Postcard from the Field: Tori Hymel Writes from Sierra Leone

Tori Hymel, an IGC IGEP Fellow and Ph.D. student in the Planning, Governance, and Globalization program at Virginia Tech, takes a moment to send us a 'Postcard from the Field'. She writes to update us on her work in Sierra Leone.

Written by Tori Hymel

Hello from beautiful (and hot!) Sierra Leone! I have been lucky enough to be here working with Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary for a third research project, and as always, there is never a dull moment! I am here under a GCC Synergy Grant and collaborating with Dr. Todd Schenk and Dr. Gillian Eastwood. Our current focus is on expanding One Health research and work in the country by strengthening collaborations across different sectors, agencies, and organizations working on human, animal, and environmental issues. Sierra Leone is currently facing massive threats including deforestation, zoonotic disease risk, and biodiversity loss. All of these contribute to current health and safety issues, including natural disasters like landslides, warmer temperatures, and fragmented landscapes.

So far, our project has involved qualitative semi-structured interviews with people working in organizations and government agencies around the capital of Freetown. Part of that is working with interviewees to create fuzzy cognitive maps- visual diagrams of connections among both collaborators and issues faced. These maps will help us pinpoint opportunities to improve or kick start new collaborations in our focus groups that will be held in a few weeks. We are also asking our participants what drives collaborations and what makes them challenging so that we can use our focus group to brainstorm how maximize the effectiveness of those collaborations. This week I was lucky enough to accompany Tacugama’s Outreach Team to the National Forest and Climate Forum, which gave me a great opportunity to make connections with people working in a lot of different agencies and organizations. Hopefully the coming weeks will mean more interviews with them!

When I’m not taking kekes all over Freetown to do interviews, I have also been trying my best to be an extra set of hands at the sanctuary. Things here have been a tad crazy with some chimp health issues and staff turnover, so I’ve been helping take some baby chimps into the forest to practice climbing and having very unique sleepovers with a chimp who has lingering movement issues from an encephalitis episode a few months ago. They’re truly amazing animals and the time I spend with them is incredible, but they’re definitely going to make it harder for me to leave in April.