delta that few western eyes have seen. Well that last part may be sort of true. The place is crawling with tourists but at least today I'd say 75% or more were from Japan, China, and Korea. In any case I had to work to get this shot with no people.

Tonight I will be at Angkor Wat if all goes well. I guess if I did have a bucket list, Angkor Wat would be on it. At least I've talked about going there for a long time.

I was dropped off at my hotel by our local staff and once I checked in I realized that I am totally on my own. For all the travelling I've done, I rarely have time completely to myself. I'm usually with my colleagues, or travelling with friends or something. I think this may be a be-careful-what-you-wish-for scenario. I've always wondered what it would be like to just wander with out agenda, with just my backpack and camera stopping where I  want, when I want. Not worried about collecting this bit of data, or having to observe that set of activities. All that stuff is well and good, but now for a few days I join the ranks of the world travelers. I'll see how it goes.

If you speak to google translate it will speak back to you in Thai. And it seems like 3 quarters of the time its pretty close to the meaning. I don't know whether to be happy or sad about this. It sure makes communicating easier where there's no common language but it may in a very near future make language learning less important. And to me there's a joy in learning language that will be lost.

I came to the sad realization sometime in the past 24 hours or so that one of my greatest skills is opening and closing my luggage. Yes, I've done that a lot. And when I'm at the security check watching people fumble with their stuff I actually think to myself, "amateurs".  Which makes it even sadder somehow. It's just a big part of the job, the whole getting-from-A-to-B-with-the-least-amount-of-hassle thing. I'm just trying to figure out if it's something you can put on a resume.

My latest yyz check in time 10 minutes. not bad. security check was pretty fast. main factor was distance to gate. i thought maybe today would be another weather delay day and it was a bit. Flight was half hour slow for de-icing but nothing like what folks were experiencing earlier this week. I have to be honest though, this is one of the first times I've been happy to get out of the cold for a while.

The ice storm over the weekend wreaked havoc with travel and cut power to thousands of homes...but so beautiful!

I just want to say to all my friends and colleagues around the world: I did not vote for that guy!

CLT: 5 minutes 53 seconds but no security check and on a domestic transfer so its not really comparing apples to apples. In any case this is the shortest time yet.

Still need to find a way to post this in table form.

Conference is over. I think it went ok. At least we've had lots of positive feedback on our presentation. Always hard to tell though if people are just being polite. But I actually think it did go well. Tomorrow I'm working on some data collection stuff with some of our staff here, and then Sat-Sun, I've booked myself into an all-inclusive. Got some super cheap prices in the internet. So I'm looking forward to just relaxing for a couple days. 

A sneak preview of our presentation at the ECHO conference this week. This is a map showing to of the important watersheds on the island of Hispanola, the Artibonite watershed and the Enriquillo watershed. The grey line in the center of the map is the Haitian/Dominican border and you can see in  the case of both watersheds that they are partly in both countries. This underscores the complicated nature of the ecological relationship between the two countries and how the people of this island are linked in multiple ways. In fact it is hard to find  a map like this and the few watershed maps out there tend to show these river systems essentially stopping at the border, as if nothing existed on the other side. But the reality is that people living in the border regions depend on each other regardless of nationality, often more than they rely on their fellow citizens in distant capitals.

From arrival at airport to my departure gate in 15 minutes. I'm pretty sure thats some kind of record. At the very least a personal best. Maybe i'll even start timing my check ins. l am fully aware that no one is going to care about that except for me.

And this is the canyon where those trees will be planted--either in or around. I'm pretty sure I've posted pictures of this before, but it's just one of those places where you feel compelled to take pictures. Kind of like Kilimanjaro. I swear every time I see that mountain I want to take my camera out.

We've started a new project to help protect a watershed area called Nyakazu. This is a priority area for the country since it has value both for it's biodiversity and for tourism. There's a spectacular canyon which I've talked about before where there is a residual native forest. A community nursery was recently started where local people  went and gathered tree seed from the forest and are trying to propagate them here. Below is one of the species, called Umuvyiro (still looking for the scientific name). This is one of the few times this has been tried and it's really an experiment to see what will grow and what will not. So I'm  very excited to see these leaves pushing through after 6 weeks in the ground. Makes me want to move here and just work on getting native trees to propagate. In a few months time these trees will be planted in and around the canyon area--the community (and our) first attempt at native tree propagation.

this is one of those moments when work doesn't feel like work. Sunday evening sitting on the beach. The band just finshed a pretty laidback version of Hotel California. Sorry i can't share that too

the recently painted mural at the hotel where i'm staying the next couple days. i think the artist has done a good job of capturing the look and feel of the Burundian countryside

breakfast on a travel day. todays journey is kilimanjaro-nairobi-bujumbura

It's the equivalent of spring here. Being 3 degrees south of the equator means the seasonal change is not as obvious, but still distinct. Lots of plants and trees flowering, birds of all kinds everywhere. This is a hanging plant in the hotel garden.

