Katja Malmborg

twenty seventeen, first half

I cannot focus. I have not written, properly, since Burkina Faso the first time. When the people overthrew the despot, in the fall and winter of 2014. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to write about – it’s just. The energy to put the thoughts into words. I have not been able to muster it.

I am in Hundby, my father’s summer Eden, and on a whim I packed my journal. I have not written in it for a year, the last note in it is dated Monday, July 18th 2016, it says [translated from Swedish]: “Yet again, the days have passed, I am too tired in the evenings to write, or I have trouble going to bed. I was in Björkskär with H, M, K and J. And today I came home from a weekend in Hundby. Officially, I have not started my vacation yet, but it’s basically as if. I am very tired of my job, even though I really think it is interesting. I have to start writing a more interesting journal. I’m bored already writing it.”

After that, silence.

But I am here now. Making myself put pen to paper. Actual pen to actual paper. (When you read this, it will be a transcription after the fact.) Maybe that is what I need. Being able to see something take form. Follow the words with my fingertips, eyes closed. (So much of my world is digital, I wonder if my obsession with knitting is a protest, a need to have something to touch.)

I hope I can manage my assignment of energy. Summer is really the time to separate the years, the holiday a time to reboot and change. Pink sunsets the time for kind thoughts and forgiveness. I know, I’m sick of myself writing about how I am going to change, that I will start writing again – but now maybe I will? Things actually have changed, I’ve moved apartments, I have a new job, and with that, new colleagues. When to start a new routine, but now? I will.

I will.

the anti-climatic nature of knowledge

I am preparing for a writing workshop with the communications team at SRC. How to write a popular science feature. We were given a list of reference pieces to read, stories about bilingualism, de-extinction, water goddesses, and really old trees. Long and very long articles where science, the lives of extraordinary people and snapshots of the writer’s own journey have been expertly molded into appealing stories. I love this kind of writing.

The idea is that all the participants in the workshop should pitch a story to the recently launched online magazine Rethink. And it’s not like I don’t have ideas, not like I don’t know anything – but to make a story intriguing and eye-opening, it needs to cover scales. The big picture and the detail, a moment to illustrate how large processes come together and affect our lives. As a young researcher, I’m entrenched in the detail. I could tell you hundreds of stories from fieldwork. I could show you figures and maps. I’ve got one scientific paper in review, and another about to be written – and this is the result of two and a half years of hard work. For one of those meandering science features, one needs to include the perspectives of several papers, maybe books, and interviews with experts.

The realization is daunting. What do I really know? Not enough to tell the big picture story of my case studies, that’s for sure. I would have to spend days reading up on everything else, all the important things that fall just outside my narrow research focus, and therefore hasn’t been read. The feeling gets stronger, the further I get into my research career. I’m a PhD student now, and I’ve never felt as ignorant.

But spring is here. Flowers, splashes of color among the brown leaves on the ground. The sun suddenly warm again. We’re heading toward lighter times.

reunions & winter gardens in Oslo

Two months ago, I took the train to Oslo. We were a whole crew, going to visit Hanna, my former classmate who just moved there to start a PhD. Half of my master’s class, renting a beautiful apartment in central Oslo for the weekend.

My first stop was Botanisk Hage, the Oslo university botanical garden, and I made most others in the group come with me. I don’t know if any of the others shared my love for greenhouses and flower beds, but it was a beautifully crisp, sunny afternoon with temperatures just below freezing, and the garden had no entrance fee. A perfect place and time for a stroll.

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Mid-January in Oslo doesn’t offer much in the way of greenery, but the frost that covered the grass and branches made everything glimmer in the setting sun. The garden takes up an entire inner-city block, and has a hill in its center. The garden is mainly open grass and old groves of deciduous trees, flowerbeds and small ponds on the hillsides. I can imagine it being lush and full of flowers in late May. Now, the browns and gray-greens that ranged from moss and mint felt very tranquil. Like a breath of fresh air in the middle of the busy city center.

