On non-kidlessness

I regularly read Female Science Professor, who often has some interesting points to make about being a woman in science. However, her readers sometimes irk me, more than a little. The comments on the post I've linked to above are a prime example.

They aren't the only comments, and I'm not even sure they're the majority of comments, but there are a decent number of people writing there who are saying some variant of "I couldn't have kids and an academic career."

Bullshit.

Maybe you don't want both kids and a career, or maybe you've chosen a place that's bad about supporting both ambition and a family. Those are both legitimate things. If it's the first, fine, that's you're choice, and I have no problem with it. If it's the second, and you do want kids, then that sucks, and I sympathize with your difficulties--sometimes these choices get made before all the chips in the game are on the table, and I will work with you on making it a better world for women and families.

BUT: It is not impossible to have both a kid and an acadmeic career. Please do not say you can't, because that makes it seem like it's a problem with you. It's not. It's either a choice that you make (and that I don't think anyone should judge) or it's a problem with the university/department you're working with. It should always be POSSIBLE for women grad students, post docs, and professors to have kids and a career. I won't claim that it's easy, but I'm also a flawed, crazy, exhausted human being, and I can manage it.

Don't say you can't. Either you could, or your university ought to be doing the things that would make it so you could. If you don't want to balance that much, say that, and leave it at that. The next woman I hear saying "I could never do that" about my life is gonna get an earful. Yes, you could. Don't sell yourself short, because you're selling the rest of us short, too. It's not that we women can't balance career and kids--it's that there's a ton of stuff that's in our way that's not getting fixed because so many of us think that it's just us. Fuck that. It's not you, women. It's them.

Who's the worstest blogger in the world?

Me, because I'm crazy busy finishing up my second master's degree and planning a move across the country (Ryan and I are taking a break from academia due to a change of academic plans).

But, I found this map (thanks Bill!) and had to share:



The redder a place is, the more remote it is. I am here to tell you that this map is highly delusional. Just because there are roads somewhere does not mean you can drive in the same way you can in America--a dirt track in India (or, for that matter, a paved road) is very different from the equivalent road in America. Anyone who thinks they can practically drive across Uganda in six hours is fricking delusional--a day if you're really lucky, have a good four by four and a good driver. And sure, you can get up the Congo river in a couple of days--if there's fuel available, and often there isn't. Roads in Papua New Guinea flood frequently or are blocked via tribal violence. The cost of traveling by each of these different methods is an interesting factor--in order to travel according to the speeds they're suggesting in some of these places, you might as well charter a helicopter, cause the cost won't differ much in terms of how many helpers you'll have to pay, how many people you'll need to bribe, etc.

So all you adventurers out there, don't think that the world is quite so connected as this might make it seem. Just because you can get cell phone reception on safari in Tanzania (trust me, I have) does not mean that the only place you can go that's remote is Tibet. If I can find places that *I* think are remote (and my standards are high), then you can too.

Places to start, based on our experiences:
Indonesia
Papua New Guinea
Congo
Western (or eastern, or northern) Uganda
Namibia, especially near the border with Angola and Botswana.
Northern India
Northern Vietnam
Coastal Tanzania
Northeastern Zanzibar
The Beqqa Valley, Lebanon

For goodness sakes, people, just get away from the cities, away from the tour guides, and find a way to deal with just yourself and your traveling companions. See how much you can communicate with just gestures and a few words--Please, thank you, yes, no, hello and goodbye all go a loooong way. People say you need to know numbers, but so long as you have hands, numbers aren't that hard to convey. Eat the local food, drink the local liquor (cautiously--usually it's safe, but that doesn't mean it doesn't pack a punch), make kids laugh by showing them their pictures on your camera's screen and the games you used to play as a child. Bring gifts, and accept them, and realize that the important thing this map shows is not how easy it is to travel, but how interconnected we all are.

That's all for now.

Return to everyday life

Ryan and I are back home in Cali, settled into our new apartment and studying during the new school year. Oisin is with us, and though I occasionally miss the excitement of going a new place every day, I'm still somewhat giddy to be back going through the motions of my every day routine in Davis. Cooking my own food is a wonderful task, as chasing around a toddler, for the most part. He's back in day care during the week and so far seems to be enjoying himself immensely, which helps.

I'm back to teaching and class and research, and keep finding wonderfully interesting new papers. I'm going to try and write about the most interesting things I find, and the interesting parts of being a graduate student, but they're fewer and farther between when I'm not in the field, so once the beginning of the quarter calms down a bit, I'm going to try to post some of the stories we didn't get to tell yet about the summer. For now, I leave you with a second video of dog sampling, this one of me taking the blood, so you can see what we're talking about. As a note, the calm reaction this dog has is the standard reaction we got--even the dog in the last video was this relaxed once we got the muzzle on.

Final stats from the summer

[guest post by Ryan]

36 flights
12 time zones
257:45 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]
64,374 travel miles
22 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)
17 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

Number update

[Ryan here]

At the end of sampling, we've sampled 691 dogs (corresponding to 19,384 spreadsheet cells Cori and I had to fill in---and the spreadsheet was detailed enough that by the end dog colors such as "reddish tan and black with white chest and tips" were being autofilled). Anyway, more numbers (and these aren't done yet---we're still in Delhi waiting to fly home):

31 flights
11 time zones
208:15 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]
50,574 travel miles
21 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)
17 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

FINISHED

I sampled my last dog of the summer today, a caravan hound named Rani, our 183rd Indian dog. All told, I've taken blood from 691 dogs this summer, and I gotta say, I can't wait to get home. India was lovely, if whirlwind, but I'm tired, really sick of airports and hotels, and miss my son. Tonight at 2am dehli time we board our first flight home, and in 33 or so hours, we finally make it to my mothers house, hallelujah. We'll of course keep posting this summer's stories on this blog, if only to tell the story of the Indian SIM card procurment adventure, the worst driver ever, and a few other tidbits from our travels. But I think I've finally got Ryan so he enjoys blogging, and his enthusiasm keeps me writing too. We've got loads of stories to tell and loads more adventures to have, so eve if we're eager for this one to come to a close, we'll keep you updated with whatever comes next.

Indian Engrish

[guest post by Ryan]

The splash/logon screen to our hotel's WiFi network:

Hotel New Woodlands is an ecstasy for business explorers and holiday makers in city, endowing with services beyond conjure.

Sampling Vietnam style

[Ryan here]

So in Vietnam we unintentionally played "dog sampling the drinking game," which involved taking frequent shots of locally, in-home distilled rice/corn "wine" (actually a potent distilled spirit, not wine like they called it). The pattern started out as sample dog, get invited into house, have bitter green tea and get a shot of homemade rice wine poured before we could turn it down. We finally had to take out collaborators aside and make sure they stopped it or at least cut it down to a shot every four or five dogs. Otherwise, Cori would not have been able to keep taking blood!

Still though, at night we had our fun:

Mob justice

[guest post by Ryan]

While we were in Kolkata, one local news story particularly hit home for me. At a local amateur one-day soccer tournament, an assistant referee made a controversial offside call in the semi-finals. The penalized team's manager swore revenge and headed off with a few others. After several minutes, he returned armed and fired several shots into the soccer field, killing one person (not the referee or assistant referee). The other team's supporters then chased him and his group into a neighboring resort where he was hiding. They lit the resort on fire and all of the resort's buildings burned down while 55 guests plus staff quickly evacuated the premises. Several hours later the police took control of the scene and the fire department put out the last smoldering ashes. Last I heard, the man who initially fired the shots is still on the loose as are the instigators of the resort fire. Meanwhile, the resort manager does not believe he will rebuild. The newspaper articles were silent as to the ultimate disposition of the disputed semi-final match or the fate of the referees involved.
While this story holds particular interest for me (an American soccer referee who has made his share of disputed offside calls), it is not at all unusual here in India. I have seen dozens, if not hundreds, of similar stories on the news and in newspapers in the last 10 days I've been in India. A truck driver ran into a motorcycle, killing one person and critically injuring another; that truck and at least two other trucks from the same company were then lit on fire and a national highway was closed for several hours before police took control. Two rival politicians got into an argument which became so heated one took refuge in a nearby police station; the other followed him in and shot him to death. In the melee that followed, the dead politician's supporters killed a constabul by lighting him on fire, burnt the police station down and burned at least five police vehicles. Police captured two Maoist leaders and then the Maoists blew up several train stations near where we were staying in retribution. The list goes on and on.
In a country with over one billion people, some will undoubtedly be mean and violent. The news outlets, of course, seek these people and their stories out so they can sell the most newspapers and titilate the most viewers. However, even with these caveats, Indian people, while generally not violent, seem to live with and tolerate an amount of violence in their culture than most Americans would find truly remarkable and alarming. Despite train stations being blown up nearby and trains threatened, the trains were still overflowing. As soon as the burnt wreckage of the trucks was removed, the highway re-opened and traffic flowed normally. No one seemed particularly disturbed by (realized) threats of Maoist violence or the notion of mob justice run rampant. The culprits rarely seem to be caught and no one seems to care about that. It's hard to juxtaposition this reaction with the peaceful disposition of most Indians; 30% are vegetarian for example. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, but I think it is a good indication that bloody video games are much less likely than handguns and real violence to make one innured to violence. As an American accustomed to hearing about the degredation of culture and our “new” violent culture, it definitely gives me some perspective and food for thought.

