A Long Four Days

They said it would difficult. They said it would take days. They said it would be exhausting.  And they were right about it all. Writing a research proposal is no walk in the rainforest. The night it all began, there were twenty-four of us gathered downstairs in the classroom of the Wilson House at the Las Cruces Biological Station. It was a Saturday night, just after dinner, and we were exhausted from a full day of presentations and quizzes. We sat around the desks discussing what movie we would watch that night and what our plans were for our day off. But, as soon as the PowerPoint appeared on the screen with the title "Possible IP Projects", we were all ears.  Each of us had been anxiously awaiting the reveal of the possible topics for our independent projects. All of the possible projects seemed extremely interesting, and I was quite torn when it came to picking just one. We were instructed to form six groups of four and have our topics picked by 8am Monday morning. Immediately after the projector went black, we jumped out of our seats and began darting around the classroom. "Which project do you want to do?" "What do you think about the teen pregnancy one?" After about five minutes, groups of four started to emerge from the chaos. Our groups were formed and our topics submitted a day and a half early. We then dispersed to enjoy our night and free day, not realizing what the week ahead had in store for us.  My group chose the independent project that dealt with obesity in Ngöbe indigenous women. Our group met at 8am in the classroom ready to get started.  It was Monday, so that meant we had four days until our proposal was due at 6pm on Thursday. The four of us sat around a desk that morning discussing our ideas about the project. What questions did we want to answer?  How would we get there? After a much needed lunch break, we decided to begin our research and write our intros. After a long afternoon of scouring Google Scholar and PubMed for helpful articles, we completed our intros and felt like we were in a good place heading into Day Two. On Tuesday morning, we met again at the same desks down in the classroom. Our goal for the morning was to complete our Survey and Methods sections of our proposal so that we could discuss them with our professors in a meeting scheduled for just before lunch. We finished this task minutes before our meeting, grabbed our raincoats, and made our way to the Commodore dodging the forming puddles. We got the green light to move forward with our methods and questionnaire and needed to make only minor changes. That afternoon we met back up at our spot and completed our methods and began to fill out our IRB form that would be submitted to Duke for approval of our project. While we went to bed that evening feeling good about where we were, we were still aware of all the work that had to be done in our final two days. Every group had to give a brief presentation to the class on Wednesday afternoon. So that morning, we worked on putting together our PowerPoint and figuring out what we would say. After the presentations, our group reluctantly but necessarily met again at our same desk to finish our Anticipated Results, Ethical Concerns, and Significance sections of our proposal. As we set our alarms that night, we were beyond exhausted but exited for tomorrow and the completion of our proposals. On our fourth and final day, we spent the morning finishing up our individual proposals and putting the final touches on our IRB. We sent in our IRB at 10am and set off on a hike, desperately needing to clear our minds. While hiking, we discovered a beautiful waterfall, which invigorated us, as we returned to our proposals with new found energy. Our proposals were finally complete at 5pm, and we were just waiting for our meeting with the Ngöbe Cultural Advisor to ensure our survey would be appropriate and useful. We had a very successful meeting that ended at 5:55pm.  This left just enough time to make a couple quick changes, attach our document, and push SEND.  It was wonderfully difficult.  It took days.  It was exhilaratingly exhausting.  And like all of our walks in the rainforest, we emerged from this IP proposal experience enlightened, enthusiastic, and enriched!
Emily Becker

"Different"

            As we always do with our usual trips from the biological stations, we file into our buses and head to a community that we're not all that familiar with. Sure, we learn about the people, the culture, the ethnobiology of it all, but there's always a divide that separates "us" from "them," no matter how much we actually interact with them. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just naturally how it feels – and I'm sure the community members feel it, too. It's one of the reasons I give anthropologists so much credit for integrating themselves into communities where they may not feel completely at ease. We get off the bus at the EBAIS clinic of La Casona, an indigenous community of the Ngöbe people. Their way of dress, especially the traditional dresses of the women; their dark skin, and the visibly sedentary culture of the women immediately sets us apart from them – all aspects of their culture that I notice immediately after stepping off the bus. They watch us as we walk in, and even though we were invited to visit with them and learn about La Casona medicine, something about it still feels a little off. I want to learn more about the medicine of the indigenous, and how their culture plays into their healthcare, but am I intruding? I temporarily brush off the underlying unsettling feeling of disparity, and follow the group to talk to one of the EBAIS clinic healthcare providers.