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As for the greenhouses, they were more stimulating. Not large, no, quite small actually, and old. Two beautiful metal, wood and glass structures, one tropical with three separate wings, and the other a temperate palm house. When we first entered the wing with the water lily pond in the tropical green house, I could not take any photographs for at least 15 minutes. The humidity and heat made the lens get foggy, the difference from the outdoor freezing temperature and the artificial tropics inside being so extreme. It was a beautiful pond, though, so green, and the orchids in one of the other wings so weird, so inspiring. Breathing that air, carrying so many smells that you can basically taste it. I miss the tropics. That heat and the humidity, it feels like it makes breathing so much easier.

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The Oslo botanical garden was small, but very well kept. I liked it a lot.

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As for the rest of the weekend, I really liked Oslo. So much cool street art (it seems to be a Norwegian thing, it was the same in Bodø and on Lofoten. Tons of really impressive, original street art). Easy to walk through, nice mixture of architecture, cool bars. Expensive, yes, but so is Stockholm. However, what really made my Oslo weekend so memorable and magical, was the company I shared it with. The people in my former master’s programme are truly amazing, and we became such a great group during those two years, and this weekend reunion with half of them, and the Skyping we did with half of the absentees (calling in from Uppsala, England, Argentina and New Zeeland), made this a weekend so full of warmth and laughs and love, that it has carried me for months since.

Sahelian stories: A young researcher trying out social media

Some weeks ago, I was the guest editor of Stockholm Resilience Centre’s Instagram account under the hashtag #SRCFieldwork. Every week, a master’s or PhD student or researcher at the center posts photos and tells stories from their fieldwork experiences. The idea is to give some insight into the work behind the research and also share some of the stories that would never make it into a scientific publication but that can be just as important for understanding a system, situation or problem. And, of course, everyone has to be on social media now – even us dry researchers. We’re increasingly being encouraged to get our messages out there through these new channels of communication.

Social media is in no way new to me as such. I got my first pre-Facebook, pre-blog-boom online community account when I was twelve, and have been writing things online ever since. A lot of my writing has been about traveling and about books. I’ve written about my fieldwork in a similar, travel journal kind of fashion. This Instagram-editorship, however, was the first time that I’ve seriously tried to synthesize my scientific knowledge and research experiences in a concise and systematic way. My week of being the SRC Instagram guest editor writing about my master’s thesis fieldwork experiences gave me a first real taste of what it could be like to wear the hat of researcher on social media – and I must admit I liked it! I ended up spending quite a lot of time picking topics, choosing photos, structuring the story. I didn’t quite want to let it go after my week was over, so I decided to put my posts up here too. Enjoy!

Day 1, #1

Day 1, #2

In northern Burkina Faso, approximately 90 percent of the population lives in rural areas and has agriculture as their main livelihood strategy. This region is semi-arid and rainfall is highly variable between years, leading to people having had to adjust their farming practices to the extreme climate conditions. In many rural communities, traditional agroforestry methods are still used. Small fields of sorghum, millet, maize and legumes are combined with trees, shrubs and fallows, creating a patchy, multifunctional landscape of both domesticated and wild plants.

Day 2, #3

The main goal of my fieldwork was to visit 13 villages to collect groundtruthing data for a land use classification of satellite imagery that I was going to make later. The idea was simple: I would walk in a straight line from the village center, stopping every 100 meters to register GPS coordinates and take photos. Well, it was not simple. With me, I had two farmers from the village to answer questions about management practices, etc. Conducting interviews while walking straight, no matter what came in my way, dense shrubland or rocky hill, in almost 40 °C heat. One day of groundtruthing meant 10 km of walking in total. This was nothing for the farmers, of course, but I have a feeling they found my panting and red, sweaty face curiously amusing. I regularly drank five liters of water a day. Still, I managed to stop occasionally to admire the amazing landscape I was walking through.

Day 2, #4

Livestock is an integrated part of smallholder farming practices in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Burkina Faso. Cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys and fowl roam the land and eat whatever is left once the fields have been harvested. Often it’s the children who herd them, and the manure is an important source of fertilizer for the fields. The small ruminants are sometimes slaughtered for festive occasions, but mainly they are kept as insurance. If the harvest fails, or if the family needs to invest in something, they can sell an animal and get the cash they need. Cattle are also seen as a sign of status and influence, and bulls and donkeys are trained to plow the fields.

Day 2, #5

This is Hamado, the chair of the farmer’s association in his village. In the pink evening haze, he and his donkey are bringing home the haulms of the groundnut harvest. The nuts have already been picked from the roots and will be shelled before storage or transport to the market. The stalks will also be stored and given to the animals as fodder during the dry season.