India

[guest post by Ryan]

India has been a crazy, crazy whirlwind so far, and it will only get moreso. We flew out of Vietnam on the night of the 17th, spent a handful of hours in Bangkok and then flew into Kolkata (Calcutta) early the next morning. After clearing health inspection, immigration and customs, we got our (many) bags and attempted to buy a SIM card for our phone so we could give the taxi driver directions to the person's house where we were dropping off some extra bags. We found out that India has extremely tight security around their SIM cards...without several letters, foreigners can't get one at all. So we figured out the taxi system and talked our way into using someone else's cell phone to call the woman. We went to her house, dropped off our bags and immediately had to head out to the train station. The drive there past through much of the city; slums and nice sections. The mix of vehicles/bodies on the road was very surreal---trucks, buses, cars/taxis, motorcycles, bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, regual rickshaws (yes, actual human-pulled carts), push-carts, water buffalo, cows, donkeys, dogs, pedestrians and several harder-to-describe conveyances all competed for use of the same roads. Chaos reigned.
Once at the train stations, we figured out how to buy tickets onto the train we needed and then where to catch the train---neither of which were easy tasks given the amount of English the others' spoke and the amound of Bengali Cori and I speak. We found the train, but we were too late to buy seat tickets. So Cori and I sat on the edge of the train car with our legs dangling outside the train for most of the three hour journey to Katwa. During the journey, an amazing array of goods were offered for sale: coffee, tea, water, comic books, learn-to-read books, clean seats (via children sweeping your seat and surrounds), snacks of all description, shirts, ties, belts and many other things could all be purchased from vendors climbing on and off the trains. The biggest surprise to me was that no one offered any livestock for sale (or at least not that I noticed). I'll also spare you the details of the fun of using a squat toilet without TP on a jerky train...
Anyway, near the end of the journey, a couple seats opened up and Cori and I took them, as the romance of sitting on the edge of the train was waning with the increasing downpour (it's monsoon season here). Shortly thereafter, a transvestite (apparently working as an uninvited entertainer, which is common in India as it turns out) worked her way up the aisle to my seat and promptly sat in my lap, kissed me and attempted the cuddle me, much to the amusement of the other riders. Thus I learned that lap dances from transvestites were another item on sale in Indian trains. In any case, after a bit longer we finally arrived in Katwa, where we took bicycle rickshaws to our hotel and met with our collaborator there.
The next day, after very little rest for our weary selves, we sampled from 6:30am until 1pm when the skies opened up (monsoon season, remember). The sampling was particularly difficult because the dogs here are actually feral so, for the most part, we had to actually catch them ourselves instead of having help from locals. We did attract a lot of interest from locals, however; at one point we had at least 200 people crowding around watching what we were doing (and, I think, taking bets on whether or not we'd get bitten). We've also been interviewed for the local news and by a local blogger in India. After the rain started, we headed off to our collaborator's school, where he is a teacher. We met most of the teachers in a meeting, received small gifts, made a little speech explaining our research and went on our way.
The next day's sampling was partially recorded on video, some of which is posted on YouTube and linked from this blog. It involved our first sampling at a hospital for mentally challenged individuals— this wor does take us to many interesting places where we meet many interesting people. After sampling that day, we shared a bottle of whiskey with our collaborator and his friends (and sung American and Indian folk songs while doing so), went to be at 10:30pm and awoke at midnight to pack and head to a 1:10am train. We waited at.the tiny train station until 4:15am, when the train finally showed up (at which point we were told it always ran 3 hours late). So we arrived in Kolkata at 7:45am for our 7:15am flight out of Kolkata. After an hour's taxi ride through Kolkata rush hour, we arrived at the airport to wait in a long, crazy line in order to be able to explain our situation and buy tickets on the evening flight to Bhubaneswar. We then spent a couple hours driving into Kolkata, a few hours running errands downtown, a couple hours back to the airport and then took the flight to Bhubaneswar. Sampling there went well, though I'll save that for another blog post. I think Cori is posting about our sampling in Hazaribagh after Bhubaneswar and that takes us to now (tonight in a random hotel in Ranchi about to fly to Chennai tomorrow morning).
I also have one more post on PNG and one on Vietnam on the way, as well as a couple more on India. If I can ever get the time to write...

608 dogs sampled
26 flights
11 time zones
188:15 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]
47,085 travel miles
21 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)
17 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

Welcome to the 19th century

We've just spent a few days in Hazaribagh, a town in India so completely off the map that visiting there was a bit like stepping back into the Raj. But then, that may just have been the person we were staying with.

Meet Bulu Imam:



Bulu is a true gentleman scholar, in the sense of the gentlemen who used to do all great scholarly research. He has time, and boundless energy, and so has devoted these two things to:

1. Stopping global warming, especially via coal mining near his home.
   
2. Conserving, discovering and studying the prehistoric antiquities of the area near his home
3. Conserving and studying the current culture, specifically the art, of the area near his home
4. Dogs, and promoting the Santal dog bread
5. Sharing his vast knowledge with as many people as he can manage
6. Writing poetry and prose
7. Painting
8. Tiger hunting, or, nowadays that it's no longer leagal or fashionable, telling tiger hunting stories
   

Not necessarily in that order. Bulu is deeply charming, tells wonderful stories, and knows all about the dogs of his region. After all, they're part of the people's lives here, much in the same way they've always been part of his life, traveling around on hunts and chasing after small game. This is Rosie, his pride and joy, archetype of the Santal breed, save for being just slightly too large:

Bulu's house is large and made of several different outbuildings, including a huge maze-like building build of mud in the traditional style, with all the wonderful built in quirks that a child building a snow fort might add, except more permanent. There's also Bulu's large family's home, a museum of local art, and another outbuilding with a few more rooms where we stayed, all set amdist a gorgeous mossy overgrown tropical garden. Complete with servants (for someone who can barely handle room service, this takes getting used to), meals cooked over an open fire, mosquito nets, huricane lamps, and full libraries, it was a bit like living a very long time ago for a few days. I can't say I agreed with everything, but we got our samples, and enjoyed the company and a bit of rest for a few days. Every bit of India will manage to be different, I think, but this was probably the bit I was expecting least of all.

Travel stats update

24 flights
11 time zones
179:15 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]
46,128 travel miles
21 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)
17 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

Muzzling dogs

Due to popular demand, and a very helpful collaborator, we've finally got video of us capturing and sampling dogs. Sadly, we only had one video of us muzzling a dog so we didn't have much to choose from. It's a little amateur hour, but it gives a decent idea of the process for muzzling dogs that do not want to be muzzled. This is video from a hospital for mentally disabled people where some of the patients kept dogs, so we had additional concerns in keeping people back which made it a little more difficult, but the patients there were very sweet and helpful generally.



While this guy freaks out a bit, he was not hurt at all, just scared of the leash. We're tapping him on the head because we didn't want him chewing through the lead, as we're down to three leads now, and still have to finish sampling in India. We'll post more videos of actually taking blood and such in a bit.

[Guest post by Ryan, with bits by Cori, heh]

Kayaking with Jellyfish

[guest post by Ryan]

Our last day in PNG we went to an island where we could snorkel and kayak. Due to the extremely rainy weather, we were the only toursits on the island all morning (compared with about 8 staff members and a handful of wallabies an birds of paradise). We still managed to have great snorkeling, however (gotta love the always-warm northern Coral Sea waters). We saw a enormous diversity of corals and fish along with most of the characers from Finding Nemo. The fish came in every shade of color and some were absolutely gorgeous. In the afternoon we went kayaking. At first it was pretty normal then we saw more and more jellyfish in the water. They were pretty and interesting and so we were enjoying ourselves. Then my leg started tingling. I moved my leg to sit in a better position and there, right next to/under where my leg had been, was a jelly with very long purple tentacles. After paddling in trying hard not to touch it, we asked what kind of jelly it was. Apparently a Portugese Man O War. Somehow, luckily, I avoided being stung. So now I have been tandom kayaking with a Portugese Man O War.

Vietnam: thoughts, landscapes and cute puppies.

Maybe this is because I was a military brat, raised mostly during peacetime, mainly after the cold war was ended, but Vietnam to me has always been at least somewhat about the war Americans fought here. This was the war that I heard songs about, saw movies about, heard people talk about.

I think so many places on earth are like this for Americans--civilizations have existed in the fertile crescent for millennia, but in the emotional lives of Americans, it's still just Iraq, the place we sent American soldiers to die. That's what resonates. Bosnia is just a country that had a bloody civil war a decade ago, Lebanon is where Israel drops bombs, Rwanda is where they commit genocide, and places like Papua New Guinea, that haven't made news since the Japanese invaded in WWII, don't even really register on our radar. The great events that shape nations are what make news, but they don't constitute all or even nearly all of the existence of those nations they occur in. Still, they make up a decent proportion of our conception of places not America.

This of course is not a uniquely American phenomena--the young woman who translated for us in Turkey, while very (unnecessarily) concerned for our safety in Ankara, voiced her concern by saying, "It's like Texas out there!" Meaning, it's not safe. Now, I've only ever been to airports in Texas, and I'm sure that there are places that are not safe, but my general impression of the state is that it's not a particularly dangerous place, even if it's a bit more intimidating to outsiders than other places in America. I'm sure there are a lot of Texans out there that would be very surprised to know that an Albanian woman living in a country that borders Iraq considers Texas so treacherous. But I guess people overseas hear a lot about Texans owning guns, and so assume it can't be safe.

All of which is just to say, you can read a ton about what a place is like, and know it's history backwards and forwards, and you still will have very little actual concept of what the country is like. Knowing its history can help offer post-hoc explanations of why it is what it is, but it can never help you totally predict a place.

So what is Vietnam actually like? Well, in my experience, it's beautiful and challenging and full of stubborn but kind people. I have to say, after slogging around after dogs in the northern hills for a week, it would SUCK BALLS to fight such an ultimately pointless war here. Clearly wars suck all the time anyways (what is it good for, absolutely nothing!), but ultimately pointless wars must suck exponentially more (Good God, yall!). Fighting an ultimately pointless war in a country with this kind of weather, and this incredible feeling of remoteness probably ranks among the top miserable human experiences of all times.