            We all stood around this woman who clearly knows a lot about both how the EBAIS clinics there function, and about the prevalent health issues circulating in the Ngöbe community, especially in La Casona. As I was practicing translating my question into Spanish in my head, I jot down her answers to other students' questions, namely the ones about the health concerns at La Casona, as I speculate that they would be most relevant to know. They turned out to be relevant in a way I didn't quite expect, however. After I ask my question, "Tiene algunas metas o planes para el futuro de esta clínica?", or "Do you have any goals or plans for the future of this clinic?," I realize that her answer sounded awfully familiar. She spoke of the issues of adolescent pregnancy in the community, and how awareness and health programs are being enacted to alleviate those issues. While there's not a large population of adolescent mothers in my hometown, it's not like it's a foreign issue to me; I've actually gone through health classes that are probably similar in their efforts to reduce adolescent pregnancy. In fact, none of her answers really surprised me all that much, and not because they're what I expected from this community. The Ngöbe people's health issues of domestic violence, adolescent pregnancy, respiratory problems, diabetes, and especially obesity as a result of sedentary lifestyles and processed foods, aren't unlike from what we see in the United States. I can name at least one person in my life who has experienced each of those issues, so why am I scribbling them down and thinking about them as if they're completely foreign? Is it just because "foreign" is pressed into my mind as something that I am constantly experiencing here? Maybe that isn't the case.

            Some may say these similarities are a result of the non-indigenous influence that this woman spoke of, and maybe that does play into it. But either way, this visit provided me with more than just an insider's perspective on healthcare in the Ngöbe community. It made me realize that although the differences of our cultures can seem stark and obvious, the underlying similarities may be more universal and significant in reality. While the health concerns of my culture back in the U.S. and those of La Casona aren't completely the same, noticing that there exist coinciding problems provided me with a more open-minded perspective of our "differences." So maybe next time the group visits a community different from our own – or whenever I encounter a group of people different than myself in the future – I'll at least understand that while cultural distinctions clearly are present, we may in fact be going through the same issues. And there's nothing wrong with a little empathy.

Rachel Brown

Two Countries, One research student

            I've done this dozens of times before. I'm staying up late again on a weeknight after all my friends have gone to bed even though I have to wake up early tomorrow because I have a paper to work on. I've been feeling stuck up until this point, but now my ideas are starting to flow more easily. In my mind all of the individual concepts that have until now been splayed disjointedly across my paper, notes, and mind like remains on a battlefield are finally are weaving together to create the story I have been trying to tell for hours. I always get over my writers' block best when it's late at night. I look at the clock and wonder when 11:30 become late at night. I guess this is the first research paper I've written on jungle time, and I decide that midnight is late enough for this particular forest-dweller.

            This is one of the first assignments I've done in Costa Rica that feels so much like what I've written before in the United States. The last two months have put me into the best learning environments I've ever experienced. There's no line between education and recreation when we walk through the rainforest being taught to identify plants and stuffing some into our mouths. Walking around communities asking people questions about dengue and showing them how to build mosquito traps made me feel more like a volunteer than a student. There is an incredible integration here between living and learning and there's little I've appreciated more about this program.

            But the paper we're writing to propose our final research projects does not feel very different from my old, stationary, indoor way of learning. I've written plenty of research papers and enough research proposals that there's little about this particular experience that's new. More hours on end staring at computer screens, flipping through sources, writing paragraphs that I later delete, etcetera, etcetera. It's not a pleasant reminder, and I've felt frustrated for most of the week thinking how this paper is keeping me from enjoying my time out in the woods like I've been able to for the rest of this trip. It's been a long time since I've felt this academically burnt out.

            It's now the next day and things aren't feeling any better. I want to go hiking but my time is running too short. I'm losing a source of my sanity and I'm starting to feel disconnected from my work. It feels so much like college in the states. The day passes as a frustrating blur of slow progress and distractions. At the very least it's dinner time, and I decide to use the distinction I'm drawing between work and rest to my advantage. I leave my work behind in favor of the cool darkness of the rainy night.

