Core Sampling

Do you remember that song from girl scouts? It went:

“Black socks they never get dirty

The longer you wear them the blacker they get

Some day I think I should launder them

But something keeps telling me don’t do it yet”

Well, my question is what if white socks turn black? Do they fall into that category have never getting dirty, especially if there is no chance of them ever turning white again? The socks I wore today turned black. I don’t think I will ever be able to get them white, especially considering I’m not due to do wash for another week or so. Okay, white socks turned black: this sounds really gross so I think I must explain.

Although I’m really happy to be studying at UKZN Pietermaritzburg, I don’t like how the school doesn’t have an anthropology or archaeology program. Therefore, a few weeks back, I asked my biogeography professor if he knew anyone local who studied archaeology so I could do something pertaining to my major while I was here. When I told him I studied paleoethnobotany, he replied that his lab was a paleogeography lab using pollen analysis to study past environmental change. Perfect! Although I’ve never done pollen analysis, it is a method used in Pbot which is usually associated with various other botanical analysis techniques. He then proceeded to introduce me to the graduate students in his lab who told me that when they went to the field, I could come along.

Pollen analysis is fairly difficult because preservation, especially in the tropics, is a big issue. In order to find decent, well preserved specimens, it’s necessary to find sediments where 40,000 year old sediments can remain intact. In the tropics, the best place to do this is in wetlands and bogs associated with indigenous forests. Therefore today, I accompanied my professor, a post-doc student, and 3 master students to Kar kloof National Reserve, 1600 meters in elevation, to take core samples of a wetland.

The drive up to the site was beautiful. There were dozens of raptors (buzzards, eagles, and falcons) along the side of the road, cranes with 2 meter wing spans, and at one point, we spotted about half a dozen somenga monkeys swinging through the trees. After off roading it for a good half hour, we finally reached out field site, which was a wetland situated on ranchland beneath 2000 meter high mountains.

I was told to wear old clothes and shoes I wouldn’t mind getting muddy. The problem, however, is my wardrobe is very small and I didn’t bring any old clothes with me. Thus, I had to wear my only pair of normal sneakers, my soccer pants, and a shirt that already has mud stains. We packed up the gear needed for sampling and trekked out into the field. After about 4 minutes of walking carefully through thigh high grass, my shoes and socks were soaked through since I was sinking up to my ankles in floating vegetation and sediment. For about an hour we carried on like this: tramping around through the wetland looking for bouncy ground where we would then proceed stick a rod in to see how deep the sediment was. The ideal sediment is black, mushy, and wet. However, we kept coming up with samples of clay and regolith, which are whitish, grainy, and amazingly difficult to get through.

When we finally selected the sampling site, we started the actual coring process. For those of you unfamiliar with coring, the process involves sticking a metal rod, with a shovel like device attached to the end in alternating holes, 10cm apart allowing you to collect sediment at given depths. Sounds simple right? Wrong! The first couple samples may be, when the corer is only plunged 48 or so centimeters, but when you start trying to take samples at 200cm, in very firm regolith, you get 2 grown men plus 2 or 3 grown women hanging on this thing. It’s quite a site, especially since everyone is covered in mud. We did this whole survey/coring process for 8 hours. By the end of it, we were so exhausted and sunburned that we were covering ourselves in war paint and having sediment fights. Good times.

Even though this sounds like strenuous and exhausting work, it was actually really fun and really interesting. It was cool to get out in the field and be able to work on a project with graduate students. Everyone that I went with is really intelligent and total bio nerds, which meant that I learned about all the flora and fauna in the area. They told me that whenever they go into the field, I am more than welcome to come along, and, not to mention, they offered to show me around different areas in the Drakensburg Mountains, such as baboon rock and the areas with Sans Bushmen paintings.

Plus, I really like making relationships and connections with people here. I really love all of the Americans (and Frenchies) that I have been hanging out with, but it’s nice to meet locals who are familiar with the land and willing to show me around.

On a side note, Friday night we had a Mexican/French feast! I made tortillas from scratch, with the help of a girl from Berkeley who knew what she was doing, and which turned more into tostadas because they weren’t flat enough. We made fried rice, chicken, salsa, and guacamole. Delicious! I ate enough to feed a small village. Then, to top it all off, the Frenchies made crepes dressed with sugar and lemon juice. So good! Best meal, by far, we have made since being here.