"When
in Rome, do as the Romans."
My Experience as a Volunteer in the Sharklab
Somebody
once told me that proverbs reflect the way people of that culture think about
the world. A well-known proverb of English-speaking
cultures is "When in Rome, do as the Romans", meaning that you have to act in the same way
as the people around you.
For me, a foreign girl coming from Chile (a
tiny third-world country) to the Famous Sharklab, inhabited by people coming
from first-world countries (U.S.A, France, Australia, Canada and England),
understanding and practice this proverb has been very useful.
Seeing a rice maker and a drone for the first
time and watching BBC documentaries with actors that were in the Lab only hours
before at first took me out of my comfort zone. This was heightened by the fact
that I am still learning how to speak English, so I really didn´t understand
anything about the house rules, duty list, packing practices , etc. The good
thing is that any time that I made a mess, I would just say "I do not
speak English."
Now that I have been here for 24 days, I am
almost one Roman more, almost reaching a first-world understanding.... thinking
about the postgraduate program in which I will enroll in two more years, the
model and price of the GPS that I will
deploy with acoustic tag receivers to find sharks easily, or maybe even getting
my own drone to find them without getting out of the boat.
Only a few weeks have passed and I have learned
a lot more than what I was expecting, not only in a "fun-shark-work"
way, but in a "do-and-fix-everything-that-you-will-need-to-do-the-fun-shark-work"
way, from making a shark pen (see Alex McInturf
blog: "When life gives you lemons...take DNA) and fixing gillnets to
tagging tigers sharks and swimming with hammerhead sharks. This is a
once-in-a-lifetime great opportunity with genius Romans, living, imitating and
trying to understand them. What a great experience!
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| The Sharklab at dusk. |
Really interesting little blog post! nice work
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