This is a classic agroforestry plot in Kilimanjaro Tanzania. A mixture of banana, avocado, some timber trees, and annual crops (at this moment, maize). There's also one sad, spindly looking coffee plant (sort of in the middle of the picture, slightly to the left of centre). The groups with whom we work here have done significant tree planting and recently I was able to do a quantitative analysis of whether all that tree planting has resulted in any measurable change or not. The graph below shows the change in vegetation--measured as an index called NDVI--over a 3 year period. What it shows is at locations where there are groups working to do tree planting, there has been an increase in vegetation over time. As you move away from the centre where the group is located, there is still a positive influence but less so with distance. At about 5 or 6 kilometres away from where these groups are located, the change in vegetation starts to become negative. This is shown in the green line. The yellow line shows what happens around a typical village in the rest of the same watershed. You can see that change at and around these villages is negative over the three years, and gets worse further away from the village.

the Nairobi airport. which frankly doesn't look

that much different since the last time i was here (when was that? i guess i should check my blog). You may remember there was a big fire here a few weeks back and there are definitely sections that are closed off for repair but things appear to be working more or less OK. In fact i got my transit ticket printed off faster than ever. So fast I thought maybe they'd made a mistake.

There is a subtle smokey aroma in the air

It is slightly less hot this evening. Or less humid. Plus I had fresh mango and passion fruit juice. So life is good.

One more day of meetings tomorrow. These have been interesting, but with some intense moments. When I'm in listening and translating mode it's always a bit draining for me even if the discussion itself is fairly tame. Internally my brain is going a hundred miles an hour to try and keep up with the conversation. It's a good feeling though. Tiring but kind of like the tired you get from a good run.

shouldn't talk about the weather, but wow it's hot here. The temperature isn't so high I  don't  think, maybe 32 or 33 C, but it's like 99 % humidity. Feels like you're standing in a greenhouse. And it's 9 pm, when it's normally cooler, but I'm feeling no relief at all.

Three years after the Haiti earthquake and I'm still  learning about things that happened  during  those few seconds. One of the staff here who drives for us was telling  me about how his wife was trapped in a building  and had  her leg crushed. It was several days (I'm not entirely clear on exactly how many),  before they could get her to a  functioning hospital that was in any kind of shape to look after her,  and by then  it was too late. Infection  had  set in  and they  were forced to amputate below the knee. My co-worker said one of the worst  things was that he and his wife were  in desperate need but everyone they turned to was in the same situation. Fortunately my co-worker has family in the US,  and  they were able to get his wife there where she received a prosthetic limb.  Then my co-worker asked  me where I was during  the Haiti  earthquake.
"At  home reading the news on the internet."  my pathetic reply.

I think both of us at  that moment were  thinking about how life is horribly, brutally unfair, but nobody said  anything.

Agroforestry is biodiversity!

I'm in the Vienna airport. The layover was only 5 hours and I kind of thought it would be better to just sit and relax. But I sat there thinking about it for about a half hour then grabbed my bags and headed through customs. There's a direct train to the city centre that takes 16 minutes. I didn't really have a plan and didn't have long anyways so it was really just a stroll around the city centre. I passed a couple of nice cafes that I should have stopped at but kept thinking I would find a nicer one. Which was a mistake since I never did and had to get back on the train without drinking Viennese coffee. Next time Vienna!

