Important points after a long silence

So it has been a good long time since my last post. My sincerest apologies for that. Of course there is a lot to say about all that's happened since. To begin with, my supervisor (Francis Murray) and a team of experts came for a week's visit - one of the most intense weeks I've ever had. After adapting to the rhythm of rural village life, re-experiencing the sprint pace of the Stirling aquaculture department was quite a shock. Thankfully Francis fixed many of the problems I was having with my data collection, but there is still an incredible amount of work to do. During Francis' visit, I was advised to study the markets where oysters are sold, which really made clear what information will actually be important to people here. One of the issues I have found is the use of volume as a unit of sale. Oysters here are sold in cups (about 2300cm cubed volume), costing Le 1,000 per cup (~£0.13) regardless of the actual quantity of oysters inside. This quantity varies significantly by number of individuals - from 130 to 280 individual meats - and by value - 5 to 11 leons per oyster. The reason for the variation is partly the size of each meat, but also the habit of heaping mountains of meats on top of the cup- I hope I can post a photo when I get back. There is money saved by pursuing large oysters from sites further from Bonthe - as you can get more cups out of one harvest - but travelling to these sites is a strenuous and sometimes dangerous task. Another issue that has come up is the price of rice. Rice is a staple food, yet almost the entire country's supply is imported. Now for reasons which I suspect are production failures in southeast Asian countries, the price of a bag of rice (Le200,000) is now higher then it has ever been in the country. This change is causing a degree of unrest and getting enough food is becoming more and more difficult. I am curious to know whether this is just a national issue. To relate this back to oysters. Over the weekend, traders agreed to raise the price of a cup of oysters from Le1000 to 1500. Since the price of a cup of rice is Le1200 the rationale was: a cup of rice for a cup of oysters. This, and a radio broadcast of the activities of this oyster project with my supervisor Francis, was considered responsible for this change. As for me, I am rushing to get my data collection finished in time before having to head back to Stirling. Sadly I haven't been seeing the friends that I often used to spend time with in the evenings, but there is a lot of interesting work still to do.