There's  tonnes of valleys  and ravines here that are being farmed. They look  pretty nice so here's  the photo.  Actually today I  was in  meetings all day, so  this shot is kind of cheating since I took it yesterday on the way back to Bujumbura.

This is Nyakazu nature reserve, close by some of the communities where Floresta Burundi is working. These cliffs must be at least 100 metres in height, and from where I took this picture you are looking down on a dense tropical forest. The ranger that accompanied us told us there are chimps down there. I am hoping next time I return that we can hike down into the fault and exit on the plain in the background. It's pretty spectacular--an unexpected pocket of vibrant wilderness surrounded by otherwise typical farmland. I've been visiting farms only a few kilometres from here for 4 years, and had no idea this was hidden away in the nearby hills.

Real quick because I'm almost out of battery and I'm sitting outside the internet place which is actually closed on Sunday, but the wifi still works. Here's a picture from church (Catholic) this morning. Totally in Kirundi so I didn't understand anything. Since I had the time I worked out that there were probably 1100 people in attendance, plus or minus 50 babies on women's backs. And there's 3 masses on Sunday and one on Saturday. That makes somewhere around 4400 people attending every week. Just so you know.

Sorry that all my pictures are about banana propagation but I've been involved in trainings for the entire week and haven't got out much. This is one of our staff digging up a macro-propagated banana shoot which now has it's own roots and can be planted out in the field like any banana plant.

This is a banana propagation system being promoted by our local partner. I may have talked about this before, but this is a method which lets you multiply many times more banana shoots than  the traditional system. You can see several dozen in the photo. This is a particularly critical time for banana here since there is a disease, BXW which is devastating the older varieties. There are only a few varieties  around  which are resistant and getting those out to farmers is urgent.  We have trained local community groups to use this system and now they are able to multiply these seedlings to supply farmers in their area. This will restore the ability to produce banana since the traditional varieties are  being seriously threatened as well as  create on opportunity for these community groups to make some income from selling these superior plants.

After all this time, and all the flights I've  taken, flying still amazes me.  If you told people 200 years ago, that someday there would be big metal vehicles that weight thousands of tonnes and could carry 300 people many kilometres above the surface of the earth and cover distances that 'normally' take days or weeks, and on top of that you could get a hot meal and a cold drink, they just wouldn't believe you. Even now I don't believe it, especially when I'm standing in some farmer's field where they are barely scratching out a living next to a mud hut--well, it just doesn't seem possible that perhaps a few hours before I was on one of those giant metal  birds.

Just a practical note for those of you who travel to Burundi. I've discovered Brussel Airlines. Direct flight from Brussels to Bujumbura. Eight hours, no transfers, not waiting in some other random Africa airport. Plus the meal comes with all things Belgian.

The conference is over. And my flight out of Monterey  is about  to board. I  got a  chance last night to  go to the Aquarium here, which is great. This is a shot in one of the jellyfish tanks. Very  amazing. And we were able  to ask a whole lot of questions of  one of the staff here, who was extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastically answered all questions. I learned a lot about jellyfish, which, it turns out are pretty amazing. Turns out they are kind of on the threshold of  being animals  at  all. They have  no organs, and hardly any concentration of nerves  which could be considered a 'brain' of any kind. So beautiful though. This particular one also happens to be quite poisonous.

Finally I got this creature,  whatever it is to cooperate.  It  was  being  coy the  whole  time,  but this shot should  make it identifiable. Several  other folks here at the conference also thought it  was a sea otter. Since it's somewhat uncommon to see, I'm kind  of excited. Again, if anyone has better id.  abilities pls weigh in.

Conference is  pretty much over for me.  It's  pack up, airport, home.  Well  worth the trip. 

From my beach walk this morning, in the tidal pools which form when the water levels are low. At high tide all this would be underwater as you  can see by the kelp. The first shot is an anemone, I think, and  the second I'm pretty sure is a crab. I don't know  what kind of crab though. Someone help  me out with the id.

The ocean is so beautiful, you just sort of point your camera in that general direction and snap the shutter, and something good is likely to happen:

From my morning walk after breakfast. I found several starfish in an intertidal pool just kind of sitting there. They actually look kind of fake, starfish do. But on closer inspection you can see that it's moving, albeit slowly. And there's little tentacles or suction feet things on the bottom that it seems  to be able to (slowly) deploy. The movement reminds me of how a snail or slug moves. I guess they're in the same family. 

For those of you from California, I suppose this is no big deal, but I wandered down to the beach again between workshops and dinner and came across a bunch of seals (harbor seals, I think), just hanging out on the rocks. For me this was very exciting, although for locals maybe it's like seeing a squirrel, or a raccoon or something, I don't know. I was actually looking for seals, out in the ocean, so when I glanced down and saw them just out there in the open on the rocks it was pretty cool (for me). Also some black thing swimming around pretty fast, which I'm guessing was a sea otter--check the first photo. If anyone knows, please confirm. Whatever it was, was kind of camera shy, and both times when I saw it, it soon disappeared when I lifted my camera.

