Today, I did transect walks in a village called Rallo. Things look kind of the same everywhere here, at first glance, and I’m starting to feel like I’m an old record player stuck on repeat, asking the same questions over and over. The answers rarely suprise me, because I’ve already asked someone else, in some other village, about the use of that tree or that bush. But I’ve got to ask the questions anyway. It’s the repetitive work of science
But then I have these moments of wonder and excitement. They still come quite often, and I honestly don’t think they will ever go away. I still manage to get excited over the view from the tunnelbana window in Stockholm, and I’ve been traveling the same way almost every day since I was seven. It’ll take a while before I’m sick of this place, too.
Mostly, it’s the landscape that excites me. Or aspects of the landscape that tells a story about the people that live there. Like this tree. It’s called something that sounds like ”sabnua”, and the roots can be used as medicine. Also, the resin can be burned and the smell and smoke will scare off bad spirits.
This village also had a mountain. A small one, for sure, but in this otherwise flat landscape, it definitely stood out. We climbed it. It was covered in golden grass, and the view was beautiful.
Or sitting down for a moment to help a woman clean groundnuts, making everyone laugh, most of all the woman. She did ask me to help her, but I think the people here don’t expect white girls to be able to do anything. People always seem surprised when I want to do things myself, and actually pull it off.
In the afternoon, I forced a depression. A depression here is a seasonal river, that during most part of the year is a densely vegetated sliver running through the fields and shrublands. This particular one also had high grass, and Desiré and the young man I was inteviewing challenged me to walk through it. I think they think my behaviour is weird, when I want to walk through fields and bushes just to get my groundtruthing points in the middle of things and not in between, on the roads. And I was too tired to argue with them, so I just walked on.
I don’t think they expected me to manage getting though this either, with my bags and machines. But I did, and on the other side, a tiny little white butterfly landed on my finger and found something really delicious underneath my very dirty fingernail.
Another day of walking almost ten kilometers in the heat. I’m exhausted, I hate it, and I love it, all at once. I have something of a masochist in me. I like it when things are physically tough. To prove myself.
But soon, I think I need a break.
Katja Malmborg 