Hamado says: “It is important that we have fodder for our animals. I tell the farmers in my village to not turn all their land into fields, but to also keep some as shrubland. The shrubs and herbs are an important source of food for the animals, but also provide wild fruits and seeds that the women harvest and medicinal plants that we use if someone gets sick.”

Day 3, #6

In the multifunctional landscape of northern Burkina Faso, the smallholder farmers don’t only cultivate their crops and herd their animals. Certain wild trees, shrubs and herbs are actively being managed as integrated parts of the agricultural landscape and harvested for their uses as food, fodder, medicines and for religious ceremonies, and are important sources of nutrition for both humans and animals.

This is a baobab tree (Latin: Adansonia digitate). It has a sweet and nutritious fruit that ripens just before the rainy season starts and that kids love to pick. The leaves are dried and used as condiment in soups, and can be used to treat asthma. Both fruits and leaves are also sold at the market, giving the villagers a small but important source of cash income.

Day 3, #7

Noon is not a fun time to be out and about in northern Burkina Faso. The sun is excruciating and the heat like a vise pressing at your temples. Luckily, the farmers have prepared for this, constructing combined shelters/fodder storages and planted mango and neem trees to provide shadow. When the day is at its hottest, everyone takes a break from work, sitting down in the shadow to eat lunch and socialize. I was often asked to join in their meal. Here, we ate tô, the staple porridge made out of sorghum. You take it with your hand and dip in a sauce made with a wild type of spinach. A little bitter, but very filling.

Day 3, #8

Fieldwork in a place like rural Burkina Faso sometimes requires a little bit of ingenuity. As my fieldwork partner, I had Elli (@helhet). She was in Burkina to collect soil samples and measure water infiltration and evaporation. However, some tools turned out to be hard to find. No matter – Elli decided she could do it herself. She bought ordinary plastic pipes and rusty tools at the market and spent a couple of evenings in our room swearing over the dull saw. But she prevailed, and managed to construct her own rudimentary lysimeters! Over a period of two weeks, she then weighed these soil-filled pipes at dawn and dusk, as a way to measure the rate at which water evaporated from the soil in different locations in the village. This is an important indicator for how good the soil is to farm in, especially in a dry place like northern Burkina Faso.

Day 4, #9

The wild shrubs and trees in the multifunctional landscape of northern Burkina Faso are also used as a source of firewood and building material. It is often gathered by the women from the outskirts of the village. Everyone has a task to fill, from the children herding sheep in the afternoon after school, to the old man sitting under a mango tree carving pickax handles.

Day 4, #10

Soil degradation is a serious issue for smallholder farmers in northern Burkina Faso. They use many strategies to deal with this. One of them is the Zaï (pictured), a soil and water conserving technique in which manure and other organic matter is dug into pits in the poor soil. This increases soil fertility and water infiltration, and sometimes makes it possible for herbs and shrubs to sprout there. These wild plants, in turn, loosen up the highly compacted soil with their roots, which makes it possible for the farmers to plant crops on these lands again.

Day 4, #11

Written in my field notebook: “During the afternoon transect walk in a village called Tarba, we ran into a big herd of cattle. The afternoon walks are the best. When the heat has started to subside and the light has turned soft orange. The smells come out then too: the dry earth, the harvested fields, the mint-and-thyme-smelling weeds. The cows stirred up dust, making the air shimmer in the light of the setting sun. After a long hot day, the temperature was just perfect, and there was a light breeze. One of the boys who was herding was walking with a little puppy by his side. He was singing, in a clear boy’s tenor, and the puppy was happily running back and forth between the boy and the cows. As if playing at being a shepherd dog.

One of those beautiful moments, walking through the fields and shrubby fallows together with a singing herder boy, his puppy and his cows, while the sun set in a shimmering golden mist.”

Day 5, #12

One way for smallholder farmers to build resilience in the highly variable climate in semi-arid Burkina Faso is to harvest rainwater. Dugouts and small reservoirs, like here, are mostly used for watering animals, while larger reservoirs can be used for aquaculture and irrigation of rice, maize and vegetables. Access to irrigation water can be an important source of both income and nutrition during the dry season, but is problematic. Dams are costly to keep up, the landscape here often leads to high sedimentation rates into the reservoir, and if not governed well and fairly, the reservoirs and the new water resources can lead to increased pressure on the land, rising inequalities in the villages and displacement of farmers.