This is that sound I could hear last night. I got up this morning before breakfast and went for a walk. This beach has been turned into a state nature preserve, and is two minutes walk from my room. At breakfast the various people I was sharing the table with were all talking about how beautiful it is here. None of them were from this area. There were 3 Canadians, 1 Kiwi, 1 Texan, 1 New Yorker, and 1 Oregon(er??). Anyhow, for all of you who said I should take a couple extra days and just wander here: I am very sorry I ignored your advice. First workshop starts in 15 minutes. Gotta run.

I've arrived at the conference centre where I'll be for the next few days...conferencing. It was 64 degrees when the plane landed which is what in Celsius? All I know it's a big relief. Let's say it's the temperature where you think, "should I put a sweater on, or just stay in a t-shirt?"

Sorry no photo yet since it was also dark when I arrived. Tomorrow morning though, first thing, I promise. Well, maybe right after breakfast. What I can tell you is that I can hear the ocean. At first I thought it was was a highway, but no, it's waves breaking on a beach...I'm telling you, it is going to be very tempting just to skip out on the  meetings  altogether and just wander around here, even the conference grounds literature says there's lots to see. No one would even know...

For those of you that wonder what I do when I'm not travelling, here's my list of stuff I did today:
1. Got up
2. Ate breakfast
3. Corresponded with contacts in SE Asia about a trip planned to that area
4. Worked on planning ideas for a new program (somewhere in Africa--location to be revealed)
5. Helped translate a technical document about plant propagation into Haitian Creole (used Google Translate)
6. Researched and downloaded data on tree cover in SE Asia  (see image below)
7. Packed
8. Went to airport
9. Sat at airport
10. Still sitting at airport

A full day really.

This file shows percent tree cover in 2010 for part of South East Asia. Most of the work is done in advance by folks at NASA and their partners. Estimating tree cover is not an easy thing and there are a number of ways of doing it, each with varying levels of reliability. Interpreting the data for our purposes or in order to be able to post it on a blog like this is another whole step.

It rarely happens but my arrival gate in Amsterdam and my departure gate are right next to each other. Literally a 10 metre walk from where I got off the plane to where I get on again to go to Toronto. In fact I started heading deep into the airport assuming I would have a bit of a hike as one usually does. The first photo shows the plane that I was on which came from Nairobi. The second photo shows the plane I'll be getting on at the next gate over. So a very low stress situation. In fact in the second photo if you look closely, you can see the reflection of the sign for the neighbouring gate where I arrived. 

Tired of photos of plants? Here's a shot of spectacular Lake Malawi, one of Africa's Great Lakes. The mountains in the background on the other side of the lake would be Mozambique.

My now required picture of a national flag. I  got lucky since I was in an immigration line at  the airport and it was moving slowly enough that I was able to get my camera out of my luggage and ask someone to take a picture for me. Malawi by the way.

We're here in Malawi. This you could call field trip for a few staff from our Burundi, Tanzania  and US offices to learn about improved  fallows. What is an improved  fallow? This photo below illustrates pretty well. On the right you can see some trees or maybe tall shrubs called  Tephrosia which are 2.5 years old and  have grown  to  a height of about 3 metres. The are legumes so  they add nitrogen to the soil as well as organic matter. All  this means that after a time, the soil is much richer,  and then  the cut the plants down and plant corn as they have done on the left (you can see the corn stalks on the soil surface. Yields on these fields after an improved fallow are 2.4 to 2.8 metric tonnes per hectare, which is at least twice the average yield using the  traditional system. Improved  fallow systems are relatively new, maybe they have been around for 15 years or so, but Malawi is one place where they have had particular success with promoting these systems with farmers. So we're here, not just to learn about the technical aspects, but also to learn about how they have persuaded farmers to adopt these systems--not always an easy task as I think I've mentioned in the past. We're doing this for the next 3 days, so if I get internet again you  can expect more discussion  of the same. This is only one of a variety of great techniques that can help farmer  increase  yield and income  with little expense.

We are experimenting with some different techniques for sharing knowledge. One of the challenges of this work is to find ways to effectively  get new ideas and new practices out to farmers in ways that they can accept. This then leads to the same farmers actually using those practices on  their farms--at least that is the idea. One of the other challenges is accessing the knowledge that farmers already have. There is a  tendency for everyone (both farmers and traditional trainers) to assume that farmers really don't know very much, and everyone looks  to the trained technician to have all the answers. So one of the things we have just started trying is a teaching technique called farmer field schools. The concept of FFS has been around for a while, and has worked well, especially for training in pest management. We just spent this last week, working on trying to adapt the FFS system to our situation, for teaching various topics on sustainable agriculture. Pictured below is the first workshop in the field, and you can see farmers making observations on tree seedlings in a backyard nursery. The idea is that farmers observe, and learn, share with each  other, and  share with training  staff. This puts everyone on more of an equal footing,  rather than technician first, and farmer second. We have a long way to go to make this really workable for us, and we will probably experiment with other approaches besides FFS, but at least this first attempt was seen as a positive  step by those involved.