            I was one of the last to leave the building, so the hill outside the Wilson House is peaceful. I don't want the calm of the rain and the forest to go away, so I linger. I step out into a dark corner on the hillside and try to capture the enveloping calmness I feel all around me. I look out and see the lights illuminating the thin path that meanders down to the gravel road below. The way they shine on the brightly colored plants in the garden makes me feel as though fairies should be flitting between the flowers and bushes. As it is, I see only a few friends leaving a group meeting to go to dinner. Their quiet laughter echoes over to me, dulled slightly by the rain.

            Standing here, I don't know where I got the idea that this paper is disconnected from the life that I'm living in Costa Rica. I can't be isolated from my work because I'm surrounded by it. It's not about it's being different from home—the integration of studying and living is important no matter where you are. For me, that connection has always been the very root of my passion. This experience hasn't been special simply because it's been different from what I do at home; it's been special because it has shoved in my face the inextricability of my life from the research I do. If I think of this trip as an escape from home, I'll miss the very point of it. Unless I can bring this skill back home with me, I've lost one of the greatest opportunities this journey has to offer

Submitted by Casey Morrison

Caption: Research papers Costa Rica style

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The Ngöbe Approach to Feminism

 

Anne Boldt

            Upon setting foot in La Casona, a region of the Coto Brus canton in Costa Rica, while visiting the Ngöbe indigenous people, I immediately noticed something that we hadn’t seen in our trips to meet other indigenous groups: distinct differences in apparel. For example, while the men were dressed in standard jeans and an old t-shirt, as commonly see throughout Costa Rica, the women were dressed in beautiful traditional Ngöbe dresses. The dresses appeared to be hand-sewn, came in a variety of colors, and were worn by females of all ages in the community. In fact, even as the children played fútbol at recess, the girls were holding up their dresses while running down the field. Immediately I came to question why the women were, from my observations, forced to dress traditionally, while the men were free to dress in whatever apparel they chose.
            As we made our way to the EBAIS in the community and I saw more women clothed in traditional garments, questions flooded into my mind. Why this difference? How did the women feel about it? Was this something the men forced upon them? As a female from the United States who wears sweatpants and a sweatshirt daily because I prefer to wear what I think is comfortable, it seemed unfair that men were given the freedom to choose their clothing and women did not possess the same freedom to self-express through clothing. Was this a breech of human rights? Was there no sense of feministic pride in this community? I knew I had to find out if and why these women were being denied such simple freedoms.
            After meeting with both the EBAIS doctor and traditional healers in the community, we made our way across the river on a less than stable bridge to the cultural house of the community. In this house, Ngöbe children were educated on how to write in their own language, as Ngäbere originated as an oral language. We met with two Ngöbe women from the community, and were allowed to ask them questions regarding the community and their customs. To preface the discussion, our professor Claudine informed us that both women were very political. This point confused me even further. Why would such strong, opinionated women settle for a lack of simple freedoms?
As the discussion began, it was apparent that I was not the only one concerned, as another student quickly inquired about the differences in apparel between men and women. All of the questions whirling inside my head were causing me to hope for a response secretly full of angst and plans to over throw the patriarchy. However, to my disbelief, the woman’s answer was so simple and completely genuine. She responded by saying that the women of the Ngöbe community preferred to dress in traditional garments because they knew that the men thought they looked beautiful in them. There was no hint of frustration or bitterness in her answer; they simply enjoy pleasing the men around them.
            This complete difference between men and women is not only an accepted, but also a fully welcomed custom in the Ngöbe culture. To these women, their willingness and desire to please the men of their community are not considered degrading or lacking feministic characteristics.  Instead, these women are fully aware of their rights and privileges and they choose to wear their traditional clothing out of respect for their culture and the men in their communities. Perhaps their dress is also a form of self-expression, but simply having a different aim than that of women in the United States. ​

Microbiology is cool!

