Why, you might ask, am I writing about political unrest in Madagascar? Have you even heard that there is political unrest in Madagascar?1
Well, I'm not going to try to explain what's going on, because I don't understand.2 I don't know which side, if either, would be good for the people of Madagascar. I just know that unrest seems to be spreading and that because of the unrest one of my graduate students may have to delay or cancel field work she had planned for the next couple of months.3 Her dissertation isn't in danger. She'll have plenty of data on genetics and reproduction in populations of the orchid she's studying even without this year's observations. But unless her field assistants can do some of the field work for her, she'll be missing a critical year of data that we were planning to use to build a demographic model of the populations.
Field work in ecology is hard. It's often filled with hours of backbreaking work and tedious monotony. But in the end, the results are worth it. We expect unbearable heat and long, difficult hikes, just as molecular biologists expect long, boring nights mixing chemicals and culturing cells. What we don't expect is for political events to make those long, difficult hikes impossible or unsafe.
I know my student will be very disappointed if she isn't able to go to Madagascar this year, but she won't be half as disappointed as I am that I'm unable to help her.
Well, I'm not going to try to explain what's going on, because I don't understand.2 I don't know which side, if either, would be good for the people of Madagascar. I just know that unrest seems to be spreading and that because of the unrest one of my graduate students may have to delay or cancel field work she had planned for the next couple of months.3 Her dissertation isn't in danger. She'll have plenty of data on genetics and reproduction in populations of the orchid she's studying even without this year's observations. But unless her field assistants can do some of the field work for her, she'll be missing a critical year of data that we were planning to use to build a demographic model of the populations.
Field work in ecology is hard. It's often filled with hours of backbreaking work and tedious monotony. But in the end, the results are worth it. We expect unbearable heat and long, difficult hikes, just as molecular biologists expect long, boring nights mixing chemicals and culturing cells. What we don't expect is for political events to make those long, difficult hikes impossible or unsafe.
I know my student will be very disappointed if she isn't able to go to Madagascar this year, but she won't be half as disappointed as I am that I'm unable to help her.
1If you're in the U.S., chances are that you haven't heard about it at all, or that you've heard very little about it. The unrest has been little reported in U.S. media. Nearly all of the news I've seen comes from the BBC, AFP, Xinhua, or al Jazeera (yes, that al Jazeera).
2If you want a quick summary, Reuters has a pretty good Q & A. The U.S. State Department has issued a travel warning that "recommends deferring all but essential travel to Madagascar because of escalating civil unrest...[T]he Department of State has authorized the departure of non-emergency personnel and family members at the U.S. Embassy in Antananarivo...."
3Actually, she's already delayed her departure. She was planning to leave last Saturday.
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