Day 5, #13

Things rarely go as planned when in the field. In October 2014, barely halfway through our fieldwork period, the president of Burkina Faso of 27 years, Compaoré, decided to propose a change to the constitution that would allow him to be elected for yet another term. This led to big protests in the major cities in Burkina Faso. The parliament was set ablaze and other governmental buildings also. Compaoré was forced to flee the country and a transitional government was set up, followed a year later by the first democratic elections in almost three decades.

During the most intense week of the popular uprising, Elli (@helhet) and I were told to stay put in our room. For a couple of days, we did not know which way the protests would go: peaceful transition or escalating violence. The contrasts were extreme, butterflies fluttering in the quiet backyard of our guesthouse in rural northern Burkina, and the confusing messages of closed borders, burning cars and hijacked TV stations in the capital. It was nerve-wrecking. Nothing bad happened to us, though, and after less than a week we could return to our fieldwork, having witnessed the first step in the (mostly) peaceful transition towards democracy in this West African country.

Day 5, #14

To wind down in the evenings, and especially to not lose our minds during those days of being cooped-up in our room during the 2014 Burkinabe uprising, Elli (@helhet) and I watched quirky sitcoms and ate Swedish candy. I basically never eat candy at home, but in the field Gott&Blandat became like a safety blanket.

I also designed two pairs of mittens. If you want to see the result of my fieldwork de-stressing, check out Elli’s Burkinabe elephants and Vivi’s reindeer at @becausekatjasaidso. Also, if you want to learn more about my classmate Vivi’s fieldwork involving, guess what!, reindeer and craftsmanship, stay tuned. Vivi will be the SRC guest editor later this spring.

Day 6, #15

The last thing I did in each village I visited in northern Burkina Faso was to return and present the preliminary results of my interviews and groundtruthing. I did this to allow the villagers to learn what I had discovered in all 13 villages, but also to let them correct me if there was something that I had misunderstood. There were always more people at these meetings than the 4-6 farmers that I had interviewed, ranging from the village elders to heaps of children. These conversations were really inspiring and I believe we learned a lot from each other.

Day 6, #16

In Burkina Faso, they give gifts. In each village that I worked in, they gave me something: More groundnuts than I could ever eat, beans, watermelons. I even got two live hens! The generosity, both with regards to time and resources, of the people I met astounded me.

Day 7, #17

I think the best chance consequence of my choice of master’s thesis was to end up in the same field sites as Elli (@helhet). I’m not saying that anyone should choose their project based on where their friends are, but having someone to share everything with can make things so much easier. With all the twists and turns that unraveled during the course of our months in Burkina Faso, I’m not sure if I would have been able to come back with so much data and so many positive memories without the support and mere presence of Elli.

Here, we are photographed with Kassoum and Madi, who were members of the farmer’s association in the village where Elli worked and incredibly helpful in the challenging task of collecting soil samples from the dry, hard earth of northern Burkina Faso.

Day 7, #18

And then there was Abouleh. A former chair of the farmer’s association, but now just the man who knew, whom everyone turned to when there were issues with the farming. He welcomed us when we came to his village, he introduced us to everyone who mattered and he waited for us after our walks, wanting to hear if I had gotten everything I needed. He said: “I am a farmer. I care for my land, for my animals. You only ask about the farming now, but the animals are important too. Say that to your colleagues, tell them: The land and the animals and us cannot be separated.”

Day 7, #19

I’ll miss the sun rising over the shrublands. The smells of dawn, soft, dry and earthy. The sounds of donkeys and goats. The desperation in a donkey’s scream, or the very un-animal-like braying of the goats. Wherever I heard them, I couldn’t help laughing. And the people. I’ll miss working with the farmers. Their knowledge, sincerity and helpfulness, going out of their way to make sure I got what I needed. I am humbled by this landscape and the people who live there, and can safely say that my experiences from doing #SRCFieldwork changed my life.

