Well, I certainly never thought I would live in the North, but here I am. 3 weeks ago I made the move from Falmouth to Manchester, and to say it has been a shock to the system is an understatement. Going from a quaint Cornish town to a big city has been quite an adjustment, despite having grown up in London!
The last few months have been completely manic. It's been all change, and my blog has definitely taken a back seat. Everything has been in flux; my Masters, my new job, my personal life... I don't really know if I'm coming or going! I've been working on a new science project BBC Learning, which is aiming to inspire primary school children to engage with science. This is something my own school lacked somewhat, so I am hugely excited to be a part of this. But that excitement is mirrored by anxiety. I have moved to a new city where I know absolutely no one, and have been trying to complete my Masters Dissertation at the same time. This has been an immense challenge; holding down a full time job and writing into the night. The past few months have been a huge source of stress, but I hope it will be worth it in the end. So that's where I'm at for now, hopefully the next few months will allow me to revive this blog and end the hiatus! Until next time...
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It has almost been a month since we set off for Kenya and to be honest, I feel like I dreamt the whole thing. Writing this from a very rainy and cold Cornwall, it seems unreal that just over a week ago we were in 30 degree weather!
The trip has most definitely been the highlight of my Masters course so far and was definitely an eye opener. I had never been to Africa before and had no idea what to expect. Kenya was beautiful and definitely a place of contrasts and extremes, with incredible wild landscapes and matching wild weather. January is typically dry in Kenya, but this year the heavens opened daily and meant the vegetation was lush rather than dried out as it would usually be. The rain also brought challenges. One day in particular I was left without dry clothing or a sleeping bag after the truck containing all our bags was caught in a downpour! But the majority of the time the sun was out over the beautiful plains, with daily postcard-worthy sunrises and sunsets. Some of the highlights of the trip for me included meeting Sudan, the last remaining male Northern White Rhino, at Ol Pejeta Conservancy, and seeing tens of spotted hyenas just metres from our tents at Mara North. It was incredibly sad, but also a true honour to meet Sudan and see the last two females of his kind too, knowing we were looking at the last members of a species which has been wiped out exclusively by human activity. It was however, lovely to see how well cared for they were and the measures Ol Pejeta Conservancy was taking to keep them safe. Another memory that will stick with me is pushing our beloved 'Doom Buggy' out of the mud repeatedly in Enonkishu. As you can guess from the name, bus 6 wasn't exactly lucky during the two week trip. It was somewhat ill equipped to deal with the excess rain, meaning members of the Doom Buggy (Lorna, Lauren, Jack, Chris, honorary member Kristian and myself) spent the majority of a game drive pushing it out of the mud instead of seeing the beautiful leopard other buses had tracked down. (No safari envy here, I promise!). In a strange way it was kind of great being the doomed bus. Every unfortunate event which occurred, such as my phone drowning in toiletries, became another reason to laugh and it definitely bonded us! We spent most of our long drives (some up to 8 hours long) incessantly talking, singing Toto, having pun wars and playing Heads Up or Linkee until our batteries died or we finished the game. A rather cute 'bromance' seemed to form between Jack and our driver, Eliaud, who later tried to convince us girls to stay in Kenya and marry his sons. We all politely declined. The range of wildlife, which until then I had only seen on TV, was absolutely magical. Getting within a metre of a wild (but habituated) giraffe was another moment that will stay with me forever, and watching herds of zebra and gazelle running across the plains didn't seem real. We learnt a lot about the challenges many of the animals in Kenya are facing, both due to natural processes and human interactions, as well as what is being done to help their survival. We came across people who were doing incredible work, both with the Kenyan wildlife service and private reserves, and learnt about the challenges they also face on a daily basis. All in all, it was a wholly positive experience, even though I gained the nickname 'Calamity Jane'. So the blog has been a bit quiet of late. The holiday season took hold and before I knew it, 2016 was just around the corner. This post isn't about anything in particular, simply a quick look back on a few things I've done this year. When I look back on my life a year ago, it is incredible to think about how much has changed in such a short period of time. This year has turned me upside down and inside out, but it has led me to a masters course I absolutely love.
