Week 1: responding to email questions (Snakes, Projects, Airport chaos)

Here is a little something I wrote to Kelly in response to her questions to me.

Answers to your questions:

So I am guessing you are the only 20 year old student living there? 

As of right now I have everyone beat by at least three years. In the office that I am working at I have everyone beat by two decades. lol

What about food? Do you just go to a cafeteria and are there other people there? Or do you have to go grocery shopping?

I eat at a cafeteria called the "Canteen." It is like our dinning hall but I have to pay every time I eat (so three times a day). The times to eat are very limited as well. It cost me between $1.15 and $1.85 for every meal. The Canteen is about the size of the middle sitting area in Gator D or a little smaller. The food is way different and I am still getting used to it. The main dish is always rice and then you get to choose from a variety of sauces to put on the rice. They also have tortillas (small ones) and fruit juice of some sort. They also have tid-bits of meat (sometimes). A lot of the meat is a pinkish, purplish color; I am not sure why. Maybe from the spices? Also, the food has lots of spices in it. The food that I eat is not that hot but I have been warned that some of the food is extremely hot and only people very accustom to spicy food should eat it.

There are other people who eat in the canteen. At any given time that I walk in there 40 or more countries may be represented by individuals in the canteen. That's to say there is usually a language barrier between people at the tables. Some Indians are good at speaking English but most people have very mundane English capabilities. Everyone is super nice though. I have met a couple of regulars in there. A Brazilian, a Kenyan, and an Ethiopian. The Brazilian and the Kenyan can speak alright English. The Ethiopian only speaks french....but we enjoy smiling at each other. I was actually going to go running with the Ethiopian today but he got a dentist appointment at the last minute and we didn't go together. 

In regards to grocery shopping. The food and water are to unsafe for me to eat or drink unless it comes from the campus. I would have a high chance of getting sick if I bought food on the streets. From what I have been told the grocery stores we have back home don't exist here. Think of the worst getto you have ever seen and that is probably the closest thing to compare to Hyderabad (from what I have seen so far...which is not much). If I were to buy food off campus it would have to be sealed in a package and be from a trusted company. My body is way more vulnerable to diseases here since I have never had exposure to them like Indian citizens. If I were to need water off campus it would have to come from a sealed water bottle from a trusted company. I have been told restaurants try to reseal water bottles and sell you tap water. I was warned to watch out for that because I could become very sick if I were to drink contaminated water. 

And can or would you leave by yourself to roam around outside of the campus?

There are two rules I have been given 1) do not go outside after dark (6:00pm)  (I don't follow that one) and 2) do not travel alone outside of campus. So as far as leaving campus goes, I have to notify AVRDC, ICRISAT security and have ICRISAT arrange a driver to take me to where I want to go. I also need to go in a group. So to answer your question, I would not leave the premises of campus alone if you paid me. I feel like I would be taken advantage of in a heart beat. At 3:00 am in the morning when I flew into Mumbai I some how ended up outside of the airport terminal. I was immediately hustled by a bunch of taxi drivers and a security guard had to come out and help me get back inside the airport (now that was scary). Also airport guards walk around with semi-automatic machine guns. That was my welcome to India, Yay!!!

 I do want to go off campus but I don't think I will do it for a while. I need to find a group of people who can speak the local language and who I trust. Even inside campus, the minute people find out I am American they start acting like I am rich and want american money from me.

Although I probably won't leave campus for a while, the campus is 3,000 acres. I have lots of agriculture fields to explore and there is tons of wildlife to see. ex. a million different types of birds and bats (huge bats!!!) and lots of peacocks, snakes (I have been told there are a lot of cobras and other venemous snakes), porcupines, monkeys, frogs, skinks...etc. You name it, they probably have it.

You say that you’re trying to crossbreed plants, but will you be there long enough to see the results? And how will you test its resistance to Bruchid and its tolerance? 

I will be here long enough to breed one generation of plants on my own. It takes about 6 years to truly create a new pure pedigree of plant to hand out to farmers. It is really amazing what they have and can do as far as plant breeding goes. We will test the plants resistance/tolerance by exposing the crop to bruchids. The ones that survive or fare the best we will keep to breed again. The ones that don't survive will be destroyed.