20 July
    The family invited us into their tiny kitchen house. It was about 1m x 4m, made of mud bricks and a tin roof, and we crammed all 8 us in there. Guinea pigs ran freely about the floor, making the high-pitched squeaking noise I remember hearing from my childhood pets. There was a fire in the corner that filled the room with smoke. The mother of the family, only 26 years old though I can't remember her name, offered us soup, boiled potatoes, and chuno. Chuno is a way of preserving potatoes, that allows them to be eaten for up to 10 years! The potatoes are first soaked in water and then dried out in the sun, and the total process takes about 20 days.
    We had gotten up early to visit and collect data from the families who have volunteered to work with Yanapai. This particular family was the first of the day. We weighed small sacks of potatoes as well as guinea pigs. We will return in a month or so to compare the weights. The heavier the better, because the longer the potatoes maintain their water weight, the longer they can be stored and eaten. The same with the guinea pigs - the longer they maintain body weight without water, the more nutrition they can provide for the family. The storage time of these foods is especially important, since this region is very dry, and so food can only be grown during the rainy months between September and April. Climate change has further reduced the rainy season, causing severe drought and food shortages. Data from 20 different species of potatoes and 4 different species of guinea pigs will be compared, to determine the best species given the water shortages. Of course, the study will not suggest that only the one, best species be cultivated - many potato species will be grown in the same field at the same time, as per traditional practices. This helps to minimize pests and nutrient depletion of the soil.
    It’s going to be hard to go back to school after living like this. Adjusting after last summer was hard, and my life last summer resembled my life in the U.S. much more than my life right now does. In a way, I think it’s impossible to see the luxuries of the Western world in the same way once you really make yourself see the rest of the world. Something I’ve been noticing recently is how little I actually do for myself. If there wasn’t running water, if there wasn’t trash pickup, if there weren’t grocery stores that supplied me with food and department stores that supplied me with clothes, I would be so, so lost. I almost feel like a useless human being in that I don’t even know how to take care of myself in the most basic ways. I guess that’s what society gives us; it saves us time so that we can focus on all the other things that we focus on. And I guess that’s good? That has allowed modern medicine, and mapping the human genome, and combustion engines and the internet. But what about all the people in our easy society who don’t contribute to any of the things that improve the world. (Or maybe change the world is a better word.) I don’t mean the people in our society whose lives aren’t easy. I mean the people who trade stocks, or sell houses and cars, or make high fructose corn syrup. How do they find any meaning in their lives?