Vietnam is hot and sticky in the summer. I don't mean hot like Qatar, where people at least have the good sense to sleep through the middle of the day. I mean so humid and sticky that you can't tell where the humidity ends and your own sweat begins. The upside (have you noticed that Ryan and I always find the upside?) of this is the incredibly beautiful and lush vegetation. Also, endlessly charming picture-postcard terraced rice paddies being farmed literally by the hands of women and men wearing conical hats. When you see tourist photos of places you think, clearly most of the country can't look like that. But really, much of the northern part of this country actually does look like this:



or this:



or this:



Trust me. I drove through most of it on bad roads in a full 4x4. I had lots of time to figure out what it looks like.

So, it's beautiful here. While there's definitely a somewhat intimidating socialist bureaucracy, it has run pretty smoothly for us thanks to a very capable collaborator. I've gotten quite good at ignoring the response to tense up when I see red epaulets with yellow stars, a reaction I didn't expect in myself given that I'm not exactly a big war movie buff or anything like that. As a westerner, it's quite hard to tell just how much people in such uniforms are actually responsible for getting in the way of everyday goals for people here--it might be nominally socialist, but I don't think I've ever been anywhere quite so eagerly capitalist. People's living rooms double as store fronts and everywhere seems to be selling something.

Still, it's a beautiful and cheap place. I'm sick of Pho for breakfast and miss dairy products, but other than that, Vietnam has been lovely and fascinating.

Also, there are adorable dogs:

Muzzling the dog

Is frequently one of the most dangerous parts. In this instance, I allow Cori et al to muzzle the dog while I take a series of photos: [guest post by Ryan]

Bride price

[guest post by Ryan]

Papua New Guinea has a culture of large gifts cementing trade and other relations. People compete to give away as much as possible in feasts and through direct gifts and, through the sheer size and quality of their gifts, become big men. Also receiving a gift obligates one to try to repay it plus some. One corollary to this is bride pirce, a negotiated price paid by a groom's family to the bride's family. These sums can be enormous---up to 100,000 kina plus other small gifts. One of our guides' families just finished paying off his brother's bride price---72,000 kina or about $25,000. To put this in perspective, correcting for GDP differences between the USA and Papua New Guinea, this would be the equivalent of a guy's family paying his bride's family about $400,000. No ideas, Leigh (besides isn't a grandchild worth more than $400,000?).

PNG Vignette 2

[guest post by Ryan]

Air Niugini Adventures

Wednesday: Make reservation for a round-trip flight to the Highlands. Told we should pay for them and get actual tickets issued Friday at 3.
Friday at 3:05 (at international terminal): “We're sorry the system is down. We cannot book tickets. Come back later.”
Friday at 3:20 (at domesticterminal): “We're sorry the system is down. We cannot book tickets. Come back later.”
Friday at 4:15 (at downtown office): “We're sorry the system is down. We cannot book tickets. Come back later.”
Friday at 6:00: “We're sorry the system is down. We cannot book tickets. Come back later.”
Saturday at 8:30am: “We're sorry the system is down. We cannot book tickets. Come back later.”
Saturday at 11am: “We're sorry the system is down. We cannot book tickets. Come back later.”
Saturday at 3pm: “We're sorry the system is down. We cannot book tickets. Come back later.”
Us: So what can we do? … after trying for a couple hours, we get them to book us stand-by tickets for the next day's flight, but they can only book the outbound flight and it costs 90% of a round-trip ticket.
Sunday at 3pm (trying to buy return ticket): “We're sorry the system is down. We cannot book tickets. Come back later.”
Tuesday at 2pm: “The airport has just been held up. It's closed now. Come back later.”
Tuesday at 5pm: Now business as usual at the airport and can finally buy our return ticket.

Also of interest is Air Niugini's listed reasons for canceling flights for which it won't reimburse travelers for expenses:
(1)Volcanic ash
(2)Tribal war
(3)Thunderstorms/floods
(4)Civil disturbance

[Welcome to developing world airlines 101.]

PNG Vignette 1

[guest post by Ryan]

Conversation with Taxi Driver in Port Moresby:
Cabbie: Where go?
Us: Comfort Inn

Cabbie: You know it dangerous at night.
Us: Yes, that is why we got a taxi.

Cabbie: Tonight very dangerous.
Us: Oh?
Cabbie: Other taxi just got held up.
Us: Oh that sucks. Is everyone ok?
Cabbie: Yes. It's okay. Happens every night.
Us: That really sucks.
Cabbie: Yes, raskols everywhere.

Cabbie: I'm from Manus....One time I robbed a plane.
Us: O...K...
Cabbie: My boys and I got guns and I pointed gun at pilot's head and told him I would shoot him.
Us: Uh...huh...then what happened?
Cabbie: Army came and we ran into the bush.
Us: Did you get into trouble?
Cabbie: No. Government took our land for airport so we were just getting payment. We rob another plane too.

Cabbie: One time raskols rob my cab. Had to get 7 stitches (points to the back of his head).
Us: Oh, that sucks.
Cabbie: I didn't see them except one of them. I remember his face exact.
Us: OK.
Cabbie: Then I saw him in that park over there. I didn't do nothing though. Called my boys over.
Us: We see...
Cabbie: We chased him. We caught him. Then we cut off his hands.

Cabbie: Now he has no hands.

Cabbie: OK. 13 kina 10.

A few exemplary pictures from the highlands of PNG

These are betel nuts. Everyone in Papua New Guinea chews them (mixed with lime (like from limestone) and mustard incessantly and spits out the blood red juice.
This is what it looked like when they got Ryan and I to try them. I don't think we'll be taking it up any time soon:
A bit more fun: Me taking blood out of the back of the 4 x 4.
And this deeply charming bit: An old woman who adopted Ryan as her son, and in the tradition of mother-in-laws to their daughters, gave me a bilum (the string bag). SO MANY BILUMS (seriously, I have like eight now.)
Here's the women making the bilums. They are constantly busy with them, which may explain why they feel they can give them away, even in a society full of people with so little.

All in all, it was an amazing trip. We would highly recommend PNG to any bold/independent travelers, especially those looking to meet charming local people while visiting beautiful mountains. Spend as much time as you can in the remote areas and you'll have a wonderful time.

Beaten path? What beaten path?

Greetings from Kuala Lumpur! We're currently in the airport here, wishing the free wifi worked just a bit better. Much of this post was written in Goroka, a town in the highlands which literally cannot be reached overland from the capitol city--there are no roads connecting Port Morseby to the highlands. Papua New Guinea is beautiful and still wonderfully wild, and we really enjoyed traveling around there. We're not much for the beaten path.

That, by the way, is how we found ourselves in that tiny church in Goreme--we drove past the main part of the World Heritage Site there, which looked crowded, was closing, and cost a good bit of money. Instead, we chose a random sign marking the tiny Reflection Church, and wound up exploring the cool empty caves Ryan mentioned in his last post.

Now, Paris and Belgium and Amsterdam were all lovely, but god, soooo many tourists. We managed to have some really nice meals in very local places, but following the Rick Steve's Paris guide's advice for delicious dinner locations, even if the book as excellent as the Amazon.com reviews say it is, doesn't totally let you feel as though you're eating like a local... Especially when half the other tourists are also carting around the same little blue and yellow Paris guidebooks.

Now, mind, all the other tourists here are toting around little Lonely Planet Guidebooks to PNG and the Solomons, but it's hard to feel like too much of a tourist when you spend your time in villages where few white people have ever visited--while we were in Port Morseby we took trips out to Gaba Gaba and Porebada, two coastal towns with very helpful people.

From Goroka, we drove to Upper Bena, home of the Bena Bena people, who were amazingly kind, generous, and engaged in what we were doing. The genuine fascination with a scientific project on dogs caught me off guard a bit--I'm always surprised how much of this project transcends different cultures and educational levels and amounts of biological understanding. I'm so pleased that even in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, people understand that by collecting blood from dogs in many places, you can tell something about the similarities and differences between groups of dogs. It's quite cool as a scientist to arrive somewhere and have the people there find your research not just strange or interesting as a curiosity, but actually engaging and even relevant to their lives.

As I was typing this, an Australian couple came and asked us about the internet--they commented on our clear internet addiction and we pleaded our withdrawal from the web in Papua New Guinea. That led to questions about why we'd gone there and a whole bunch of inquiries about what it was like, and so even here, in the airport, with strangers, we're always finding people interested in what we do, asking questions about dogs and travel and science. Awesome.

Anyways: Back to the Papuan Highlands

In Bena Bena we stayed with a local council president, who put us up in a thatched bamboo hut. Amazing how well you can keep warm in a cold highlands night in one of those. The people were shockingly welcoming. It's truly amazing to me when people who clearly have so little are so generous-hearted--one of the older women adopted Ryan as a son and me as a daughter-in-law and different people in the villages we visited insisted on giving us no less than five traditional string bags (bilums), two highland hats, and a bow and arrow for Ryan. I was quite glad that our being there also gave something to the community, but even despite that the generosity and kindness of the people we met was stunning.

Back from Papua New Guinea

[guest post by Ryan]

We just got back out of Papua New Guinea and are now in the Kuala Lumpur airport, back in the land of free and readily available Wi-Fi. We had a great time in PNG and will have several blog posts about it forthcoming. We are headed to Ha Noi now and then the northern reaches of Vietnam where I think there will be more internet than PNG, hopefully. For the first blog post, I'll post some photos of our sampling in the coastal areas of PNG near Port Moresby. Later we'll have photos of our Highlands sampling and some stories---there were some great moments! Without further adieu, some photos with blurbs for context:

Me weighing one of the dogs; always a favorite with the children.

