The Swing of Things

In stark contrast to weeks 1 and 1.8, I have work coming out of my ears in the lab now. After spending hours carefully picking specific samples from a -80 degree freezer all day last Friday, trying not to burn off my finger tips, I now have a pile of cow serum samples to analyze. My plan was to look at half on Tuesday and the other half on Wednesday. I had flown through my training easily enough, so I was excited and ready to go on Tuesday morning. For those of you who are interested, I am testing for Theileria parva antibodies in serum using an ELISA. After working hard for about 3 hours on Tuesday morning, I added the substrate as the final step and waited for the color to change. Nothing. Something was wrong. And I had no idea what. There was nothing to do but try again in the afternoon. Through this process I at least figured out what I had done wrong (really stupid measurement mistake) but the new batch of conjugate antibody had not yet been titrated (not my fault) and was not strong enough, so assay #2 was also useless. Day one of my project, down the drain.

This morning I woke up ready to go again. The first assay worked in the morning and I finally had some results. But through this process I came to realize that our pipettes for measuring everything down to very exact amounts are not as reliable as one would hope. I had carefully measured 50 microliters of serum from each animal, but after only removing 20 microliters for experiments, some of my tubes were nearly empty. Also, the multipipetter had cracked, so it now required 3 hands to function. Sigh. I didn't want to make excuses for my slow progress, but this was frustrating. As I struggled with the wash/suction device, Alice came over to help me. She said "washing can be really frustrating (because the vacuum doesn't work), that's why I make Dickens do it". But to her credit she spent the next half hour fixing the machine which I really appreciated. Then, pleased with herself, she chirped "old is gold". I had her repeat that a few times and finally understood that she was saying her old experienced touch was best at fixing things. Is "old is gold" an English phrase that I just have never heard, or did she make that up?

I spent the afternoon and evening running 3 times the number of samples I usually do in order to conserve my stock samples of variable volumes (you make a batch in the morning every day, but it is only good for that day). Alice told me I was working too hard before she left. I was relieved that Dickens was there to help me analyze everything in the end, until I realized that he had been sticking around just for me, probably at Alice's request. I have to get him a present or something.

While I was working I also the opportunity to talk to Salma, the older Sudanese woman in the lab working on her PhD. Since I had just finished 'What is the What' I asked her about living in Sudan and she told me a lot about her take on the conflict there (which until recently I had known barely anything about) and how it affected her life in Northern Sudan. Her main point was that it is silly to try to explain the conflict as the result of racial differences, because Sudanese people are and have always been a diverse mixture of ethnic groups. We also talked about veterinary medicine: the luxuries of being able to give your dog dialysis (obviously unheard of where she comes from), and the similarities of practicing production medicine there and in the US (the need, the clientele, and the reward of being so useful in the lives of so many).

Between the morning and afternoon lab sessions, I gathered up my nerve and went running again with the reception gals. Things went much better this time (I even made it all the way up the hill!) which I attribute to being hydrated, somewhat acclimatized to the altitude, and the milder weather. This time I was able to notice what I was running by. Just outside ILRI is a roundabout with a park in the middle. Lots of people are always there, mostly just laying around and hanging out as trucks belch exhaust all around them. As we headed off in one of the 7 or so directions, I was briefly gagged by the smell of garbage all along the road. Just beyond that were small fields of corn and other veggies near small houses. Then through a market with chickens picking through trash, ducks drinking out of puddles, and men honking and whistling at us. I was glad I couldn't understand them. Then we went down the dirt hill to "the tree". You can identify "the tree" by the sign that hangs on it. It is an advertisement to call for help for just about any malady including impotence, boredom, low salary, relationship problems, debt, and pretty much anything else you can think of. On the way back the school kids were walking home. Tiny children in small groups, or too often by themselves. One little boy who couldn't have been older than 4 was just strolling along the highway by himself. As we ran past them they gave us high fives, and you could hear them giggling behind us as we ran on.

Now I'm back home, for another solitary evening. I don't mind the time alone so much any more since I am busy during the day. Plus, the maid does the dishes :) JJ literally has drawers full of pudding, sauce, and dip packets, so I did my best to interpret the pictures and German instructions for making vanilla pudding. Despite having to reconstitute a block of cream (nearly butter at this point) back into milk, it turned out pretty good. Now it's time to drink tea and read until I fall asleep.