Day 7, #20

Although fieldwork can be truly fun, it is also exhausting. You have to take the time to have some frivolous fun too. The last five days in Burkina Faso, we took the bus south and did some proper touristing in hippo lakes and waterfalls around Banfora. And so, with this photo of me standing on top of one of the Domes of Fabedougou, I conclude the story of my fieldwork in Burkina Faso. I want to thank you for this week. Barka!

autobiographies and the need for introspection

Some time ago, I read two books. It wasn’t intentional, but they happened to be autobiographies and, coincidentally, the authors belong to the same writing group in Portland. After having read them, it kind of made sense. They were about journeys, about finding a way out of a broken past, big sorrow, drugs and destructive sex, a desperate need to feel something. And a will to tell the story of that journey.

The first book was “The Chronology of Water” by Lidia Yuknavitch. Raw and furious and full of passion. Yuknavitch did a beautiful little TED talk about being a misfit.

The second book was “Wild – A Journey from Lost to Found” by Cheryl Strayed. Definitely easier to access, it was turned into a Hollywood movie starring Reese Witherspoon. But also, full of sorrow.

They inspired me. This way of putting your life into words. Especially Yuknavitch’s fragmented telling of her life. She is oceans more brutal than I could ever be, I don’t crash like a wrecking ball into life, but the way of structuring memories into moments, pictures, an assemblage of the senses. Telling a story in the blink of an eye. I think that’s what I’ve been trying to do, a little, since I started writing at age eleven. And then, a lot, when I started blogging at eighteen. And why I have never managed to stop, just shut it down, even when the time between blog posts has turned into months. Never had the heart to. There is a need there, I think. Quiet, but persistent.

But also, it is in conflict with a much louder need. The one of doing good. The one that sees the wrongs in the world and wants to make a difference. The one that guided me onto the path of problem-solving environmental research and sustainability science. How could I justify spending time on exploring myself through words, when the world is on fire?

Lately, though, I think I’ve started to realize something. The world is incomprehensively complex. In order to actually do any good in it, you need to make good decisions and play to your strengths. But how can you ever do that, if you don’t know who you are? Some people might know from the moment they’re born, at least that’s what it seems like. Those together people who just act and do well and don’t worry. But for the rest of us. We need to find our way, and sometimes just running out into the world without understanding where you come from can lead to skewed judgments and poor decisions and in the end do more harm than good. Sometimes, dealing with yourself is the best thing you can do for everyone else.

And I think, maybe, this is where authors like Yuknavitch and Strayed are contributing to solving a little piece of this complex puzzle of our world on fire. Through their introspection inspiring others to look inside themselves also.

We just have to remember not to get stuck in there. Look inside, and then, look up and enter into the world, clear-eyed, whole, and with a purpose.

a brief pop cultural summary of my 2016

2016 has been a tough year. A lot has happened, both professionally and in my private life, and I don’t yet know what the implications of all these events, changes and developments will be. So for now, let’s focus on simpler things. Pop culture. And it’s kind of funny, I realized while going though the year’s collection of photographs, playlists and reading journal – many of the strongest cultural experiences I’ve had this year are also associated with certain places, moments. I’ve already written about one of them, reading “Desert Solitaire” in Montpellier. But there are more. So here comes, my year 2016 in pop culture, illustrated when appropriate. Enjoy!

MUSIC

This year, I have mostly listened to random songs, and not albums. There isn’t one artist or band that has influenced me more than any other, the songs just happened. Like, the beat in Hearlines with the Broods, perfect when taking an afternoon run in Hundby. Or the beauty of Dagen jag blir fri by Jonas Svennem and Leslie Tay, that I heard for the first time when walking past the Porte du Peyrou in Montpellier, sunset. The clarity, the lyrics like solvent, making knots loosen, worries trickle away. Yes. That is the best song of my year.

BOOKS

Reading I’ve done a lot more. 31 books in total. Many more than last year. I haven’t read as many since 2012. The exciting “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel on a beach in Greenville, Liberia. The summer was lovely, reading “Vitsvit” by Athena Farrokhzad while lying on the grass on Björkskär, moving from hammock to porch to sunbed reading “My Brilliant Friend” by Elena Ferrante, the ferocity of the wind on rocky Nordkoster, while reading “Buddha in the Attic” by Julie Otsuka. “Desert Solitaire” by Edward Abbey in Montpellier. Out of these, if I have to choose, I think “My Brilliant Friend” was the best. The richness of Ferrante’s writing, the complexity of her characters, the depth of the insights about the nature of relationships. It is an incredible read.