Cori showing off her cassowary-feather bag (bilum) given to her by the village leader's wife. It was the first of eight bilums we got...

Cori appearing as the Virgin Mary in the midst of the villagers (damn dirty lens). In any case, all those people crowded around the truck we were sampling in for the entire time!

The dogs in PNG were very small (some as small as 6 pounds full-grown); the smallest we've sampled yet. Many of them also had cute, enormous bat ears, like this guy here.

A very proud dog owner with his less-than-thrilled muzzled best friend.

Smiles all around :).

Cori drawing blood in the bed of a pick-up truck by the sea.

Cori drawing blood on the verandah of a stilt house over the sea.

The view from said verandah.

This dog does not look particularly comfortable/willing, but she's quite cute.

Such a friendly, friendly dog making friends with Cori!

The guys helping us at the Port Moresby Pound. Not a fun place to work and I'm sure they get paid a pittance, but there are people like this all over the world helping animals in whatever way they can.

This is a very mangy dog at the Port Moresby Pound. The way this pound works is that they get calls from people about very, very sick dogs on the streets. Then they collect the dogs and determine if they are beyond the ability to save. If so, they euthanize them. It sounds barbaric, but really this seems like one of the more humane and targeted ways at controlling the problems associated with unrestricted street dog populations. Still it was sad to see and take blood from several dogs destined to be euthanized in the next couple days.

When the dogs arrive at the Port Moresby Pound, they are washed---with up to a dozen dogs in a cage! They are not well-funded and do the best with what they have, but it was sad to see the conditions there. You certainly can't blame the Pound employees though who seemed to be doing the best they could with the resources they had.

Also, here are our current stats:

20 flights

9 time zones

139:15 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]

39,846 travel miles

18 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)

14 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

Turkey Photos II

Driving along a random dirt track on the Marmara Coast that we stumbled upon accidentally. Adventure and "off the beaten track" just seems to find us...


The ampitheater at Troy. One of the best preserved buildings there.

Some building foundations at Troy and the view from Troy. As you can see, it occupied the high ground and allowed one to see for miles in all directions. For those of you who've read Homer, it puts his works in more perspective.
Troy is actually 9 successive cities built one after another, each on top of the one before it. This picture allows one to see three layers in one area. It's a bit like paleontology, finding the layers and the expected remains in each. Unfortunately Troy was discovered and initially excavated by a treasure hunter in the 1870's, so much of it was poorly excavated resulting in damage to the site and most of the best removable finds were taken away from Troy and out of Turkey.

We saw no fewer than five enormous versions of the Trojan horse as we neared Troy.

Turkish, while at least using a Latin alphabet with a few additional letters, was not particularly easy to learn on the fly. But the again, neither was Croatian (I'm sorry but Zwj is not a valid start to a word).

So many sunflowers.

OMG there were so many sunflowers.

A mountain pass on the small road to Amasra. Such a pretty, pretty road. They were also demolishing part of the mountain to build a larger road as we came through the pass so it got very smoky.

A cute mosque along a stream that followed the road to Amasra for miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers I suppose). There were so many cute villages with cute mosques and also, as it was Friday evening, a number of people dressed in traditional garb, some even with drums, walking along the road.

Turkey Photos I

[guest post by Ryan]

So we haven't written much about Turkey especially given that we spent 10 days there and drove around nearly the entire country. It was quite the adventure, even if it was frustrating at times. There was the hustle and bustle of Istanbul, scenic country driving and several seafronts to drive along. There was a day with 16-17 hours of driving in which we would up sampling only three dogs. We laughed, we cried, it was better than Cats. In any case, I think we've made a strategic decision to spare most of the details and instead will share several photos in this post and the next with a few short stories or details regarding some of them. Plus this way we can feel "caught up" and focus on blogging what we're actually doing now instead of staying two weeks behind!

One of the things we noticed driving around Turkey is that, more than anything else, Turks seem to enjoy two things: patriotic displays and funny hats. For example, there were flags EVERYWHERE (some buildings had a half dozen or more; any hill of more than three meters had one on top). Often they'd combine their two loves and have a statue of some patriotic figure wearing a funny hat.


This was a beautiful sunset in Cappadocia, which is a very beautiful area. This is specifically in Goreme, which is a World Heritage Site where all the houses, churches, etc were carved into the rocks.

These were our impromptu hosts in Cappadocia. They showed us around the random 5th century church (see below) and fed us a home-cooked meal with homemade wine. They also entertained us with some dancing. If any of you go to Cappadocia, we highly recommend looking for the Lemon House which is up past most of the touristy sites on the road through town.

See, the homemade wine is in the plastic jug on the table... (it actually was pretty good).

Here are some pictures of the 5th century church called the Church of the Reflection in Goreme. When you arrive there along a seemingly forgotten path past the touristy area, you're greeted by a very friendly guy who gives you a mini-tour, allows you to explore the church alone some with provided flashlights and, after it all, serves you tea. All for about $2 each. The church was built directly into the stone and had a couple decorative rooms at the front.

The church had tiny passageways to interior and 2nd floor rooms with Indian Jones-style rocks that could be slid across the passageways to seal them off.

I only just barely fit through the doorways....

Here's a picture of the old part of the city of Goreme, completely built into the stone.

Another photo from Cappadocia:

Here's a view of beautiful Amasra, Turkey, on the western end of the Black Sea coast. The water in the Black Sea was surprisingly warm.

Western Europe Trip in Pictures

[guest post by Ryan]

Some beautiful stained glass in a European church. The Catholic Church does know how to do imposing and grandeur. No arguments there.

Sacre-Coeur on Paris' Montmartre. Gorgeous. Pretty cool interior as well, though way too touristy for our tastes generally (but better than Notre Dame in that sense).

Ryan (me) at the North Sea, one of 9 bodies of water I've entered thus far on the trip (Persian Gulf, Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea, Sea of Marmara, Dardinelle Straits, Aegean Sea, Adriatic Sea, North Sea, Coral Sea)

Saint Deny statue in Paris, featuring Saint Deny carrying his head up Montmartre after he was beheaded partway up it when his executioners became too tired to walk the rest of the way up. Legend has it he then picked up his head and hiked the rest of the way up before collapsing dead at the top.

Cori feeling very special drinking champagne out of a Paris souvenir mug in front of the lighted Eiffel Tower, waiting for the hourly lights show (which actually is just them randomly turning on and off white lights all over the tower...an epileptic's nightmare).

Cori with the Mons monkey. Mons is the town in southern Belgium I lived in for some of high school. They have a gorgeous Grand Place (town square) and an inexplicable little brown monkey statue on one of the buildings in it that you rub for good luck. Especially if you're a primatologist.

Chariot in the church in Mons. Every year they put the patron saint's body (in one container above the altar) and head (in another container on the side of the church) in this chariot, pull it to midway between Mons and a nearby city, have it meet up with a chariot containing her husband's body from that neighboring city's church and then pull it back to Mons. They have to pull/push it up a hill at the end to get it back into the church. Legend has it that when they don't succeed on the first try there's bad luck that year (as in 1914 when in September Mons featured the first shots of WWI...on November 11, 1918 Mons also was the scene of the last shots of WWI).

Canals in Brugge, Belgium...so cute...though many of the towns we went to had canals.

Beer from the ancient brewery we stayed at in Michelen, Belgium (though sadly the bar was closed during our visit but the beer vending machines worked and several nearby restaurants served their brew):

Cori's uber-girly Hoegaarden Rosee (which was what she switched up to from other uber-girly framboises):

Wtf, Australia?

Actually, more "WTF, Air Niugini?" the airline that canceled our 7 am flight to Port Moresby without emailing us or contacting us in any way. We showed up a full seven hours before their one flight today, which leaves at noon. Clearly I haven't spent enough time in airports in the past 48 hours, so the universe is sharing with me, again, the joys of mediocre overpriced food, uncomfortable chairs and severe sleep deprivation. Oy. We're hoping to use the extra couple hours of airport time to get some internet things sorted out--maybe those posts will show up after all. All and all, a less than auspicious start to our journey to PNG.

In the mean time, I bring you these random notes from Australian bathrooms: The toilet paper at the hostel we stayed at in Cairns was a brand called "Eloquence." I think I'll just let that speak for itself. Also, the airport bathrooms are labeled "Female toilet" and "Male toilet" as though the toilets themselves are women and men. I'm letting these little quirks amuse me, because the alternative is curling up in an exhausted ball on the airport floor and whining at a loud volume, which is still, somehow, below my dignity.

Photos from Croatia

Ryan with a very cute boar-hunting puppy from Croatia (well, the adult dogs, not that puppy, hunts boar).


OMG more cute puppies (we saw SO MANY in Croatia):

Sign seen outside our dorm in Zagreb:

Two local helpers from Bosnia where we sampled stray dogs around a particular town. They were great about showing us where all the dogs hang out and introducing us to the local dog owners. We've found the same thing happening in many places throughout the world---kids just love helping us out. At first they didn't want any pay but they finally relented and accepted ice cream. As a human interest story, one of them lost their dad in the Bosnian war and the other one's dad lost a leg. In fact in Bosnia we saw much more war damage than in Croatia---lots of buildings with RPG holes, etc. Lots of men missing limbs, etc. Our trip through a number of former war zones has been quite sobering.

More puppies! Trying to sample one of them its littermates just got in the way (while Ryan took pictures and laughed instead of separating them). Ah the joys of fieldwork.

