Tuesday, October 30, 2007
No Daylight Savings
Fun Fact: Tanzania does not observe Daylight Savings Time. Starting Sunday Elizabeth and Sarah will be 8 hours ahead.
The Lab: Sterilizing Beside Cockroaches
Emailed by Elizabeth to Neil:
We spent the morning making sure that our pressure cooker worked and collecting water for drinking, the lab work, and our emergency eye wash station.
We are finally to the point of trying a real test run with the agar, and it's almost 10pm. I guess college kids have the same habits wherever they go. We had been distracted by all the bugs that come out at night in the office. Another part of the hold up was our lighting situation.
One of our newly wired ceiling lights doesn't work, and the other has the best strobe light effect I have ever seen. So we moved to the best lit room in the building and sat on bundles of mosquito nets to watch our chemicals boil on a hot plate on the floor.
If all goes well we will be at this again on Thursday and Friday; after spending all day collecting samples in Nyambogo and interviewing each family we visit.
We spent the morning making sure that our pressure cooker worked and collecting water for drinking, the lab work, and our emergency eye wash station.
We are finally to the point of trying a real test run with the agar, and it's almost 10pm. I guess college kids have the same habits wherever they go. We had been distracted by all the bugs that come out at night in the office. Another part of the hold up was our lighting situation.
One of our newly wired ceiling lights doesn't work, and the other has the best strobe light effect I have ever seen. So we moved to the best lit room in the building and sat on bundles of mosquito nets to watch our chemicals boil on a hot plate on the floor.
If all goes well we will be at this again on Thursday and Friday; after spending all day collecting samples in Nyambogo and interviewing each family we visit.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Where Are We? aka learning to blog
So we have now been in Kenya and Tanzania for about two weeks. Just last night the VLOP group of 25 headed for the airport, and things are now starting to feel like Africa. . . or not the US. Its a weird mix of culture and purpose which I imagine will take a while to settle itself out.
Here in Nairobi we bought a pressure cooker, to use as an autoclave, and many other creative lab supplies. It will all be stuffed in a suitcase and we will head back to Shirati, our home base for the next six months, on an overnight bus. Rumors have it that it will be a bumpy ride, and if its anything like the vans we have spent endless hours on these past few week, there is no question about the bumpiness. When we get to Shirati, we will be working with three communities. In the past two weeks Sarah and I have had barely enough time to introduce ourselves to the communities as the people that will be around for six months to collect data, build partnerships, and be the best resource we can. Regardless of what we have accomplished, it has been a educational two weeks, and I anticipate that our productivity will soon go up.
Here in Nairobi we bought a pressure cooker, to use as an autoclave, and many other creative lab supplies. It will all be stuffed in a suitcase and we will head back to Shirati, our home base for the next six months, on an overnight bus. Rumors have it that it will be a bumpy ride, and if its anything like the vans we have spent endless hours on these past few week, there is no question about the bumpiness. When we get to Shirati, we will be working with three communities. In the past two weeks Sarah and I have had barely enough time to introduce ourselves to the communities as the people that will be around for six months to collect data, build partnerships, and be the best resource we can. Regardless of what we have accomplished, it has been a educational two weeks, and I anticipate that our productivity will soon go up.
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