Work

I guess I've been keeping you in the dark a bit about what I've been working on for the past six months. Some of you are probably interested, so I'll try to enlighten you. There have been three main things I've been working on: Agriculture research, the constructed wetland and the Analog Forestry Database.

Basically when I came, my boss Mokhles said that they were interested in testing methods of intensive farming, particularly vertical and urban gardening. My job was pretty open-ended. The previous SALTer had done some stuff with that, although I didn't really know much of what he did. So I did a bunch of reading and research and designed some experiments of my own. One of my main experiments was growing potatoes vertically. I planted potatoes in cardboard boxes and old tires and as the plants grew, I added soil around the stems. When necessary, I built the boxes higher. This may sound weird, but its been known to work. The theory is, once the plant matures, tubers will form along the buried stem. My first attempt didn't work out so great. The plants ended up dying before they could reach maturity, so I only harvested some tiny new potatoes. Aref, another crop researcher here, is interested in trying this method again next year. I wrote up a fairly detailed report on my hypotheses of why it didn't work this time and things that he should try next year. The main reason seems to be that the variety we used was early season, when ideally we would have planted a late season variety. Hopefully next year will be better.

Back in November, I talked about the constructed wetland at the AKB. Since then I've learned a lot about natural systems of water purification from further reading and research I've done. A few months ago, we did proper tests on the water. The system we have doesn't seem to be doing a good job at removing nitrogen, with the concentration of nitrate increasing as the water moves along the system (opposite of what should happen). I hypothesized that this was because we don't have a proper living environment for the aerobic bacteria required to break down ammonia in the dirty water. We decided to test this and so I designed a reedbed that should provide a better environment for those bacteria. The reedbed is in a barrel and consists of layers of brick shards, medium gravel, fine gravel and sand. The "common reed" (the kind you would find in swamps) is planted in the sand. We built the bed a week ago, but we don't have reeds yet. Apparently, they should be available next month when the rain starts in earnest. The reedbed we made isn't big enough to handle all the water from the house, but it should be fine for our experimental purposes.

Finally, when I'm not working on other stuff, I work on the forestry database. This basically involves entering data I find from books, documents, websites etc. Not really the most interesting of work. The hope is that once the database is finished, the information can be used by our partners for agroforestry, land reclamation and reforestation projects. I've recently finished going through each plant we currently have (63 in total) and exhausting all the resources I have access to on each species. I have also assembled 63 documents providing further information on each species, such as some of its common products, how to grow and harvest, some common diseases and pests and any other useful info that the database itself doesn't include. These documents will be attached to the plant profiles. Mokhles has been taking pictures of the trees as he travels around the country and I've been uploading them.

I'm down to about 2 and a half months left in Bangladesh. I've learned an incredible amount of stuff while I've been here. I've certainly fulfilled the Learning part of SALT, but I what I really hope is that I've also done the Serving part. I realize now how short a year really is. It seems so long at the beginning, but now that its winding down, I have a new scope and I can see its insignificance. If I've made any contribution to MCC program in Bangladesh, I don't know it now. The chances are I will never know, and I've accepted that.

The field at the AKB as it looks now

The reedbed with the wetland in the background

Take 'er easy,

Ben