If you want to go far, go together - Part II

Tanja, Samuel, and Annabelle are ETH students who participated in a two-week field project to Bungoma County, Western Kenya from Nov. 10 to 25, 2018. In this post, they share their stories of unexpected difficulties with field work.

Read more about the class in the first post of this series.

Fieldwork challenges (by Tanja Schöni)

One of the beautiful farms in Kamukuywa, where we did our fieldwork on. There is a sweet potato field in the front. In the background there is the farmhouse and home garden with many different tree species.

A completely new world opened up to me when we started our first on-farm fieldwork on soils and biodiversity in Kenya. Together with the Belgian and Kenyan students and their professors, we analyzed the soil of the huge fields of a farm in Kamukuywa. We took samples to do pH measurements directly on-site while the farmer and her kids were watching and following us with curiosity. To finally be able to use the methods we had studied in class was not only very interesting for our Kenyan audience, but also for myself. However, since we were in Kenya and not somewhere in a lab at university, our research was sometimes limited by external factors. It took only about five minutes for the sky to completely change and suddenly we saw heavy rain pouring down on the field just next to us. In a rush, we started to collect all our stuff to protect it from the rain. Luckily, we could seek shelter in the farmer’s place and we thus did not get completely wet and did not lose our samples.

This rain was the start of the long expected short rains of the year. A delight for all the farmers, but bringing small difficulties to us fieldworkers.

No soil digging in tropical rains (by Samuel Steiner)

Eva (KU Leuven) and Samuel (ETH Zurich) after attempting to do soil augers in the pouring rain. This was one of the funniest moments in the field trip to Kenya.

Our supervisors advised our group to collect soil samples with augers. It was understood that this was a very urgent mission indeed, as these samples were used to assess energy and food security in Kimilili, the small Kenyan village where our group was stationed for the fieldwork! We therefore went outside head up looking into the darkening sky, telling ourselves that a bit of rain could never stop us. Only a few steps after we left the cozy hotel, the first heavy raindrops hit us. We came back very soon, empty handed and wet like drowned rats, capitulating in the face of this heavy tropical downfalls.

Asking the right person for permission is crucial (by Annabelle Ehmann)

Ben (UoE), Annabelle (ETH Zurich), Patrick (ETH Zurich) and Elien (KU Leuven) working all together on the soil pit in Misikhu, Kenya. Ben’s excellent communication skills made it easier for us to get the permission.

We had breakfast at six in the morning to allow for an early start in our field project village Misikhu in Kenya. In Misikhu, we were walking around the area where we had previously agreed to dig a one-meter deep hole. We had previously explained to the woman in the house next to the field who we were and why we were in Misikhu. We then had asked her if she would allow us to dig a hole there to investigate the soil. Luckily, she had quickly agreed and even provided us with further tools to remove the soil.

As we were about to start digging, another woman came screaming towards us. Our Kenyan student Ben patiently calmed her down. It turned out that she was the actual responsible of the particular field we were digging on – not the woman we had talked to previously. The plot owner, this woman told us, lived somewhere else. Ben convinced her to let us continue by ensuring her that we would provide her with all our findings about the soil pit and that we would do some further pH-tests around her farm.

We realized from this incident that it is important to directly ask for the owner and not only for the permission to work on a particular field.

Different life circumstances, but mutual interests (by Dara Coli)

I had been to Africa before so I was not shocked when I arrived in the small village of Mabanga for our field course. I was aware that the livelihoods of the villagers are extremely different to my life in Switzerland. However, one memory of the field trip that will remain with me was on our last day as we were walking through “our” village one last time. We were on the way to the home of the village elder, Pius, who had helped us navigate in the village and had introduced us to many locals. I was walking next to one of my fellow group mates from Kenya and a young boy from the village, who was currently writing his high school exams. He was telling us which subjects he liked and disliked at school and which Swiss football stars he was a fan of and we found things we had in common. The conversation for me really captured the essence of our week in the field. The people were extremely welcoming and genuinely heart-warming to talk to. No matter the huge difference between our lives, there was a mutual interest and we after all had some things in common we could easily bond over and laugh about.

We are grateful for the financial support by the WFSC (Course Support Grant for WFSC members) to the field projects in 2018 (Kenya) and 2017 (Ethiopia).