Officially an adult

May 18: Alright, it's a good thing I'm so mature because in the eyes of Canadian law I am no longer a dependent - I am a full-fledged voting gambling drinking driving working tax-paying responsible adult. Thanks to everyone everywhere for their good wishes and to all those up on CABI hill who helped me celebrate in absolute abligurition with a colossal chocolate fondue.

Willkommen, Bienvenue, and Welcome to Camp CABI

There’s nothing like gruyère on a baguette after a long misty morning working in the gentle valleys of French Switzerland, after beating the crap out of canola fields with sweep nets on a search mission. Today’s target: The elusive emerald and bronze-coloured Mesopolobus morys and Trichomalus perfectus (long names for little insects). Both bugs are parasitoids of cabbage seedpod weevil: a major pest that costs Canadian canola farmers buckets of bounty every year. Cabbage seedpod weevil is not a problem here in Europe, partly because of good work by the tiny flashy Mesopolobus and Trichomalus, which lay their eggs on the skin of weevil larvae. The eggs hatch, and the parasitoid larvae eat the weevil alive. The difference, fyi, between a parasitoid and parasite, is that a parasite needs its to keep its host alive, but a parasitoid does not. Slow merciless death can be a good thing.

This is one of the biocontrol projects in which I am involved this summer. To understand biocontrol, you must say the following (as Mike, my co-worker, does) in a deep dramatic discovery-channel-like voice: “Biocontrol: Using Nature Against Itself To Benefit Man.” Cabbage seedpod weevil escaped its natural enemies in Europe by sneaking into Canada. We hope to help out canola farmers by finding a natural enemy that will control this weevil (and only this weevil) and introducing it to Canada. Parasitoids are good candidates because they tend to be picky and piggy eaters; they specialize on a single host and they kills lots of them. But first we have to make sure that’s truly the case, so that we don’t make the situation worse. Introducing natural enemies can be highly effective, but introductions with oodles of good intentions and not enough good science may go horribly awry.

The canola fields, like many things in Switzerland compared to Canada, are very small. Other small things include cars (I think it has nothing to do with energy efficiency – large cars aren’t practical because they wouldn’t fit down the narrow roads!), meal sizes (none of that super-size me nonsense), coffees (espres-so-good), and the living spaces (thank goodness everyone’s so friendly!). Some things are larger, like the price of just about everything. There are four important less expensive exceptions: bread, cheese, chocolate and beer (thus my new diet).

But don’t worry; I do get lots of healthy food without spending all the money in my Swiss bank account (that’s right, I have a Swiss bank account). I work for the Swiss division of CAB International, which is a non-profit organization. Their purpose is (yoinked off their website, feel free to google it): “to improve people's lives worldwide by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment.” The Swiss research centre (where I am as I type) is a single building at the top of the hill north of the town of Delémont.

CABI is a world apart from the town below. Since we study sweet European insects and plants that have turned into viciously invasive pests in North America (all except Diabrotica, the corn root worm, which came unwelcome in the opposite direction from the Americas to Europe), the research centre is full of students and scientists from both continents. English is the only language we all share, so we all speak it. We are heavily Canadian biased; we have something like 8 Canadians (4 in our lab alone). There is only one American. She wants to go back to working for the tourist industry in Hawaii, but I don’t think that has anything to do with us.

Since we students mostly live in basement bedrooms or tiny apartments, we use the kitchen in the research station for all our cooking. Every day someone signs up to make lunch for everyone else. On Monday, for example Amber and I made spaghetti with an olive oil sauce and lots of parmesan cheese for 25 people. Last week, Mike made a Moroccan stew, and before that Emma and Wade cooked curry. We take turns doing the dishes too. The centre works the way it does because we are a team. We do so much together (eating, working, living, travelling, and wild partying) that we spend most of our time up here on the hill, and it feels a bit like summer camp. A summer camp with colossal colonies of dangerous insects and good wine.

Our lab meets every morning at 8am and we work until the work is done. That can mean long hours. Plus when leek moth larvae or cherry bark tortrix (two more pests we fondly call LM and CBT) need to be fed, it can eat into our weekends. Nevertheless, we manage to take the timely Swiss trains to visit the country’s touristy places on our days off. So far, that includes Basel (where everyone promenades along the Rhine river speaking German), Gruyères (famous for cheese, churches, castles, cream and Aliens), and Bern (capital city).

My French is serving me well, and my “Bonjour” is just as musical as the “Bonjour’s” of the Swiss women at Delémont’s Saturday market, with their woven baskets full of bread and their heels clicking on the cobblestone. The walk to work takes about half an hour and I love it: climbing past the fields and cowbells, up a road lined with maples and cherry trees (with little bags wrapped around the branches for someone’s experiment) and past a big blue tent which is apparently a circus school for juvenile delinquents. The forest behind the centre is thick with birdsong. From the lab we can look over our microscopes out the windows to see three different towns doted with church steeples (like GPI-linked proteins on membrane lipid rafts…anyone?).

It reminds me a lot of working for Agriculture Canada in Agassiz, BC. Church bells, cowbells, train whistles, and nowhere to buy food on Sundays or after 6pm. Not to mention that the insects we study, having come from Europe to Canada, are the same species. Of course in Agassiz, you can’t hike to century-old ruins in less than an hour, or find Nutella on every shelf in the kitchen, and there aren’t nearly as many roundabouts. And in Agassiz, I wasn’t missing a Daniel who lives nine time zones away (ouchies). But CABI Switzerland has definitely become my home-away-from-home, and I can skype my heart’s other homes for just 0.017€/min. Thanks to the good work, the good food, and the good people here, I think I’m looking forward to the rest of the summer.

Love,

Samantha

Coming next time, on THE SAM REPORT: A week in Paris in September, and then eight months University of Victoria finishing my BSc H Co-op (aka degree in alphabet soup).