Travel to Australia

[guest post by Ryan]

So we arrived (finally!) in Cairns yesterday and spent the afternoon on the beach (sadly it was too late to go to the Great Barrier Reef though the snorkling in PNG is supposed to be awesome). We completed a trip in less than a week that took us from above the 52nd parallel north to south of the 37th parallel south! It was only 40 degrees F in Melbourne, in fact. Anyway a quick update to our stats and then I'm going to try to post some pictures from earlier in our trip before flying to Port Moresby in a few hours.

14 flights
9 time zones
100:15 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]
33,527 travel miles
16 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)
13 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

Still alive, and headed for the other side of the world.

Yeah, so that whole science thing got in the way of our actually writing about science. Sorry about the absence—we’re back for the second half of our journey and eager to get you up to speed ASAP. We are still alive, and very much still traveling. Even this post got kind of intercepted by a failed attempt at typing on a French keyboard in the airport, hence the strike-throughs....

Right now we’re sitting in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris Changi Airport in Singapore, waiting for the longest flight that either of us has ever been on, from Paris to Singapore our flight to Melborne. The next part of our travels is taking us to Papua New Guinea. I’ll admit, I absolutely adored traveling through Europe, but I am also absolutely giddy at getting back to some place more remote—no where we’ve gone yet this summer has truly been off the beaten track, and I really miss traveling places where there aren’t Starbucks.

The downside of that, however, is that it might limit our connectivity with the rest of the world. In about fifteen hours, we’ll be Right now we are in Singapore for a quick stop. Then we fly to Melborne, then to Cairns, Australia, arriving about a day and a half from now. (Mom, that will be at about 9 pm your time on July 26, 2009). We’re pretty certain we’ll be able to find internet in Australia, but after that it may be less than convenient. We’re spending just one night in Cairns, and leaving on a 7am fight for Port Morsby, PNG.

I can come up with few places more remote or challenging to travel in than PNG. There’s not totally a government, barely any tourist infrastructure, and river valleys so wild that basically any entomologist or botanist who walks a mile in from the ocean is guaranteed to find something no one’s ever described before. This is the kind of adventure I miss having.

It’s also the kind of adventure that doesn’t do great things for one’s internet connectivity. I’m sure this is far more frustrating for us, particularly because I’m at the point in the journey where I want to snuggle every small child I see because I miss my son. Still, we both do really want to share our stories more with anyone who wants to listen, and hope that there’s a few listeners still out there. Either way, we’re hoping to send out posts about Goreme (a bizarre Cappadocian village carved into rock formations), Croatia’s very cool dog breads and Belgian breweries and beer in the next little bit. Look out for those, and for much increased travel stats in the next couple days

Updated stats, courtesy of my lovely husband:
12 flights
8 time zones
84:15 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]
27,854 travel miles
15 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)
12 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

Just a quick update

[guest post by Ryan]

We're done now in Croatia and about to take a week off in Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Hopefully during that time we can catch up some on blogging. Things here have been hectic but great. For the moment I only have time to update our stats:

9 flights
7 time zones
56 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]
17,216 travel miles
11 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)
9 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

One last post about Lebanon

[from Ryan]

Yes, we're almost done in Turkey so we should blog about that, but we did enjoy Lebanon so much and were talking about this simile between ourselves for awhile so we figured we should post it. Driving around the rural areas of Lebanon is a lot like how the Godfather depicted driving around Sicily when their movies are set. I hope that conjures up nice images for everyone and explains why we liked it so much (especially seeing as we were treated as part of "the family"...)

What do you do when you can't weigh a dog in the sling?

You estimate it's weight:

Travel stats to Turkey

[from Ryan]

Just to keep things up to date, here are our current travel stats:

8 flights
7 time zones
50 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]
13,549 travel miles
6 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)
4 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

Lebanon

[guest post by Ryan]

This is a long overdue post about Lebanon, which is a beautiful country full of very welcoming people and great food. For starters, we saw basically the entire country. We went north along the coast to Tripoli, south along the coast to Tyre (as far south as foreigners can go---even here there are UN tanks guarding the roads) and along nearly the entire extent of the Bekaa Valley an into the Anti-Lebanon Mountains. At times we were mere meters from the Syrian border (our GPS was unsure of which side we were on) and of course at times we were in the Mediterranean :).



Given the kind of people/travelers Cori and I are, we most enjoyed the remote mountains at the Lebanese-Syrian border. The views were breathtaking and the people were very nice, offering us to enter their tents/homes, giving us coffee and giving us great fresh food (goat meat, bread and mixed goat/sheep yogurt is great when it's served incredibly fresh).

We stayed across the street from the American University of Beirut, a thoroughly modern university regarded as one of the best in the Middle East. The area of town was nice as it was full of students (not tourists) and very alive. Below is a picture of one of AUB's buildings near its entrance:

While in Lebanon we also found some time to visit ancient ruins, which again were nice because they lacked the high volume of tourists found in such areas in Egypt, Turkey and the like. The ones pictured below are at Baalbek and date from 60 BC (or BCE if that's your style).

We also found some time to visit the souk (market) in Tripoli, pictured below. You could buy just about anything in the narrow alleyways there.

Europe meets Asia

Turkey so far has been a slightly odd and very interesting mix of east and west--very European in a lot of ways, but also very Asian as well. Just what you would expect from a country that's partially in Asia, partially in Europe. It's a very nationalistic country with HUGE flags everywhere (the Turkish flag is particularly striking blowing in the wind, so you can hardly blame them). At the same time, it's also a country clearly trying to get into the EU--whereas their Middle Eastern neighbors often quote prices in dollars, here things are in Euros. The country loves the internet--it's EVERYWHERE, and pretty fast--but the government (in a less than liberally European spirit) blocks youtube.com. It's a strangly ambivalent sort of philosophy--half the country seems to want one thing and half the country wants the other. Or maybe everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too, but they keep changing their minds about which they want more. None of which is a bad thing, really--it makes for an incredibly passionate and interesting experience. But it is unfamiliar and constantly surprising. Keeps you on your toes, hehe.

This is sort of like what it's like to visit here as well. It's beautiful, fascinating and enchanting, but also hard to predict. At least we managed to get 45 samples within nine hours of landing. Here's hoping we have more luck like that.

The promised awesome pictures are up on the previous post. We've arrived safely in Istanbul, which is beautiful. We can see the Blue Mosque from the roof of our hotel.

Also, big props to Turkish airlines for fitting us in on a later flight for free when we overslept our alarm for their 340am flight. Thank god that worked out.

So you want to sample a village dog's blood....

Actually, likely you really, really don't. But I do, and so I'm going to explain how you actually do it here. It's one of those grunt work type parts of science (that is, it's data collection) but relatively pleasant and interesting, since its often pretty challenging. Plus, the perks (international travel to places waaaaaay off the beaten track) are excellent.



So, here's how we actually do it.

First, we put all of the following into a large duffel bag, and throw that into the back of a 4x4:

• butterfly needles (needles with wing shaped handles and tubing attached)
  
• Vacuum sealed test tubes
  
• Tube holders and needles (plastic holders and needles to puncture vacuum sealed tubes)
  
• alcohol swabs
• measuring tape
• data sheets
• sharpies
• pens
• leads (the kind you slip over a dog's neck)
  
• muzzles (in about eight sizes)
  
• camera
• a cooler with ice
• fish scale (suspensory scale)
  
• goat sling (a mesh sling for holding dogs from the scale)
  

Step 1: Find willing helpers. People looking for coauthorships and recommendations tend to be particularly good people to work with, as they're cheap and enthusiastic.

Step 2: Find dogs. If people keep them as pets or guards, this means driving around the countryside with translators (sometimes more than one) to explain your pressing need for blood from rural dogs. After many strange looks, most people are willing to help if only out of curiosity. I've often thought that it's probably particularly helpful that I'm female, as I get some especially strange looks diving onto riled up dogs with thick bite proof gloves. Novelty gets you a lot of interest.

If people don't keep dogs, we usually rely on shelters. Shelters are awesome because they usually have very calm, well-socialized dogs and enthusiastic staff. Also, it's great to be able to compensate people by donating to a dog shelter and helping the animals too.

We've also tried driving around looking for dogs, but this usually doesn't work as well.

Step 3: Restrain the dog. Get the owner or any other foolishly helpful soul (ie, me or Ryan or our collaborators) to put a lead on the dog. If it freaks out, let it do so until it runs low on energy. Then cautiously put a muzzle on the dog from behind:



If the dog is chill, that last bit is less necessary, which saves loads of time.

Step 4: Measure the dog. For breed dogs there are more than 30 of these measurments. We take six: body length, height, chest girth, chest width, face width, and snout length. Usually I call out these measurements to Ryan, who writes them down along with a number of other types of physical descriptions and takes pictures.

Step 5: Get the blood! Get someone strong and confident to hold the dog still and hold a forelimb so that the cephalic vein is obvious after an alcohol swab. Insert butterfly needle attached to tube holder and needle. When there's blood in the butterfly needle's tube, attach the vacuum tube. Wait, trying desperately to instill patience in a figity dog, for the tube to fill with five cc's of blood. Fiddle gently with the needle and pump the dogs paw to increase the speed of the flow.



Step 6: Weigh the dog (if it's under 50 lbs) using a fish scale and goat sling. Ignore the local people's laughter as the dog slips out of the sling for the third time before you can suspend the sling from the scale.

Step 7: Carefully release the dog, making sure no one lets go of the lead or muzzle before everyone's clear and they've really been removed from the dog. Losing one of four leads to a dog running away is not fun in the middle of a busy sampling day.

Apparently, with loads of helpers, tons of chill dogs, and an efficient system, you can take blood using this method (ie, steps 3-7) at a rate of about one dog every three minutes or so. At least, that's what we did today--seventy dogs in less than four hours.

