Social Activities: Florida, the Home of rich biodiversity-click on the link Photos to view thumbnail version of pictures on you can click again on each thumbnail to view full portrait size of the pictures.                                                               

Below is the map of Florida. If you want to know which State became the core of the United States in the very latter part of the last century, then your answer is Florida. This was the State that held Americans to the first and most complicated electoral debacle for almost two months bringing Americans to start questioning themselves about the integrity and perfection of their political and legal systems. The electoral difficulty dubbed by the Nation's press, "Decision 2000", woke Americans to face the reality that there is still some editing work to be made on their national constitution.  Also, the State of Florida has most of the world's best beaches and lakes. It has a lot of animals and inhabits one of the world's richest ecological systems and biodiversity. The State of Florida is one of the few Federal States in the United States, that can boast of a gradient of two or more climatic conditions across its land stretch from the south to the north. From its southern most point, the Key West to the north-western and north-eastern towns of Crestview and Jacksonville respectively, you experience a climate change from tropical through sub-tropical to temperate. Southern DataStream's research activities are located in two towns, namely in LaBelle in south central Florida near Lake Okeechobee and in Gainesville in north-central Florida where the University of Florida is located. Nothing fascinates me more than just taking a road trip from LaBelle in the south to Gainesville. You pass through these beautiful cities of Ft. Myers, Tampa in the mid-western  and Ocala in the mid-central locations on the 75-Interstate Highway between north and south Florida. Florida jots from mainland into the sea and on its eastern margin is the Atlantic Ocean and then bordered to the west is the Gulf of Mexico. The many beautiful beaches in Florida made it the first choice of most tourists for the New Year eave celebrations and college students for their Spring Break 2000 festivities. One can understand that my stay in Florida will not limited to only research work. And certainly, I have not been left out in any of the social activities. These include partying, road trips, beers and sailing on the boat. The Caloosahatchee river provides a beautiful sailing route from my LaBelle village to Ft. Myers. But can you also imagine sailing on the Gulf of Mexico?. Fantastic! Great scenic beauty you can ever imagine!!. If you want anything, the home of it is Florida. What do you want as an individual? Water?, Work? Entertainment? name it and it can be located in some corner of this beautiful State. You will have online photos of some selected scenes of our social activities here as interns. As for my colleagues interns, little said about will save you from bursting your tear glands in over-production of tears of laughter. This year's intern cohort represents three continents all over the world and you can imagine the kind of unique group. The continents represented are North America, Europe and Africa breaking down into five countries namely Ghana, US, Germany, Britain and Italy. Look at the cultural diversity in display, but let me tell you what happens when different cultures meet. Sometimes confusion, but most often competition. If the competition in pursuit of cultural dominance, then one would expect a suite of elements of confusion. But if the competition cultural advertisement through one's way of life, then you can also expect mutual respect and cooperation. So this can be two-way affair and all depends much on the values of the individual interns making the group. It also partly depends on the internship program's host grip of the interns. If the grip is such loose so as he may lose control of the group it may just be  a total confusion. On the other hand, if the grip if firm, then it may be all work and happiness. But Dr. Capece is a strong man and very good at dropping emails into intern's email accounts keeping them in check. Although most interns don't like this way of communication, it is effective in keeping interns focused on their tasks. The close of a typical day's question at the Palomar Cir where interns are housed could be, "what can you say about today's email from John"?. Usually very long emails with attachment files containing fine details on policy changes and work schedules. Now it will be interesting to look at how the different cultural elements combine with that of the US. Anglophone Africans will have no problem and may adapt easily and go about their duty in public as first timers. Because, English is the spoken language here despite the fact that Americans want to speak a little differently from how the queen would wish they should. But this will depend on one's previous travel experience also. Sometimes Americans just speak and you don't understand what they mean. This becomes important when one wants to do shopping or get food from restaurants. Usually every kind of order will be clearly displayed on the menu and numbered. This makes things easier for you to order your food by just saying #1 or #2 ..., but I can tell you that is not all. The process can turn to be even more complicated and confusing. You tell the waiter, ok I want #6, and you will be asked a question, going with what?. This is where the difficulty comes. If you were from Ghana like me and only used to fufu (my favourite) banku, rer-red, omutuo, tz, kenkey etc, you can imagine how lost you will be as to what to say, given that you haven't lived in America long enough to know the different kinds of dietary combinations. This is what makes my German brothers; who speak English with very strong German accent like wood-cutters, very angry anytime we visit restaurants in Florida here. I have no idea how my Italians colleagues fair since we have not been closely working together. They are working on the hydrology modeling project in Ft. Myers. But you can imagine what the story will be, given that the Germans speak clearer and much more fluently than Italians. The Italians will extend every word they pronounce  and will require much longer time to construct an average sentence or make an average statement than the Germans. Being with the Southern DataStream and this year's intern group is one of the greatest experiences I have ever had in my 27years on earth. This is not say that I like everything about the group. For example we could just be walking together all speaking English and out of the blues hell will break loose and you hear noise such as "oftintung, ist gotun tfet" from my German brothers. For my Italian relatives, let us not go there!!. It will be a total collapse of sound waves on the electromagnetic spectrum..."fritito, capitoo, and mioor koc mi manch" ....here I say all apologies to my other colleagues, but that is true story! They won't even recognize that there is someone amongst them who may be wondering what a hell is going on. My Italian cousin would say, "What a h-e--l--l..." Sometimes, I get so frustrated about this, but you see these are the difference in cultures and we need to coexist. For the first time, I have tasted how it feels like, to be a minority. It feels ugly!. Here is where to reach my intern group. A red arrow points from a name to an animation that takes you to the specified intern by name. Just click on the any of the animations corresponding to the intern you want to reach and you will be there.

 

 

3. Andy Golbs

 

4. Olli Neumann