I have been back in the USA a little over a week now. I still miss many aspects of life in Colombia and sometimes I still inadvertently respond to people in Spanish without thinking. I learned so much about conservation and environmental issues. So many themes are unique to that part of the world and so many are key here in the USA too. I know I will draw upon this experience for the rest of my personal and professional life.
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As I said in the last post, I have been questioning my impacts a lot recently. I leave the country in just 44 hours and thankfully I am not scrambling to finish my work. Today is a relaxed last day at the office and tomorrow campus is closed for Colombian independence day (the perfect farewell for my final day). I wonder if I--or anyone--can ever know the intangible effects (both good and bad) that I had here. Of specific significance, I poured hours and hours into ecology and community development projects in multiple Colombian cities. This sounds great but I also wonder what I contributed outside of being just another body capable of doing work. What did I personally and uniquely contribute? The obvious answer is that my English skills were a huge contribution because one of the biggest facets of our Puerto Lopez project was English classes. I do hope that I, as a senior ecology major with past research experience, have contributed more than just my language abilities. I certainly learned an immeasurable amount about field ecology so perhaps that is the measure I should be preoccupied with. However, as I said in my last post, I do not think I can fully assess my impact until 44+ hours from now when my journey has officially come to a close.
I leave Colombia in just 4 days. My 10 weeks have almost come to an end. Naturally my mind these days is filled with thoughts questioning my impact. Working on my projects I often felt like an observer, under-worked, and not included. Also over the course of the past 9 weeks I have felt engaged, strenuously worked, and at home. Is it a matter of weighing the underwhelming times with the triumphant times? Or does the fact that small successes exist mean that my trip as a whole can be called a success?
I don't actually know how to gauge my level of impact. The risk is making this experience all about me and what I did, which I do not want to do. However, my personal contribution must be measured because money was spent to send me here, feed me, and house me. I would like to know that the money was well spent. I suspect only once I have gone home and the experience is fully over can I reflect on it in its entirety and gauge what success meant. The research I have participated in has been a perfect mix of ethical service and rigorous science. Serving communities and protecting the surrounding ecosystems have gone hand in hand. The chief principle behind ethical service (not just blindly motivated service) is that it is rooted in the community and directed by the community. For the two major research projects I helped with, we were invited there and, once on site, took most of our cues on what needed to be done from the local people. We got out science done but in a way that was aligned with the needs of the community.
Recently I spent 4 days in Villagómez, a town about 3 hours north of Bogotá. The team from Universidad El Bosque was tasked with assessing the natural resources and existing infrastructures there in order to assess the tourism potential of the area. The citizens of the town desire a secondary source of income and, with the beautiful mountains and wide variety of species there, ecotourism is a promising option.
The 4 days were highly productive for our team. We did camera trap surveys of 2 different mountainous forests, met with several community leaders, toured key natural sites, and had many brainstorming sessions. Over and over we reminded ourselves to focus on potential opportunities; something did not have to be obviously perfect for tourism for it to be worthy of our time. In fact, we knew most of the town's infrastructure and surrounding natural sites would be potentially ideal. If they were already ideal, then our aid would not have been needed. All in all, it was a very productive few days. In September, our team will present our findings in the form of a detailed proposal to the departmental leaders at a meeting themed around tourism in the department of Cundinamarca. I will be back in the USA by then, but I am excited to hear how it goes. During the semester prior to our summer research, we Loewenstern fellows talked a lot about ethical photography. We even attended a seminar specifically focused on the topic. Most of what we talked about concerned the ethics of photographing other people. Most of what I have personally photographed here in Colombia is of natural landscapes and animals. These subjects necessitate their own ethical considerations.
The ethical presentation of photos of animals is done for purposes that do not harm the animal or its perception directly or indirectly. For example, sharing a photo of a shark with fear-mongering captions indirectly harms shark species across the world by furthering the notion that they are bloodthirsty killers. The converse would be what I am (hopefully) accomplishing here: perpetuating the idea that these reptiles are beautiful animals. This being a blog about conservation, I hope the readers can understand that that is the context for everything I write here. I share these photos because I believe seeing these animals up-close will make one more likely to think positively about or even try to support conservation efforts in Colombia. Recently I had a very rough day—the single hardest day of my Fellowship thus far. The campus has hosted an entomology conference the past 3 day. The first day there was so much hectic preparation that I just felt useless. When it is so busy, no one wants to find work for the exchange student (who not only does not speak the language perfectly but also pragmatically does not know all the logistics of and buildings on campus). The situation was not the fault of anyone but I still found it very hard to keep things in perspective. I felt very limited in my abilities the whole day. The university students ran the behind-the-scenes logistics and setup of basically the entire conference so one of our major duties was being there to answer any questions the conference attendees had. Again, I was limited for three reasons. Firstly, I had not been there for the planning of the conference so I did not know the plans and sequence of events without asking someone else. Secondly, many times I did not know the answer to a question simply because it was not my home university and I do not know where every single thing is located. Thirdly, even though my Spanish has improved greatly, at times I did not understand exactly what an attendee would ask me. All in all, the day was very hard for me. Thankfully, the following 2 days of the conference went better. I guess I needed that one day to figure out the flow of things.
I recently passed the halfway point of my time in Colombia. The timing lined up with my return to Bogota from the research field, so my time in-country segmented well into two halves.
I am feeling very good about my time here thus far. I have done so many interesting and impactful things (both ecologically and socially), and I look forward to the rest of my time here in Bogota. The only consistent difficulty is the language. This is something that every student in my position faces and it is nothing that surprised me. My Spanish has improved immensely. Several of the people in Bogota who met me before I left for the field have commented over the past few days how much I have progressed. And I still have so much to learn. I am excited to see where my language skills are at when I depart. I thought a lot today about how I relate to conservation in the USA versus abroad. Conservation abroad seems so exotic to most people in my field, but in my exposure to it (including this summer) I have seen it is very similar to conservation in the United States. I don't mean that efforts aren't changed to fit the relevant context; I mean that, once you strip away this idea of the exotic and foreign, then it is equally as interesting and of vital importance as conservation anywhere. We shouldn't fetishize foreign conservation because 1) that's just another way of fetishizing foreign cultures and 2) that makes conservation in the USA seem less exciting and important. Conservation anywhere helps conservation everywhere. To be cliched: it's all one Earth and we're all working together.
For the week I am in Bogota, I have been living with a family of biologists. The mother and father are both in the administration of the biology program at Universidad El Bosque and 2 of the 4 children also study biology. They definitely have very educated and wise opinions on the topics of wildlife conservation and sustainable development. So far in my conversations, nothing has surprised me about their perspectives. They seem to agree with the prevailing mentality in conservation that often more than half of conservation biology is not pure science but is helping people. It is great to meet people who care about conservation and think about it responsibly.
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Ben JohnsonI am a junior at Rice University majoring in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and minoring in Environmental Studies Archives
June 2017
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