Step 8: Mail blood home. Talk to people repeatedly about the lack of danger from healthy domestic dog blood and attach loads of letters making it clear that there is no value nor any troubling regulations on shipping this stuff.

And then we move onto the next country! That's how I'm spending my summer, and while it's exhausting and not fabulously intellectual, we're having a blast.

Driving in Lebanon

[Guest post by Ryan]

If driving at rush hour in Boston is coach pitch and driving in Southern Illinois (where I learned) is t-ball, then driving in Lebanon is the 9th inning of game 7 of the ALCS between the Red Sox and Yankees. I actually kind of like it---good driving skills are rewarded in a way that doesn't happen in America. You can make lanes wherever you fit, travel in whatever direction you feel like you can safely do so and make any maneuver you can successfully pull off. Traffic laws are either absent or unenforced, which is odd given the number of men with automatic weapons standing around the streets and the number of fortified positions featuring machine guns, tanks and grenade launchers that are sprinkled throughout the roads of the country (but they just politely waved us through all the checkpoints---it wasn't actually scary at all).

There are no limited-access divided highways in Lebanon. Most major highways are two lanes (sometimes expanded to 3 or even 4 lanes if people try to squeeze their cars into available spaces) each way with only a faint yellow line separating traffic that is supposed to be driving one way and traffic that is supposed to be driving the other way (see figure). Of course to pass or position themselves for turns, people enter the oncoming traffic lanes, even if they are on blind curves (it's pretty mountainous here). The furtherst lane on each side of the road is not only for slow traffic going the correct way, it's also nearly equally for slow traffic going the wrong way. Because left turns take a lot of skill and luck, people will avoid them by driving on the wrong side of the road for awhile. Add to that the people walking in the street, the people stopping their cars at random locations to chat to the people walking on the street, the barracades sprinkled along the roads and the double and triple parking, and you start to get the picture. While you frequently have to travel relatively slowly, as soon as there's an opening you're expected to speed up to 130-140 kph (around 80-85 mph). It's hell on the brakes and engine, but hey, it's a rental car.

Driving on the side streets is, if anything, worse. Though the odds of a catastrophic accident are lower due to lower speeds, the odds of a fender bender must be much greater. More than once I've actually had to fold in the mirrors to drive down the streets avoiding parked and slowly traveling cars.

Driving here is certainly not for the faint of heart or the non-aggressive, but the payoff for being a confident, good driver is so much higher than in the States---traffic laws are enforced only by natural selection; you don't have police unnaturally selecting against efficient drivers.

USA v Brazil

[guest post by Ryan]

Since our hotel's satellite went down today, Cori and I are at a nearby sheesha bar where they have an enormous projection TV set up for the big USA v Brazil FIFA Confederations Cup final due to begin in 10 minutes. This is huge---the first time the USA has ever played for a major FIFA championship. Of course we're the huge underdogs, but we were last time too against Spain. The 3rd place game earlier today (South Africa v Spain) was a thriller---hopefully this one will be too. While the commentary is in Arabic, it's kind of fun since the only words we routinely understand are "Gol" and "Kaka" (the latter being the name of one of the Brazilian attackers).

I may update this post with commentary as the game progresses (or maybe not, depending on how engrossed I get).

GO USA!

Lebanese Shepard Dogs

[guest post by Ryan]

I never thought I'd muzzle a bear until I met a 110-pound (about---he was too big for our scales) monster of a dog today. He had enormous, powerful jaws and a disposition that left a little to be desired (to be fair, he was being approached by three strangers carrying a leash, a muzzle and needles). But we got the job done with no problems.

While that dog was extraordinary, the shepards' dogs here in Lebanon are all large, powerful, not fond of humans and many have fairly long hair (alpine meadows get cold---we were sampling in the shadows of some mountains that still have snow on them in late June). I've had to use all my dog handling prowess learned over the course of sampling several hundred dogs previously to avoid direct bites and other damage. This is in stark contrast to the dogs in Qatar who were all well-socialized since they were shelter dogs. But we've been able to sample just about every dog we've been able to leash here in Lebanon, a testament to Cori's, my and Mounir's prowess with mammal handling (Mounir is a mammologist who frequently works with wild animals). One dog bit through a leash in 3 bites and then almost bit through the 2nd leash we got around it despite our best efforts.

Still, these have been some very cool dogs. They have been very healthy (in sharp contrast to the dogs in many places), they seem very good at what they do (guarding sheep), they are beautiful animals and they seem very confident and happy with their lives.

I'd love to write more about Lebanon and the dogs here, and to post pictures, but that will have to wait until we find a faster internet connection. Plus it's Saturday night in the most happening city in the Middle East and I don't want to spend it just in a loud internet cafe.

Does your summer job involve searching yourself for fleas?

Hello!
Apologies for the sudden silence--while our hotel in Qatar had very convinient internet, our connection here is both slow and not in the hotel, so we've unfortunately had to blog slightly less obsessively. This is actually a real shame as Lebanon has been an amazing country so far.

We arrived safely Wednesday night and Ryan got to work on his aggressive driving skills. Rules of the road are decidedly optional here, and I say that as someone who just came from Qatar after having their car hit. Otherwise, after Qatar, Lebanon is wonderfully warm personally and cool temperature-wise. You can definitely tell it's on the Mediterranean Sea, in no small part because every part of Beruit and its suburbs seems to be positioned for an ocean view from the top of a hill. But even without the views--the food is wonderful and central in the way it ought to be in a good country on the Med--our collaborator here, Mounir Abi Said, has been trying to expose us to as many different Lebanese foods as possible, and knows what is the most delicious everywhere. We've also had a wonderful home cooked meal with him and his family, and were treated to awesome goat's meat pastries and fresh picked cherries in the Beqqa Valley yesterday.

Mounir has also been incredibly good at helping us find interesting shepherd's dogs in remote locations. He's worked previously with many of the shepherds in the valley and so they've all been super helpful in part as a favor to him. We have insane pictures that we'll upload as soon as the internet situation improves of us in the middle of picturesque meadows in the Lebanese mountains, surrounded by sheep, Lebanese and Bedouin herders, their dogs (many of which look like my dog growing up--a husky-sheltie mix named Romeo), and our collaborators. Not a place I could've ever imagined being, but wonderfully beautiful and enjoyable. The only downside is that most of the goats, sheep, and dogs have fleas and ticks, which doesn't leave one with the cleanest feeling after sampling, but so far, we've not had any bad luck with them, touch wood. A shower after a day of sampling is one of the nicest things ever.

In any case, tomorrow is our day off and so we're hoping to do some touristy things like drive up to Tripoli. I'll tell more about the country after that, but after three days, I'm pretty sure that I'll want to come back and really relax instead of working: the food and scenery alone would make that worth it.

Stats:

7 flights

7 time zones

42 traveling hours

11,599 miles

5 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)

3 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

FAQs

Hello to any new readers coming by here via Pharyngula! Welcome!

Today is our last day in Qatar, and we'll be spending it packing up and shipping samples home. Lucky for us, this leaves us some time to address some of the issues discussed in the comments here. Therefore, without further ado, Frequently Asked Questions:

1. Have you ever been bitten?
Nope. Neither of us has ever been bitten, nor has any of the assistants or dog owners who help with the project. While Ryan and I both have pre-exposure rabies shots as a precaution, it's never been an issue. Any dogs that aren't well-socialized pets, or any pets showing any signs of aggression, we muzzle. Ryan and I were both trained in how to do this safely and we have dog handling gloves (big thick un-bite-through-able gloves) for extreme cases. Ryan's pretty adept at getting a muzzle on just about any dog so long as no one gets in his way, but we like our 0 bites record more than we like a perfectly unbiased sample. We think first about keeping people safe, and then consider trying to get as interesting as a sample (ie, with both aggressive and calm dogs) as possible. So far, we have far more trouble getting blood from shy or skittish dogs than mean ones. A mean dog you can get behind with a muzzle--a shy dog is off and running before you even get out of the 4x4.

2. What about cats?
Alright, I know that no one was really asking this question over in the comments, but we actually get it a lot, particularly in Muslim countries, where dogs are considered bad luck or dirty. Cat domestication is in general pretty well understood to have occured in the Middle East, and there's a lot fewer questions that we're interested in that can be addressed with them in terms of shared history with human beings. Also, we're just not cat people.

3. What about the really interesting dogs I saw in [insert country here]?
Tell us about them! We're always fascinated by the diversity of pups we see around the world and are also interested in breed formation in general. Not only do we sample village dogs, we're also always on the look out for interesting "local breeds." Some places do have very distinct dogs, like the Armanti dogs from a village outside Luxor in Egypt, built like wire-haired afghan hounds with slightly furnished (ie, mustacioed) muzzles.

4. What about other ways of getting DNA?
Blood is particularly awesome, because it's pretty easy (you try cheek swabbing a pissed off village dog) and also managable to stabilize. We are banking this DNA for future study whenever possible, so stability is important.

5. Have you heard about the domestication experiements with silver foxes?
Yes, we have! This was actually one of the studies that got Ryan and I interested in domestication in the first place. In fact, because of this study, we pay particular attention to pedomorphic traits like floppy ears and indicators of domestication like white patches of hair on the forehead and chest.

6. Have you heard about testing dogs for breeds using DNA?
Yes, and use similar methodology to ensure that we don't wind up looking at dogs whose genes have gone through a breed bottleneck.