This time last year, I was debating whether to apply for a Masters course for a September start. I had many reasons to apply and a few not to, mainly the fact I was desperately looking for a job in London, which, for someone trying to avoid anything desk based, was a real challenge. However the planets must have aligned as the Science Museum took me under their wing as an Explainer, a job where I helped teach visitors about how things worked and where I ended up learning loads in the process. It was awesome - being paid to play with giant lego, thermal imaging cameras and huge foam bridges with kids in the name of science was pretty much ideal! I met some incredible people there and somehow managed to keep up volunteering next door at the Natural History Museum. This involved bringing specimens out onto the galleries to communicate science to visitors, and was incredibly rewarding. I have now been volunteering for 2 years and hope to continue to do so for a long time yet. I also spent my Mondays working with Jan Beccaloni and the vast NHM arachnid collection. A year on, I still hate spiders (sorry Jan!) and am very glad that all the ones I worked with are all very much dead! Somewhere in between all that, I got the news that I had been accepted onto my first choice Masters course, so as September came, I swapped the museums and my hectic London life for Falmouth to start an MSc in Conservation & Biodiversity at the University of Exeter's Cornwall campus. The Penryn campus came as quite a shock when I first arrived, I couldn't believe how small it was! The largest lecture theatre was the size of the smallest we had at the University of Southampton where I did my undergrad, and I was really apprehensive of what I had signed up for. But once I found my bearings, I couldn't love it more. The course has been great so far, I've made some amazing friends and I love my little house on the high street. The size of the campus makes it great for a postgrad as you soon get to know all the faces on campus, and there's the added perks of quite a few field trips and days out with the modules I selected. Speaking of field trips, the next one coming up is a big one... KENYA! Excited doesn't begin to cover it. It's the first time I'll be setting foot on the African continent and what a way to do it! There s three groups of us, with trips tailored for Conservation & Biodiversity, Conservation & Policy or Behaviour & Evolution. But I've never been so nervous about a trip before and I think I finally figured out why. It's come around way too quickly. The Kenya trip seemed like it was really far off and now it's a week away, I don't understand how! Maybe it's true what they say, as you get older the years get shorter, because 2015 absolutely flew by! I'm really looking forward to 2016, although I have no idea what it has in store for me. I will hopefully complete my Masters at the end of August after producing a thesis project on Stable Isotopes and Turtles, but apart from that, nothing is certain. If this year has taught me anything it is that you can't plan everything, so we'll just have to wait and see. Our planet has a human population of over 7 billion people. This is mirrored by a growth in demand for food and other consumables, and has unfortunately caused a rise in the amount of waste generated worldwide. We aren’t brilliant at dealing with this waste, as Professor Margaret Bates explained in her talk on Waste Management in Uganda at the Greenbank Hotel last Monday, hosted by the Falmouth Rotary Club.
When we throw rubbish away in the UK, our bins are collected and the waste disappears from sight and mind. We have no idea where it is going, what happens to it or what impact it might be having to our environment, nor do those thoughts even cross our minds. So what happens in countries where it doesn’t ‘disappear’? Professor Bates from the University of Northampton conducted a study into waste management in 4 towns in Uganda, looking at human health, pollution and waste segregation. During her visits to Uganda, she found there was minimal segregation of waste, meaning that medical, plastic, household, electrical and organic waste was generally disposed of together. In an attempt to clear waste, many rubbish dumps would light fires, releasing toxins from burning plastics which have been found to affect fertility, have a heritable impact, and are the major ingredients in agent orange. This was occurring in areas with around 74,000 residents where children were free to play and animal grazing took place, and even had banana plantations were next door. Professor Bates described these polluted areas as “more toxic to human health than Chernobyl” and found there was an increased incidence of cancer in people living near waste points due to the carcinogens produced in burning. Waste found in these areas included medical waste such as used needles, which, instead of being incinerated, were mixed with solid waste; worrying in a country where HIV/AIDS is endemic. However, any spread of disease that may have been caused by this was simply attributed to ‘evil spirits’ by local people, rather than poor waste management. Sadly, she found that there was knowledge about why segregating waste was important, but in many cases it simply was not viable due to a lack of money and resources. For example, an incinerator was available in one town but was not greatly used, as it was too expensive to run. In some cases, it was also found that the skips used to transport waste on any given day might be used to transport food the next day. Even when there were good intentions, this was often detrimental. For example, in the creation of compost, 60% organic material and 40% plastics and other materials were used, rather than organics alone. This was then applied as fertilizer. So instead of being beneficial, it may have been polluting their land further, with these plastic build-ups leaching chemicals into the soil. Unfortunately, many local people were so desensitised to seeing rubbish in their streets and around their towns that they saw no incentive in clearing it. But by getting town councils to share best practice and teaching them techniques to improve their waste management, Professor Bates is hoping an improvement may be seen in Uganda. Only time will tell... I would like to thank Professor Bates for her brilliant talk, as well as Falmouth Rotary Club for hosting the talk. It has to be said, insects do not really sound like the most appetising of foods. However, research published this year has suggested that crickets, palm weevil larvae and mealworms may all be more nutritious than beef or chicken. Today is World Edible Insect Day (yes, it has its own day!), aiming to increase the prevalence of insect based foods in western cultures by legalising them and publicising the benefits of eating insects, both to the individual and the environment The study mentioned above aimed to compare the nutritional content in 100g portions of various insects in comparison to beef, chicken and pork, using two different methods.
The first, Ofcom, produced a 1-100 score on levels of energy, salt, sugar and saturated fat, and found no significant difference between the various insects and traditionally farmed meats. The second, Nutrient Value Scores, also took vitamins and calcium content into account, and found a significant difference between the nutrient levels in all insects compared to beef and chicken, with only caterpillars and silk worms losing out to pork. From this, it looks like insects could be the next big health food trend, especially when the WHO are likely to declare on Monday that "bacon and other processed meats cause cancer". Insects are also considered a delicacy in many places and their breeding and consumable yield are extremely efficient, meaning they would cause reduced environmental impact in comparison to beef, for example. So eating them would not only be good for us, but for the planet as well. It has also been argued that there are fewer ethical problems with eating insects in comparison to farmed animals such as cows as there is reduced suffering when they are harvested for food. It is worth noting that the carcinogen story is probably scare mongering from the press as the WHO have not confirmed this yet. However, I might think twice before eating a full English again, and maybe try find a good recipe for fried crickets instead. |
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