There are many communities here that have extremely uncertain land situations. They may have been living here for 20 or 30 years, but new national parks and forest reserves keep getting established, the laws are unclear, and generally people's futures are just up in the air. You can see it in people's eyes when we are talking to them. They just don't know if they might get kicked out of their homes tomorrow. But a good news  story: one of the villages we visited has recently struck an agreement with the local authorities to implement agroforestry plots on forest reserve land. The first photo shows a young agroforestry plot started by one farmer. This has rattan,  fish tail palm, fan palm and several other species that are at the same time forest species but also can help families feed themselves and make a living. The owner of the plot is eating and selling food products as well as shingles made from palm leaves. The forest dept took notice, and after some negotiation, has agreed to have villagers try out these innovations on about 3 hectares of reserve land. The second photo shows part of that area where this will soon be happening. It's the classic win-win scenario. Farmers get to feed and cloth their families, and the park gets greener, better protected land.

Pigs are an excellent way for a family here to supplement their income and diet. Lots of small  scale farmers do raise pigs, but there area couple of  interesting things that UHDP (the organization we are partners with) does to help farmers with that. One is that they loan a sow to a farmer.  When there are piglets, the farmer has to pay back the program with two pigs for the one he or she receives. This  is a popular animal loan  model originally  developed by Heifer Project, but now used by programs around the world. In this way, the farmer gets a pig for very low cost, and the program gets to keep distributing more animals. The second thing is that UHDP  promotes composting pig pens.

Yesterday we visited a village where two microhydro generators have been installed. This project was actually sponsored by another organization, but we were the ones who provided the idea and the training. The connection is kind of convoluted since this other organization and ourselves are part of the same network. So the research we did on microhydro gets out to another organization, who sets up an exposure visit to our Farm Research Centre, and farmers from this village get the idea to install hydro generators, which they do. Now two 3 kilowatt generators are running full time on river power through that blue pipe you see, and providing light to 30 homes. a daycare centre and the local  church. It's sort of the butterfly effect in that a seed of  an idea eventually switches on  lights in people's homes.

The unthinkable happened. i was sitting waiting for my flight to thailand and a big new airbus 380 pulls up to the gate. so that was good because the 380 is cool. But looking around at the gate I didn't see a whole lot of passengers--maybe just scattered around I thought. I boarded and sat there waiting for more people to get on. I kept wondering why it was taking so long to load this plane. At some point I came to the realization that the flight was far from full. My seatmate in the aisle realized this too and had the presence of mind to stake his claim on an empty bank of seats leaving me with aisle, mid, and window to myself. Plus 3 pillows. I am living the dream now. I got to lie down and have a real sleep like a civilized person. You have to understand empty flights rarely happen anymore. With all the codesharing and fancy scheduling technology even having 1 empty seat beside you is unusual. Even this flight was shared between 4 airlines and they still couldn't fill it. Couldn't have happened at a better time though.

This is it. The last trip for a while. Well, actually I have another trip next week, but that one is vacation. I have already decided the first 2 days of that trip will involve absolutely nothing. I may not even leave my room. But right now I'm focused on Thailand. This I expect will be a relatively easy trip thankfully. Mostly community visits, a chance to talk to farmers and take pictures. Plus it's a known quantity. So less surprises. Someone asked  me today how many times I've been to Thailand. I'm not sure really, but I  would guess at least 20.

A scarf in the colours of the Tanzanian flag hand made by a member of one of the savings groups here. Well hand made using one of those weaving machines. It's not a loom, it looks more like a keyboard except the keys have been replaced by a bunch of loops which allow the user to make fairly complex items. It's kind of one step between handmade and automation I guess. Pretty cool technology which I've seen in some pretty remote places. Allows a rural business person to compete on a larger market. I sat in the shop where these are made and sold for maybe a half an hour while one of our staff met with the owner. It was kind of fun to watch actual customers approach, look at wares, and negotiate. I even saw one purchase. The owner gave me this scarf if I promised to promote her product. So if you're  interested let me know. She's willing to accept orders.

The last two days have been the training in how to do research, a boiled down version for farmers. The end  of the training was the trainees, taking their new knowledge and sharing with a group of farmers. I have to say it's a little scary to see the words that recently came out of your mouth being repeated by someone else. I wonder how many instructors get a chance to see that in such a direct way. It's a little surreal.

Sorry that this had degraded into my health diary. I decided late last night to take what the doctor prescribed, 1 g of secnidazole--for those who care about that kind of thing--and it seems to be working. I was at a meeting all day today, and never once had to rush out of the room or even felt any discomfort in any way. I ate a full lunch today for the first time in 5 days. I'm still feeling pretty wiped out, but at least my stomach  is not complaining. So things are looking up.