7. How do you get the dogs?
It depends on the country. In Uganda and Namibia, we pulled up to random villages, had translators explain what we were trying to do, and people came out of the woodwork with their dogs. It's apparently quite a spectacle to see a dog weighed in a goat sling on a fish scale. In Egypt and Qatar, we worked mainly with local animal welfare organizations. These are great places to work, as they have very enthusiastic staff used to dealing with animals and the animals themselves are often better socialized than most pariah dogs. In Luxor, Egypt, we worked with Animal Care in Egypt (ACE), a charity that provides free veterinary care to animals of all shapes and sizes, but particularly the horses and donkeys that work in Luxor's tourist industry. In Qatar we've been working with Qatar Animal Welfare Society (QAWS), a great organization that houses a really ridiculous number of dogs and cats. Both of these organizations are incredibly supportive of animal welfare under really tough conditions, and have also been really supportive of our science. The people at ACE and QAWS all work their butts off every day of the week, and they took time to help out a couple of random grad student researchers on top of their already very full schedules. They more than deserve any support anyone can throw their way, and we're proud to have been able to donate to them through this project.

Okay. I think that's enough for now. Other questions, such as the ever important "How did you guys wind up doing this?" will be addressed in later posts.

As a final note, while we would be quite jealous of us if we weren't doing this with our summer, really, we're not trying to brag about what we do. We're proud of our ability to do it, but mostly we're just really grateful that our wonderful collaborators have given us this opportunity, and really, really, really excited to be able to travel the world and meet loads of amazing dogs and even more amazing people.

Why are we sampling village dogs?

This is a guest post by Ryan.


One of the questions we frequently get is why we are taking blood from mostly unwanted, "village" or "pariah" dogs. These questions come from those who have a real interest in the science and those that just dislike dogs and can't imagine anyone would be interested in them, let alone in unbred street dogs. For the purposes of this post, I'll assume readers fall in the former group. First, let's start with the basic theoretical justification.

For the moment, ignore the 15,000 years ago bit. What we know is that dogs are most related to Eurasian grey wolves and therefore were domesticated from them, presumably somewhere in Eurasia. Sometime in the past, when dogs were intially domesticated, a population of wolves became dogs through either selective breeding by humans or "self-domestication", where some wolves started to hang around human settlements, presumably surviving on their trash. Over time some of these wolves became less afraid of humans and became so specialized in their habits that they essentially stopped interbreeding with wild wolves (though dogs, wolves and coyotes can all still interbreed). Now, we have no idea how large this population of proto-dogs was, but we do know that it was probably much larger than the number of dogs used to start most modern breeds ~200 years ago (most breeds were founded by about a half dozen sires and maybe a dozen females).

After initial domestication, dogs probably lived "breed-less" lives as human commensals (hanging around humans, not really helping or harming them but living off their trash) for many thousands of years. During this time, dog populations quickly expanded and spread across the globe. In the last few hundreds of years, several hundred dog breeds were formed from local dogs in many parts of the world; these breed dogs have entirely replaced the non-breed "indigenous" dogs in some parts of the world, notably in Western Europe and the USA. However, most dogs throughout the world still live their lives as non-breed, indigenous, commensal dogs. We refer to these dogs as "pariah" or "village" dogs. They tend to be smallish (25-40 pounds), often tan, short-haired dogs, though the type varies a bit according to the region you're in. The important point is that these dogs have not undergone the intense genetic bottleneck associated with breed formation. Thus, while breed dogs have only a small subset of the total genetic diversity of all dogs, it is likely that village dogs have a much greater range of the total diversity. Thus, they are very useful for looking at the original domestication event. They are informative of the original genetic bottleneck that led to the formation of domestic dogs many thousands of years ago.

By sampling village dogs from across the world, we get an idea of how diverse these dogs are in different regions of the globe. Then, we can look for patterns in the amount of diversity. Specifically, we look for a region with very high genetic diversity and then look for the surrounding regions to have gradually less and less diversity as it gets further away. This is what is seen in humans, with the highest diversity seen around Ethiopia and diversity decreasing gradually as one moves further and further away from Ethiopia. That's how we know modern humans evolved there. The idea is that the region where a species formed will start out with all the diversity of that species. As some animals move away from that site and colonize other areas, they bring with them only a subset of the total diversity. Then as animals move even further away from the site of origin, they take with them only a subset of a subset of the diversity, and so on. This is why breed dogs are not useful for uncovering the site of origin of domestic dogs: all modern breeds across the world have only a tiny subset of the total diversity seen in all dogs, so it's hard to compare them and know that you're seeing an effect of the origin domestication and colonization events and not some artifact of recent breeding.

In future posts I'll explain more about the controversy over how long ago dogs were domesticated and cover other aspects of the science behind our research, but I have to leave now to collect more samples.

Conspicuous consumption?

[guest post from Ryan]

So don't get me wrong---Doha is not nearly so bad as Dubai for conspicuous consumption and men trying to building the tallest buildings and largest man-made islands and hotels with the most stars, etc. However, there are a lot of very nice gas-guzzlers on the road and people (at least the Qataris) have some very nice things. One sign of the opulence: when using the "Fast Cash" option at the ATM, one of the amounts you can take out of the bank is $1400. They basically don't even bother with having currency in denominations less than $0.30.

Qatar in four photos

My first stamp in my new passport. Note that Arabic numerals are not actually the numbers they use in Arabic speaking countries. That top row of pen is written in the modern numbering system in Arabic and says 542-9179735

Ryan and I stand in front of the Museum of Islamic Art. I'm not wearing the scarf because it's required (although it does attract less attention than my very blond hair) but because the sun was bearing down on us and a white thing on your head keeps you cool. Also because it makes me feel a bit like a movie star, which is never a bad thing.

One of the things I found most interesting is that very little in the collections is just art for the sake of art--there aren't loads of paintings or even tapestries or sculpture. A few, but it's maybe 15% of the extensive collections on display. There is, however, a ton incredibly intricate and and gorgeous functional art--carpets, lanterns, doors, ceilings, tiles bowls, helmets, Qur'ans, and a whole room full of scientific instruments. All of these were both recognizable as art and absolutely amazing in the level of intricacy displayed, even in the earliest pieces. It's fitting then that the museum itself is a work of art. This is a picture of the main atrium--the star motif is used throughout--even in the shape of the building itself, if you look at google earth.

And, of course, as always, dogs:

That's our assistant Yehia on the left, and this is Ryan with Pipette, a very friendly stray puppy found some distance away, who was quite happy to donate a bit of her blood.

A 4:25am thought...

Don't ask me why I'm up at this hour; my body won't tell me either.

One strange thing that always startles me the first time I see it: cell phone etiquette in developing countries. I suppose Qatar only barely falls into that category, but the cell phone manners are the same. I've yet to see anyone ever turn of their cell phone ringer, or refuse to interrupt a given conversation and call a person back, or otherwise acknowledge that a conversation in person might be more important than a conversation on the phone. I'm sure this has something to do with the fact that nearly all cell phones overseas are prepaid, and you don't get charged if someone calls you, only for calls you make.

Still, it takes some getting used to to see people talking on cell phones in nice-ish restaurants, and everywhere else as well. Who wants to eat a meal where you spend half the time either on your own phone or waiting for your dining partner to hang up? Shrug. Bizarre.

In Doha

This is a guest post by Ryan.
Apologies for the delay in posting; jet lag, sampling and exploring have taken all our time lately. I've finally found some time to write this post---at 3AM!
First things first, we've now collected nearly two dozen dog samples in Qatar, with more sampling arranged for Monday and Tuesday. Sampling your first few dogs is a very nice feeling; at least we know the trip will be at least a partial success! The street dogs here generally look and act much like salukis, an ancient desert-dwelling breed whose spindly body fits the climate here (humid, 115 degrees F and sunny every day with lows somewhere in the 90s during the summer). It will be interesting to compare these dogs to other Middle Eastern street dogs and to American salukis. We will write much more about the dog project and the science behind it as time goes on, but for the moment I think I'll use my time to talk a bit more about the travel.

The trip over here was a gruelling 24-hour (32 with the time differnece) affair during which we saw the sun set twice from plane seats high above two different continents. To make a long story short, a clerical error forced us to fly this leg on less-convenient and much less comfortable American carriers (Gulf carriers know how to treat their passengers). The lack of free alcohol, the poor entertainment system and the uncomfortable seats limited my sleep, though it arguably increased my productivity. I started out trying to watch Coraline but for some reason it was not working on that flight so I tried the next-best Bride Wars next (sad but true). After twenty minutes I couldn't take it anymore and got to completing a review for a journal that was due within a couple days. It was one of those papers that clearly involved a lot of long-term data but was plagued by problems in its theoretical development and data interpretation. It's the kind of paper that is all too often written, and all too often published, in primatology. Hopefully my review can help produce a stronger, more meaningful contribution.

On the flight from Frankfurt to Doha via Riyadh we were on Lufthansa which meant free drinks and more entertainment options---Meerkat Manor and Discovery Channel specials all the way!
Instead of giving a play-by-play for our trip to Doha, I think I'll just list some of the highlights so I can get to bed soon.

