This week John and I have been busy out in the field. Myself applying herbicides and counting/collecting weeds and John collecting water samples and snails. I have reached my goal of collecting 50 weed species for the herbarium! I need a way of preserving them in the humidity here, I know of a lamination service in town and am going to see how expensive that will be. I would like to have a nice way to present the herbarium to the research station and preserve it for their future use.
John found his first parasite shedding snail! At one sight he collected over 400 snails. He has to go into some pretty interesting water bodies, there are leaches that attach to his gum-boots. I wish we had hip-waders for him to use! It has been rainy here, which is good since the rains will end in about a month's time. Thankfully we have had a sunny day today for putting out herbicides.
We are still SLOWLY learning Bemba... I think it is difficult because we are just learning phrases and we have no structure, no idea how to construct sentences! We need to get some help, there is a peace corp house in Mansa-town, so hopefully we can stop in sometime and maybe they have some type of guide-book that could help. Hope you all had a happy St. Patty's day and have a happy start to SPRING!
What is in the glass? Is that the parasite-shedding snail?
ReplyDeleteJohn ... please be careful collecting your samples ... you could get into some pretty nasty stuff! (Sorry, I just had to say that. After all, I'm your mom and it's my job to worry about you!)
Take care ...
Love,
Mom Misch
Yes, that is the parasite-shedding snail in the glass.
ReplyDeleteWe promise to be careful and we already have medication to treat Schisto should we get it.