Day 17: Today is the first day that I can truly say that I changed something in my community. Pretty sweet. But don’t get too excited, I’m setting my standards pretty low to start off with.
First let me start off by saying that I hate having flies swarming around, but people here don’t pay them much heed; they’re just part of life, you get used to them, etc. It’s not uncommon to see hordes of flies swirling around the dining room and kitchen. This is because people leave food out for hours (or overnight) and the flies have plenty of food to feast on.
On several occasions, I tried to explain to my host family that flies are attracted to food, such as scraps left on the table, fruit that’s lying around, etc. They were decidedly unconvinced. Flies are a part of life, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Well, finally I had enough and decided to show them via a scientific trial that flies do not spontaneously appear, but rather that they’re attracted to food.
There are 4 tables in my host mom’s dining room (it’s a shack made out of caña aguadua, a cousin of sugar cane that’s better suited for building than for eating). Why 4 tables? She operates a restaurant on the weekends. I brought over my mold-killing spray bottle (a bit of clorox mixed with a lot of water) and sprayed, then wiped off all the tables. The fly density immediately dropped from about 4 or 5 on each table to 0 or 1. Then we ate lunch on one of the tables, but I didn’t clean it off.
Let me add at this point that it is common practice to put scraps and bones on the table while eating (getting my family to use a plate for these is my next step).
15 minutes later, the table we ate on was covered in flies (5+) and the other 3 tables were devoid of them. I felt like Francesco Redi, who proved that maggots don’t spontaneously generate by putting meat in 2 jars, covering one with gauze, and showing that maggots don’t appear in the covered jar. My family didn’t believe me when I explained the theory, but they sure believed me when they saw the results. Now they wipe down the tables with the clorox mix at least once a day, and I would say the fly problem is as solved as it’s ever going to be.
I can’t say I blame them; I’m the same way. But it’s good to know what an effect I can have by showing people a technique, rather than just talking about it in the abstract.
I was going to mention the Francesco Redi flask experiment myself, but you've beat me to it. Well done. Hard to imagine a place where things like this aren't common knowledge.