The academics are finally getting in canoes

After countless logistics, things are really starting to move along. Asher spent the last week revising his qualitative interview designed to understand how Tsimane' think about water, hydration, dehydration, and their diet in relation to health. He spent 2 days working with Dino, who is likely going to be our primary translator for the research, going over the questions from the interview to see which ones make sense and which don't (and there were a lot that did not). They then translated the questions that did make sense from Spanish into Tsimane', which is a very nasally language.

The key words that Asher was trying to get the most accurate translations of were water, thirst, hydration, and dehydration. Water was very easy, as it is a primary activity in their lives, and is translated into ojñi  (oh-ñi). In Tsimane' the closest word to thirst is jajri'rij (Hah-wri-wri), and at first it appeared that there wasn't really a word for hydration or dehydration. But after speaking with a couple of other translators (who are bi-lingual), the closest word that emerged was chanij (chan-yi -which really means a dry body, after being out in the sun). Asher is still working on a finding a proper word for hydration, but it seems like we can just say "jam jun jajri'rij" (which means no thirst at all).

Asher and Dino working on translating the interview

Kelly has been hard at work as well, working on a grant application that is due soon, as well as a couple of papers that she's revising. Even more impressive was that Kelly was able to do this after a tough couple of days, when she found out that a lot of data on her SanDisk Cruzer flashdrive was corrupt after being placed in their so-called secure access vault (so secure it will never be recovered!). We spent 2 hours on chat with their support without success. But now she's moving forward and trying to get the lost data from other people (thanks friends) as well as powering forward with all the work as we're about to not have access to computers for some time.

We went to a going away dinner with Isabel Diaz last week, who has spent 18 months here doing research on another project. She's a doctoral student at the University of Barcelona in Spain. She gave us a lot of great tips about how to stay fresh and recharge when things get difficult.

Yesterday, we met with the Grand Tsimane' Consejo, the governing body for the indigenous population, to go over the study and get approval. Dr. Tomas Huanca and Esther Conde have been vital to helping us get the research moving. Don Tomas set up the meeting with the Consejo and accompanied us to the meeting, serving as a go-between. We got the go-ahead from the Consejo to visit our study communities. Tomorrow we're visiting the more market integrated community, that is a 2 hour car ride away, to set up logistics there. We'll see if we can rent the little house Asher lived in last summer and what repairs need to be made to it, or if we need to get a house built, as well as getting a pit latrine built.

Then on Saturday, we will visit a couple of the communities way up river (2 days worth of motorized canoe travel - one way), where the water is more or less clear and the fish are golden (seriously, just take a look at the Bolivian Dorado fish below), to see which community best suits the research and to start negotiating the building of one of our houses in that community. We will likely be on this trip for around a week or so.

There will likely be chicha and there will definitely be canoes. It'll probably be a couple of weeks until our next update, when we have to return to Trinidad to pick up our 1 year visas from immigration (just in time to celebrate our 3 year anniversary).