• The first morning we walked at 7am for an hour and wound up drenched in sweat even at that hour.
• Doha is nice in a bustling-but-not-overly-so, rapidly-expanding-but-with-some-forethought way. The city is clearly alive (but not overwhelmingly so, like Cairo) and is incredibly multicultural: more than half of the people in Qatar are not local Qataris (this results in some amazing ethnic food being available). People dressed in traditional robes freely mingle with Westerners, Indians and other Muslims from around the world. While conservative dress is expected and the sexes are frequently segregated (e.g. many restaurants will not serve women, or will only serve them in special “Family” rooms), it usually doesn't feel oppressive. Women can and do hold jobs, drive (since 1995) and there is a vibrant free press (it is, for example, the headquarters of Al Jazeera). It's also a fully welfare state with very high per capita income and decent income distribution parity.
• Our first rental car's air conditioning died, so we had to use windows and frequent rehydration for one day before we could trade the car for a new one.
• Shortly after getting our second rental car, on our way to sample dogs, we were involved in an accident. Another car left its lane in the middle of traffic circle and hit directly into us (we were in its blind spot and the driver never looked). On the bright side it was a fairly minor accident; we both drove away to the traffic police, spent an hour filling out paperwork, swiped our credit card to pay a processing fee and we were back on our way, albeit having lost half of our sampling time because the shelter is only open from 4-6pm.
• We drove all the way to the tip of the Qatari peninsula---nearly an hour's drive! One can cross the whole country north-south in about 1.5-2 hours and east-west in about 45 minutes. The scenery doesn't change much though; a lot of beige with the scattered small tree every now and then. It did give us a chance to take our 4x4 off-road on the beach and see our first Qatari wildlife, a recently deceased large lizard.
• All the bulidings here are the same shade of sand beige (except one very pink house we saw).
• If you should ever want to adopt a dog (or cat, donkey, chicken, guinea fowl or just about any kind of animal imaginable) in Qatar, QAWS is the place to do it. They have a very nice volunteer staff and do wonders to help unwanted and maltreated animals here. In general, Qatar has very few dogs as most Muslims do not like to keep dogs.
• The Islamic Art Museum in Doha is awesome and free. They even give you a golf cart ride from your car to the entrance and back. The architecture (like many buildings in Doha, including Cornell's medical school) is interesting and, in this case, gorgeous. The museum is very under-utilized resulting in a very pleasant, unrushed experience. The art is amazing; intricately designed vessels, rugs, Qarans and other artifacts from across the Muslim world, stretching from Spain and Morocco to India and spanning 1400 years.

Well, there's much I could say, but I think I should go to sleep now. Just one more thing: go USA! We've miraculously made it to the semi-finals of the Confederations Cup---we watched the last game versus Egypt in a sheesha restaurant here.

Cumulative stats:

6 flights

6 time zones

36 traveling hours

10,469 miles

4 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)

2 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)

Cause for celebration...

...they revised the high forecasted for Doha, Qatar for while we're there--instead of a high of 115 degrees F every day, it should only be 110 degrees F. Woo hoo!

In which the adventure begins.

Ryan and I took our first flight segments of the summer (of the year?) on Friday, flying from Sacramento to Salt Lake City to St. Louis. That alliterative journey logged us two flight segments, three time zones (on the ground), about twelve traveling hours (counting from when we left for the airport and then arrived home), and 1,975 miles. Thus begins this summer's journey. We'll keep track of similar stats at the end of posts from now on.

Moving out of our cute house in California was an adventure on its own, in no small part because, with an inspection scheduled for Thursday morning, I woke up one week ago with the worst case of strep throat I've ever had. Because you know, moving with one-year-old Oisin was't gonna be crazy enough. My throat was so swollen I was worried about breathing (yes, probably an overreaction), I had a 103 degree F fever (chills and hallucinations oh my), and I could barely swallow liquids. Because of that last factor, I let myself get so dehydrated the gave me IV fluids, which, shockingly, are a great pick me up when you can't drink. After those, getting the fever under control, and some hefty meds for the pain, I was at least able to sleep, but I spent much of Tuesday out of commission while Ryan tried to pack the house and the incredibly gracious Ant 1 TA's finished my grading. Wednesday and Thursday were nutty, but thanks to wonderful friends and family helping us, we managed not to lose our whole deposit, get most of our stuff into a VERY full storage locker and pack the things we'd need (albeit rather chaotically) into bags for the flights Friday.

As for those flights, I gotta tell you, if I didn't love Oisin before, I would now. He's at an incredibly sweet age right now and I'm really having to work hard to supress the realization of how much I will miss him this summer. He slept the whole first flight after watching us take off, then peacefully and mostly quietly played the whole second one. Gearing up to be a great world traveller someday.

Now we're at our first base camp, Ryan's folks' place in southern Illinois. I'm sitting in a guest bedroom surrounded by field clothes, vaccutainers, backpacks, muzzles, toiletries, cameras, power adapters for the whole world, travel guides, and compression sacks. I'm packing most things first thing tomorrow morning, then making a trip to the mall for Oisin's one year portraits and a few last minute necessities. Ryan and I are both at the point where we're antsy. The last 48 hours before a the field are the weirdest mix of tempos--everything goes rushing by, but it still takes ages to get out the door...

'till next time.

Cumulative stats:
2 flights
3 time zones
12 traveling hours
1975 miles
1 country

For those of you who can't deal with big long posts like the last one...

...here's a nice short tidbit.

So when you call tech support for an American company, you very frequently get a person in India, right?

Oddly enough, when you call support for getting a visa to go to India? You get an American. Apparently India outsources its visa processing to an American company. Bizarre.

On Sapolsky, and living in interesting times

Went to a talk by Robert Sapolsky yesterday; really fascinating stuff. He studies, among many, many other things, stress in wild populations of Olive Baboons. Kelly has a nice summary of the neuroscience here, so I'll be lazy and focus on the parts that I found most interesting: the primatology. Sapolsky has been studying hormone fluctuations in Kenyan Olive Baboons for decades. He compares hormonal indicators stress levels at baseline to those after certain kinds of stress.

The punchline is that olive baboons, like humans, exhibit maladaptive hormonal responses to social stress. Basically, these hormonal responses (glucocorticoids) release as part of a stereotypical flight or fight response to stress. This response ramps up your ability to flee if a lion is about to eat you, for example. But, as Sapolsky put it yesterday, if you're stressed because need to run away from a predator, your body sends energy to your thighs. Great. But if you're stressed because you're a baboon who's trying to form fragile alliances....your body sends energy to your thighs. If you're stressed because you're on a blind date....your body sends energy to your thighs. Not quite so helpful in these contexts. What's more, your body does this with hormones that can negatively impact your stress levels long term.

If you're a low-ranking olive baboon, your situation is especially bleak: your life is super-stressful, since everyone can beat on you, and your body is constantly throwing stress hormones at your brain over things it doesn't need too. This means you're constantly reinforcing your stress response, creating a "learned helplessness" very like human depression. The happiest (and often highest ranking) baboons are the ones that know what actual stress is, minimize their stress at other times, use coping behaviors (apparently grooming is as good as smacking someone else around), and take control of stressful situations.

It seemed particularly appropriate to me that this talk was being given right now. It's an "ancient chinese curse" kind of year, in a lot of ways: we live in interesting times. When people talk about the Great Depression and WWII, they talk about the way these things affected entire generations, and built a sort of shared identity based on responding to hardship. In some ways, I suppose that respoding was empowering, but to me it still sounds a bit like being a low ranking baboon. I think it's fairly likely that things like the recession, climate change, and maybe swine flu might create a shared identity for my generation, and the notion of solidarity is appealing, but I dislike the lack of control that goes with it.

That sort of thing is a lot of the reason I do the sort of research I do. I like the notion that no matter what generation I belonged to, the things I do in my life are interesting, and that's something I took control over. You don't become a primatologist because of things happeneing to you, which fosters a fascinating work environment. I was talking with a fellow primatology grad student and we realized if we were to catch some fatal disease tomorrow, we wouldn't look back and think we hadn't done anything.

People like that make for a great work environment, even if we all probably sat through that talk thinking about how similar to the life of that low ranking baboon things can be sometimes, and maybe have been lately. Either way, at least some of my times are interesting because I wanted them that way.

Dog domestication & traveling the world

Part of why this blog is called "Travels with Darwin" is because Ryan and I are evolutionary biologists. The other part is that we have a dog named Darwin, and we travel most when we're doing stuff related to dog DNA collection.

So how do you actually wind up getting your job to send you to a dozen countries in two months? Apparently, you work for the Village Dog Project. The description of the project is below:

Understanding the evolution and domestication in dogs requires genetic analysis of a global and diverse panel of non-breed-affiliated village dogs. With a network of worldwide and Cornell-affiliated collaborators, we plan to gather dog samples from remote villages, establish a genetic archive containing DNA and phenotypic information from these dogs, carry out genetic analyses on these samples, and develop computational methods for analyzing this dataset. In particular, we are interested in understanding the location, timing, and demographic conditions underlying domestication; the genetic changes involved in the transition of wolf to dog; the relationship between these village dogs and the breed dogs; and the effect that historical forces have shaped village dog diversity.

How we wound up with this gig is a story for another time. Basically, there just are remarkably few people willing to travel through every part of the third world at the fastest rate possible, collecting dog DNA and permits for dog DNA under the most bizarre conditions you can imagine.

I've collected DNA out of the backs of 4 x 4s, using a centrifuge that plugs into a car lighter, spinning down samples in cabs, at night in the middle of a tiny Namibian village, on 3 hours sleep, for 14 hours a day, translating through two people and four languages, with the assistance of the one ten year old in a village who knows where the dogs hide, while being called a witch because the dogs don't run away from me....

You get the idea. Wouldn't you want to spend your summer doing that?

Welcome

If you're one of my friends who's been reading the previous blog I had at this address, this is likely not the site you've been expecting. Instead of leaving my old blog sitting and stagnating and turning into a mommy blog (I just can't do it), I decided to start a new blog.

Ryan and I keep having adventures, and so one of the things I've wanted to do for a while is start actually telling some of our stories. We're also going to be having quite a few adventures this summer traveling around doing dog project collection, and so many of those should wind up on here as well.

For now, I have plans for this blog. I'm going to try to write at least every other day, but we'll see how it goes. The itinerary for this summer is:

Qatar
Lebanon
Turkey
Hungary
Croatia
Belgium
France
Australia
Papua New Guinea
Vietnam
India