MOVIES

I can’t think of a single good movie that I saw this year. I’m a bit embarrassed, to be honest, but I think I’ll have to leave this black. Maybe something I should try to become better at next year, going to the movies.

TV SERIES

I re-watched a lot of things this year. I think, maybe, it’s like a safety blanket when life otherwise seems too tumultuous or exhausting. While in Liberia and Ghana, I watched Gilmore Girls, an old favorite from my teens, in preparation for the new Netflix season that was released a month ago (that I still haven’t seen, I’m waiting to be able to see it together with Ashley!). In Burkina Faso, I also watched Downton Abbey. Back home, I moved on to Friends. Both great shows that I’ve now finally seen from start to finish. But, of the new encounters this year, I must say that the Australian show Please Like Me was the best. Utterly adorable, occasionally dark but hilarious, amazing characters. Like the main character Josh’s love interest, Geoffrey (pictured above), in the first season. Possibly the hottest guy on television, but, oh, so lost, so weird, so in love with Josh. I’m obsessed! I cannot wait until the fourth season becomes available on my side of the globe!

PHOTOGRAPH

Taken with a timer, Ashley and me with some really old rocks on the southern tip of Öland. Just because it’s lovely.

our unruly paradise

On those benches in the Montpellier botanical garden in September, I read the last chapters of Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire – a season in the wilderness” (1968). It is a memoir of the years Abbey spent as a park ranger in Arches National Monument in Utah, USA, in the 1950s. It took me a really long time to finish it, I started reading already in January, but then the library wanted it back and I went to Liberia, and simply didn’t get around to borrowing it again. Until my Montpellier trip. I started reading on the plane, continued in the evenings after the workshop, and then got really into it once my vacation days started.

My camera and the book is what I carried in my bag up and down the streets of Montpellier. When the sky opened and thunder roared, I took shelter at a crêperie, had lunch, got slightly tipsy on dry apple cider and read. In the afternoons, warmed by the golden setting sun, I searched the paths of the botanical garden for hidden benches, protected by banana palms and ivy.

Abbey criticized the way the national parks were turned into tourist attractions, roads being paved in the name of accessibility, ruining what, in Abbey’s opinion, should be wilderness. He wrote:

Wilderness. The word itself is music.

Wilderness, wilderness… We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.

Why such allure in the very word? What does it really mean? Can wilderness be defined in the words of government officialdom as simply “A minimum of not less than 5000 contiguous acres of roadless area”? This much may be essential in attempting a definition but it is not sufficient; something more is involved.

Suppose we say that wilderness invokes nostalgia, a justified not merely sentimental nostalgia for the lost America our forefathers knew. The word suggests the past and the unknown, the womb of earth from which we all emerged. It means something lost and something still present, something remote and at the same time intimate, something buried in our blood and nerves, something beyond us and without limit. Romance – but not to be dismissed on that account. The romantic view, while not the whole of truth, is a necessary part of the whole truth.

But the love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need – if only we had the eyes to see. Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all around us – if only we were worthy of it.

/…/

No, wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.

It is beautiful. There is a lot to read, Abbey wasn’t afraid of extending a story, it might take a while to get into the flow of the text – but once you get there, it is definitely worth the read. I do not necessarily agree with his idea of the absolute good or even existence of pristine wilderness, my human geography/political ecology/sustainability science training wouldn’t allow me to, but it was also written in a different time. Middle-class consumers were conquering the world, modernization seen as something unproblematic and inherently good – but Abbey pointed at a risk with the unquestioned optimism, a precursor to later environmentalists. And I can really sympathize with his love and admiration for the desert. I have felt it too, in Namibia, Burkina Faso, Bolivia, Peru.

I do see the irony, me sitting in a botanical garden reading this book about wilderness. Opposites. But, I don’t know, it felt fitting. The lushness, birdsong, sun through the leaves. For me, Montpellier will forever be intimately associated with “Desert Solitaire”. I will remember both with fondness.