The room smelled like a trashcan does when it has not been taken out for a few days. Overall, an unpleasant smell, but a smell that brings me back to hours of extracting, purifying, and isolating my very own bacteriophage. So, regardless of the smell, I was excited. The prep work was done for us, and stacks and stacks of prepared Petri dishes lay in wait for their serving of bacteria. Each of us came into the room bearing our toothbrushes that were to be decapitated in the next few minutes. We murmured to each other about the surely terrible toothbrushes we would receive in compensation for giving up our toothbrushes for scientific research. An air of excitement and apprehension at the upcoming research project filled the air, or maybe I was just imagining that.

How do human habits regarding oral hygiene affect bacterial contamination? That was the research question at hand. The specific variables we were considering were: distance from the toilet, storage location, storage method, age, gender, toothbrush and toothpaste brand, and affiliation with OTS or a mere student. Not only do we have billions of microbes in our body, but they actually amount to ten times the amount of human cells we have! In fact, humans cannot be healthy without our microbiome, and when we do get sick, it often is a result of a disruption of the balance of our microbiome. So how did we get answers from a decapitated toothbrush and some Petri dishes filled with smelly media? Herein lies that story. After violently decapitating our precious toothbrushes with gardening shears, the bacteria were allowed to seep into a prepared solution after being vigorously shaken. OTS staff members' toothbrushes and brand new toothbrushes fell victim as well. While waiting for the bacteria to migrate to the solution, each group laid out rows and rows of Petri dishes and Petrifilm (a film used to indicate the presence of a type of bacteria that determines the presence or absence of potentially harmful bacteria like E. Coli) and meticulously labeled and checked for any possible mistakes. My group spent an enormous amount of time preparing for the addition of our samples as we intended on being the fastest group. Maybe not the best scientific method, but it did add some competition and fun to the process! When it came time to add our samples to the Petri dishes and Petrifilm, we had our method down perfectly. I pipetted the samples onto each dish, Anna (the most organized by a long shot) handed me each sample in our predetermined order, Keelin moved the samples around the Petri dish to ensure complete contamination, and Emily covered each Petri dish with a saran-wrap type plastic. It was organized, efficient, fun, and only a tad bit competitive. Twenty-four hours after preparing the samples, we were ready to collect the data. Each of us counted the colonies of the Petri dishes and Petrifilm we plated the day before. Unfortunately, many of our samples were either too concentrated and therefore unable to count or were mixed up in the process of plating the day before. This project happened to be my Faculty Led Project, so my group and I were in charge of presenting the results as well as writing the paper. Our one significant result was the difference between coliform bacteria contaminated toothbrushes between OTS staff and students. OTS staff had over two-thirds contaminated toothbrushes, while we only had two. The most exciting and cool part of the results was that the infected toothbrushes in the student sample group belonged to two students who had been violently ill with a bacterial infection three weeks prior to this experiment. Not going to name any names, but they may or may not have lived together at La Selva, run together every morning, shared a private bathroom, and are in contact much of the day. Not that any groups come to mind or anything.

All in all, the thrill I get from stepping into a lab to start an experiment was only further increased after this project. While challenging at times to understand the data and make sense of no significant results, the rewarding aspect of creating a data set all by ourselves in a forty-eight hour period is pretty unparalleled.

