By Andrea Weber
August 2017 trip to Coimbatore, India
In Spring 2017, I began my research journey with writing a literature review from newspaper and journal articles about an invasive tree species,
Prosopis juliflora, known as seema karuvelai, in Tamil Nadu, India. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel to India in Summer 2017. My trip to India was amazing and exciting, but is hard to describe in more words. We stayed in a women’s hostel at a co-ed university. The girls were amazing and caring. They made us feel right at home, and shared their research journeys with us.
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| P. juliflora tree with ripe seed pods growing near Sulur Lake, Coimbatore, India. |
While in India, my focus was to discuss an invasive species,
Prosopis juliflora with the people, to really understand the impacts it has on the wildlife and humans. After talking with people from many settings, rural, city, mountain, scholarly, I was able to gather enough information to understand this tree from the ground, from the people using it and living with it.
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| A woman cutting juliflora tree for domestic fuel wood. |
In terms of the work we conducted, I learned that knowing people within the field you are researching is extremely important. Things are not always laid out nicely, like they are in a lab manual. If you need information about a certain species of tree that is growing in the area, it is important to gather information from people who have studied it, and people that have lived with it. I learned that it can be difficult to communicate with people who don’t speak the same language, and that sometimes questions need to be worded or approached differently.
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| Andrea Weber (left) and Mackensie Swift in a restaurant in Coimbatore, India |
The information that I gathered from goat farmers, cow farmers, medicine men, and university scholars, were similar, in comparison to what the government newspapers were stating. Through this experience, I am much more aware of the challenges that research presents, such as working around obstacles in the field and with communication.