Montpellier botanical garden

Narrow streets and cheese are definitely some of the most enjoyable things with Montpellier – but, not surprisingly, what I liked the most about this university town was the botanical garden. Jardin des Plantes was established in 1593, making it the oldest botanical garden in France. It is a green oasis in the otherwise quite vegetation-poor inner city. Not very big, but lush, intimate, full of hidden paths and benches to sit and enjoy the greenery from, small architectural details perfectly blending in with the vegetation. Romantic.

This four hundred year old green olive tree (Phillyrea latifolia) is the oldest tree in the garden. Look at that trunk! Isn’t it amazing?

There was no entrance fee, and the opening hours were long, making it a place that locals and tourists alike seemed to enjoy visiting for a calm evening stroll. There were birds, and cats everywhere!

I spent several hours walking around on the paths, failing to get close to the cats, sitting on different benches, reading. I could easily have spent more time there. It was a really beautiful, small, half-wild but still very well-kept botanical garden.

Montpellier – a Mediterranean gem

After the workshop in September, I took a little time off and spent a couple of days walking around on the winding streets of Montpellier. It is a city situated 10 kilometers from the Mediterranean coast in a hilly, dry landscape. It was first mentioned in a document from 985 and came into prominence in the 12th century as a trading center, but now nearly a third of the population are students, thanks to the three universities and three higher education institutions situated in or around the city. And this is really obvious. As soon as I got off the bus from the airport, I was stunned by the number of young beautiful people on bikes. They were everywhere! And despite the old town with cathedrals and monuments and tiny squares and stone stone stone, the general atmosphere is really youthful. Lovely. A perfect place to wander around, admire the beautiful architecture, get lost, have a crêpe and some cider, and then find your way again.

The beautiful, overgrown fountain on Place de la Comédie.

The winding, narrow streets of the old town. The 14th century Cathédrale Saint-Pierre, in which someone was practicing on the enormous organ when I entered, making it seem even more magnificent. Saint Clément Aqueduct.

Place Royal de Peyrou, with the Château d’Eau at its end.

But Montpellier is not only old, it also manages to blend in a big portion of new. Mainly, the Antigone district, built in the 1980s with curved lines and large expanses down by the river Lez. Not as welcoming as the old town, maybe, but still impressive.

And the street art! Somehow, someone has managed to get the city to embrace its bicycling student identity and been allowed to put up bikes all over town, making it look like they are flying right through the walls.

My last day, my colleague Sarah invited me over to her house in an old, medieval village about 45 minutes outside of central Montpellier. It was a beautiful little village, old, quaint like you just wouldn’t believe. I can definitely understand the people who choose to leave their stressful city lives behind and buy a village house in southern France. The Sunday markets! The cheese!

We took a hike up on the closest mountain top, Sarah and I, with a view of the village and the other mountains and the sea at the horizon. The wind was strong, bringing with it that dry, fragrant smell of Mediterranean wild herbs. Such as beautiful way to end an intense, interesting, and utterly exhausting work&vacation week in Montpellier.

the art of being young and boring

Towards the end of September (again, I’m LATE), I went to a workshop in France. It was a final team meeting with most collaborators in the project that I’m part of. The project lead works in Montpellier, so that’s where we all went, people flying in from all over, Ghana, Burkina Faso, California, Minnesota, UK. Three days of discussing agricultural innovations and ecosystem services management in the Volta basin.

I had met several of the participants before, in the field, but I was still nervous. I would be the most junior participant in the meeting. In every sense of the word, age, experience, title. I mentioned this to my friend James a couple of days before going to Montpellier, about feeling inadequate and boring in the company of professors who’ve done everything and lived everywhere and published tons. Instead of reassuring me, however, James told me that it was probably true. Age and experience will, most of the time, mean having more interesting things to say. But this is also something that the old and experienced know. They’re not expecting me to be on their level. It is OK to be a bit boring, because my youth means I still have time to get more experience – and maybe I can contribute with a slightly different perspective. But not even that is necessary.

Embracing the fact that I’m still young and that I, in certain contexts, will be boring in relation to the other, more experienced people that I’m interacting with. That it’s perfectly fine to be boring. I have plenty of time to become interesting. I think that might have been the best advice I’ve gotten for a long time, and it definitely made me feel less awkward at the three day Montpellier workshop.