Christina Holman | Design Blog

Tuesday, we were finally able to see the actual (gota-gota; drip) irrigation system. Regla organized a tour for us to see the irrigation system and management for the fields at INIDA's headquarters in Sao Jorges. We walked quite a bit and through lots of unpaved paths to see the well, reservoir/tank, sand-filters and tubing mechanism in the individual plots. BUT we learned so much that can help us for the paper. I was able to make a lovely sketch (below) that shows the flow of water from macro-scale and at the micro-scale in each plot area. Water is pumped from a well up into an uncovered, cement "reservoir" or tank. This is where water is held for irrigation but, because it is uncovered, it should/needs to be cleaned (a lot). The tank is built at the highest point in order to use gravity to direct the flow of water through large and long tubs into the sand-filters (Japanese made, cleaned every 6 months) and two smaller filters after that. The plots are built like tie...

I am really glad I followed my hunch on the hydroponics project. That is an  amazing  facility and one of the most advanced I've seen here. I don't have much experience with hydroponics but from what I've seen, it works really well: the lettuce, tomato, and cucumber plants were absolutely huge! (Thursday, we met with the director Joao Monteiro.) He told us that, with hydroponics setups, you get bigger and more produce: they use a substrate and coconut fibers (to help stabilize the plant) in a pod as the plant grows up a rope. The facility also uses both drip irrigation and mechanical spray system that they sell to farmers. However, all of the water is pumped through an elaborate, advanced valve systems (through which they can regulate fertilizer too): It was a gift from their partner in Spain. They are able to plant so many many seeds so quickly because they also have an advanced seed-sorting and soil-mixing machine from Italy. Both systems have no siblings in Cape Ve...

Mackenzie and I were invited by the ECAA professors to attend the final round of student presentations on Friday -- and to also present what we are doing too. We weren't quite sure what to expect but we figured the best route would be a short discussion about Wellesley and who we are as well as our two missions -- INIDA and project collaborations. I made a very elegant powerpoint (if I do say so myself) with several photos of Wellesley in order to give them a clearer picture of this "women's college." (See below.) It seems that our presentation was well-received (and my Crioulo was understandable -- yes, this was almost entirely in another language). We got quite a few questions and five ECAA students volunteered to work with us, especially on the INIDA paper. We have a team now! I can't wait to have our first meeting and get to work. I'm glad we are finally making some progress: I just hope we can keep the momentum.

Last week, when Paulo brought us to his class of third/fourth-year English students, Mackenzie and I learned that students are required to do a quantitative analytical paper and defend it but  have never been taught statistics or research methods. Many of the students seemed lost and stressed out about having no experience in data collection and analysis. So, as the resident economics major who just finished a course in Econometrics, I offered to do a "statistics workshop" and help them formulate their analysis plan for their research topics. The following Monday (this Monday), it went well: students who had no experience with what we, Americans, claim to be "basic" graphs like  y=mx+b  left the session with an understanding of qualitative versus quantitative data; different types of data; descriptive statistics, regression and ANOVA; and even graph and table options for visualization. I'm really glad I could help them out and it felt great when many came up...

On Friday, Paulo set up a meeting with the engineering faculty at Uni-CV main campus, so that we could also make progress on the second goal -- laying the groundwork for joint projects for WeLab courses. Mackenzie and I had already headed into Praia for a meeting with the former "Ministry of Rural Development" (now Ministry of Agriculture and Environment) and ElectraSul - the water and electricity plant as well as desalinization plant. Unfortunately, there was some miscommunication for both meetings; on the bright side, we met with a statistician at the ministry and had more free time since we couldn't go to ElectraSul. Because we had some extra time to stroll around Praia, Mackenzie called a contact at the US embassy who she met on the plane ride over and we all decided to have lunch together. Lo and behold, we just so happened to go to the US ambassador's favorite lunch spot, and he sat with us over a meal. I am really glad all things happened like they did: I c...

INIDA has two other sites: one at the headquarters in São Jorges and the other in city of Tarrafal. We visited both to see the similarities and differences. Fortunately, for us, the sites tend to repeat the same experiments in the different climates and conditions. If we can grab the data from all of the sites to create an analysis, it would be great! Gilbert showed us around the home site and I was surprised to learn that there is a lot going on. There are plenty of mango trees and we passed several people collecting and sorting the mangoes, but there are also different types of sweet potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, and cassava. Also, they started an experiment in hydroponics but the original head passed away so it was never finished. When I asked him more about it, Gilbert told us there  is  a center of hydroponics in Cape Verde (potential engineering project maybe?). He also showed us the drip-irrigation experiment, called "rega gota-gota" here...

Nora, who works with INIDA's site at São Domingos, was able to give us a tour and talk with us about general agriculture activities. She first took us to the "Estufas" which are tent-like, net structures they use to block insects, wind and dirt from their engineered "pretty" cucumbers. The tent themselves weren't in the best condition, with lots of holes in the material, but the plants seemed to be doing quite well. They produce these engineered plants in order to sell the seeds to farmers and the workers also have several non-tent experiments with tomatoes, potatoes, squash and pepper. There are  all  types of fruit (banana, mango, papaya, pilmebi, picanga, strawberry, etc) and INIDA is testing other plants like macadamia nut and eggplant in hopes of introducing them. (On a somewhat unrelated note, because of all these varieties of food, they have a problem with people stealing their food, ruining their experiments' results - and sometimes have ...

Mackenzie and I thought it would be great to attend the first round of student presentations at ECAA to get a feel of the teaching style, students' interests and knowledge, etc. After walking up the huge hill to ECAA (a terrible lapse in judgement), we watched about two-hours worth of presentations. Though everything was in Portuguese, we were able to see a lot of overlap between their topics and our own paper topic -- and we could see what our paper might look like. We also spoke to students there who expressed interest in helping us with our project but only after their final projects are finished (a fair request), and the professors invited us back for the next two rounds. We probably will try to return for at least the last defense. I think the session went over time, so we did not get back to INIDA until after lunch and did not get much work done. Before we knew it, it was time to go and meet with the Parliamentarians. First off, the building looks quite nice an...

The anticipation I had on the plane was  unbearable ; I could not even sleep with all of my excitement but the trip was absolutely worth it. When I exited the plan, at first, my body went into absolute panic because the air is so dry - while my homes in Boston and the Virginia/DC area is incredibly humid. Eventually, your body gets used to it, however.  I was met with a very warm hug from Paulo despite it being way too early in the morning. And, though I'm sure he needed sleep, he wanted to drive through the city and towns on the hour-long drive to Assomada so I could see some of Santiago Island.  The land is just as beautiful at night as it is during the day: with many, outstretching and rocky mountain ranges and gorgeous vegetation, how could anyone not fall in love? I settled in with my host family, organized my phone service and explored my new hometown, Assomada. For the first two days, my times was enjoyable as I tried foods for the first time, like papa...

For the first week of work, it was awfully busy: I felt sometimes like a "chicken with its head cut off." The very first day of work for Mackenzie and I, it was a bit slow: we were given two articles to discuss regarding our suggested subject (Water Productivity on Santiago Island) - but we met a lot of cool people who worked at INIDA and connections are key for success. However, the second day of work,  oh my goodness....  We met with Angela about our concerns and interests in the topic and she gave us another article (this one in Portuguese), but she also sent us into Praia to gather data from ANAIS, the federal institute that distributes water production licenses. We had to go that day since a meeting regarding the new administration (and thus the potentially new director) would take place the next day and she could be removed. The director was incredibly helpful and I'm glad we went. She was able to give us a lot of data and highlight issues we probably want to i...