Today was a training day with pretty much all of our field staff here, about 25 people from all the different districts where we work. The topic was research methods for farmers which is a pretty tough topic because it tries to bring together the tightly controlled world of scientific research, and the wildly chaotic world of subsistence farming. But where those worlds collide, exciting things can happen and you have no idea what. Maybe this world has been explored from end to end,  but there's still lots to be discovered.

The last 4 days sadly, have been mainly focused on my digestive system. It is cruelly ironic how some invisible microbe can change your perspective from this great green earth, to a tiny knife-like pain in the pit of your stomach. What ever it is, it`s not your standard traveller`s bug, which I`ve had numerous times and generally goes away on it`s own after a day or two, a mere coma in the standard travel narrative. No, this is more like tearing pages out of my travel diary. I finally gave in today and went to a doctor, who I don`t think was really sure what I have either, but used the shot-gun approach and prescribed multiple treatments. Plus a little background research of my own tells me that they prescribed twice the dosage for one of the treatments. So I may try one dose of one thing, and see how that goes before I double or triple up with the chemicals.

Just to show you that I'm not making this stuff up:

There's a sign with flashing  lights in the hotel where I am staying that says "Welcome to  Sheng Kun".  Speculation on why as sign in  Bujumbura  would  say that yielded  no  clear  answer. I  asked on of the waiters but he  also  didn't  know. My guess is that either a) the sign  was there before and had been  programmed  by the previous owners,  or b) the hotel bought the  sign because they liked the fact that it was flashing and  also said  "Welcome".  

I was excited today to learn that our staff here in Burundi are testing a herb species called Tithonia diversifolia, aka. Mexican marigold, which can be planted in farm fields and has the ability to add significant amounts of phosphorus to the soil. Lack of phosphorus or lack of access to phosphorus in tropical soils such as those found in Africa is a big limitation, and typically cost of chemicals to fix the situation is challenging for small farmers. I'm excited about this because, a) it's a low cost, natural solution that not only adds an important nutrient to the soil, it also adds critically important organic matter, essential to soil health, and basically the plant does most of the work b) I learned about this from our staff here, who learned about it because of their collaboration with the government research institute--the fact that our staff here are trying new things, is just greatly rewarding somehow. I would  post a photo of Tithonia from the web, but that seems like cheating. I just learned about it in conversation today. As soon as I have my  own photo, I send it.

Sorry about the not blogging. It's partly to blame on poor internet but also exhaustion. Hopefully I can get back to more regular posts for the next few days.

My new tent, which I got through a friend in California. Not a true field test, but it will have to do for now.

As expected, nothing unexpected so far at the conference. It's been great. So many great ideas, and technologies that are are will soon be. It kind of boggles the mind a bit, and leaves one a bit overwhelmed. But the schedule is predictable, and calm, and I think I'm catching up a bit on my rest.

I'm tired, I have a headache, and my butt is sore from what is now literally days of sitting on planes. You might have noted that I just got back from Burma a few days ago. That was followed by a weekend at home in bed with travellers diarrhea. I did manage to get my laundry done, and throw a few things back into my luggage and pile into another plane this morning. After the doors closed I discovered that the Toronto airport as part of their 'noise abatement' strategy, does not allow planes to take off before 6:30 am. But my flight was still scheduled for 6 am? How does that make any sense? So we sit there for a half hour until the pilot can get permission to take off. This made me even grumpier thinking about how I had to get up at 2:15 this morning so I could sit on the runway for the sake of noise abatement. Every so often I run into someone who tells me how they love what I do, and really wish they had a job like mine. And true, in the grand scheme of things, I love my job, and appreciate very much the privilege it is to do and see the things I get to do and see, but this is one of those days folks. One of those days. At least I'm going to a conference, where there will be nothing unexpected. No crazy third world schedule changes, no failures of electricity, no menacing microbes in the water, no scary unstable governments, no threat of mugging or car-jacking, no deadly mosquitoes floating around in the dead of night. The worst thing I will have to deal with will probably be too much air-conditioning.

Watershed training was the main activity that I was here for although there was plenty else going on during the week. This is a workshop participant sketching a map of his watershed. Everyone was divided into groups by watershed and worked the entire time together. In the end each group came up with a plan for their area as a practical exercise. So much could and can happen in this country in the next few years. It's kind of chaotic and a bit scary to me, but hopefully when everything settles out things will end up in the plus column.