Kat DeRuff

The Power of Plants

By: Kelsey Sumner

While traveling, I have always been in a state of wonder. Whenever I go to another country, I am in awe by the different cultural practices, traditions, and ceremonies. My first year at Duke University, every freshman read Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, a novel detailing the life of a researcher investigating the discovery of a new antimalarial and fertility compound in the Amazon. She flies
to Brazil to see the drug first-hand and finds it comes from tree bark in an indigenous community. The researcher quickly becomes wrapped up in the community's lifestyle, learning some of their medicinal methods. Now, visiting the Ngöbe indigenous communities in Costa Rica, I cannot help but compare the ideals I'm learning to the ones in State of Wonder. Both the fictitious indigenous Brazilian tribe and the Ngöbe in La Casona, Costa Rica exemplify the importance of traditional
medicine in the world today.
Traditional medicine can help treat a variety of diseases and conditions using plants found in nature. Wild plants are a vital part of more than sixty-five percent of the global population's primary
form of health care, so should be taken into account in Western medicine (Farnsworth et al.). For example, the Bribri community in Talamanca, Costa Rica, frequently chew on Hombre Grande, a green leafy plant, because it is a natural insect repellent and antimalarial. Traditional medicinal methods can also relieve symptoms for illnesses Western medicine cannot cure, such as Diabetes, making traditional medicine an important part of the medical community. OTS's global health course recently visited the Ngöbe indigenous community to learn the different ways traditional medicine
is still practiced in La Casona. Within minutes of arriving, we quickly realized the local EBAIS has developed treatment options with the Ngöbe instead of for them. We first saw how CCSS has incorporated local customs into healthcare by visiting the new EBAIS. The EBAIS was built with the help of Ngöbe designers, complete with octagonal buildings and a room for traditional healers. We then spoke with the medicinal healer as well as saw disease prevention posters with pictures drawn by local Ngöbe artists. A midwife later outlined the ways maternal and infant mortality have improved in the area through the CCSS training programs and emergency kits for the midwives.
Through these changes, the local EBAIS has made Western health options more appealing and accessible to the indigenous community while at the same time preserving traditional healing methods. Visiting the Ngöbe community emphasized the power plants can hold in a community, especially in traditional medicine. Never before had I realized how much cultural importance plants can carry. At the end of State of Wonder, the researcher decides she cannot develop a drug from the tree bark, because pharmaceutical companies would then claim the tree grove. The indigenous community could then no longer perform a special ceremony with the trees and a part of their culture
would be destroyed. The visit to the Ngöbe community taught me how traditional medicine is not merely seen as a way to treat patients, but a way of life full of a community's beliefs and ideals.
Traditional medicine and its knowledge of plants needs to be maintained, if not for its usefulness to mankind but also for its preservation of a culture.
Works Cited: Farnsworth NR, Akerele O, Bingel AS, Soejarto DD, Guo Z. 1985. Medicinal plants in therapy. Bull WHO 63:965-981.

Welcome Aboard

Emily Yang

What a crazy week it has been, possibly the most exciting yet stress-inducing of the entire program.  That's right, it's research practicum time.  We are given three days to write a proposal for their independent research project for which data collection begins in local communities next month in November.  For the most part, classes are suspended; we now live and breathe for our proposals.  I can only compare it to embarking on a trans-ocean voyage of olden days, one that requires the willingness to work hard and a salty, ready for anything and anyone('s criticism) attitude.    

 

Once we have chosen our research paths (with some suggestions from our OTS professors), it's on to the next step: recruiting a crew.  Or in our case, a group of like-minded peers.  Since most research nowadays is collaborative, our class was highly encouraged to form groups and collect data together.  At this point of the journey all seven groups have selected diverse and interesting topics, from analyzing bacteria in fecal matter to rates at which adolescent mothers continue their education to obesity and nutritional issues in local indigenous women, the most fascinating topic for me.

 

However, at this point we still have to "build our boats".  The ideas set before us were only mere skeletons compared to our 15 page final proposals.  As a team we must comb through previous research literature, create and revise a survey for our study participants, tackle the International Review Board proposal for Duke, and of course write the proposal itself.  The introduction was especially daunting.  Trying to write a pithy and catchy summary for all my disorganized research interests felt like getting seasick for the first time.  Unfortunately, there is no equivalent of a seasickness patch for writing a research paper.  The only thing to do is keep my eye on the horizon, grit my teeth, and slowly work backwards from my research question, paragraph by paragraph.  Not that the other sections were purely smooth sailing, but it was a process. 

 

In the class, the level of expertise for writing research papers differs greatly.  Some people have only done lab reports while one girl is working on her thesis.  But we are all on the same blank page when it comes to working in the Ngöbe community.  One wake up call was learning that the community can't read Spanish and are only partially fluent in speaking it.  But a good sailor has to be able to deal with changing winds from all sides and adapt, something that we fledgling researchers can empathize with.

 

At this point our proposal-boats will be crafted, provisioned, and about to set off at 6 PM to our professor's inbox.  And in a month all of us will venture into the mists of our own choosing.  Our future schedules lay out a series of days with long hours of interviewing or data processing.  We may encounter stagnant doldrums, the glory of significant results, or even, horror of horrors, no conclusive results.  But now we are getting the chance to pursue our own fields of interest, and though the excitement is tinged with growing amounts of deadline stress, everyone is hopeful and confident.  A new chapter is beginning, and it's time to set sail.